I had to write a post on the new options we have in Windows 10 1607 and managing the items in the Taskbar, it is now live at 4Syops.com where I am one of the authors. It covers how to deploy a custom taskbar during OS deployment, Group Policy, Powershell script and some lessons I learned so far when using it.
“The feature we used to deploy a customized Start menu in Windows 10 has been extended with the ability to manage pinned items on the Taskbar. There are some unsupported solutions for importing a Taskbar layout during OS deployment, including the one I wrote 🙂 However, now we can do it in a supported manner, and we can even add items using Group Policy after we create the user profile.
Note that this feature requires Windows 10 Enterprise/Education and it only works in Windows 10 1607. (Editor’s note: There is some evidence that this feature works in Windows 10 Pro. Please share your experiences in a comment.) We cannot use this feature to remove items the user pinned to the Taskbar; we can only remove items from the Taskbar that we added with the new feature.
The Taskbar layout is configured in an .xml file either together with the Start menu layout or in a separate file. The .xml file can then be deployed using different tools according to which suits your organization best.”
Check out the whole post here:
https://4sysops.com/archives/pin-apps-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-10-1607-with-group-policy/
Also worth noting that you can’t use the new xml file with versions pre 1607 at all, it just errors out. I was hoping I could use one single xml and at least get the start menu layout, but it turns out you can’t.