The Managed Settings Framework provides a mechanism for administrators to set name/value pairs into the local Eclipse preference store for use by Eclipse plugins. In addition to setting the values of the preferences, the preferences may also be specified as read-only, indicating that the end user should not be allowed to change the preference, and that if they do, it will be rewritten with the administrator's value. This capability is most frequently used to set policy for client applications. For information about how an administrator may set up preferences to be used by Eclipse applications, see the Info Center for the IBM Workplace Client.

Application developers may determine the read-only status of a setting by calling {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.ManagedSettingsScope#isReadOnly(String, String)} or {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.preferences.ManagedSettingsPreferences#isReadOnly(String)} on the node that is returned by {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.ManagedSettingsScope#getNode(String)} They may determine the values of the settings themselves by either using the {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.ManagedSettingsScope} or by using the standard Eclipse scopes. The advantage of using the ManagedSettingsScope is that the data is retrieved from a tamper-resistant data store. Settings retrieved from the standard Eclipse store could be inaccurate for short periods of time since they are allowed to be changed by the user. Eventually, the Managed Settings Framework will overwrite these changes and restore the administrator's values but the overwrite will only be immediate if the change was done programmatically. Otherwise, it will not be overwritten until a new update is run or the client restarts. Note that it is unnecessary to know if a setting is "managed" or not, before accessing it through the {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.ManagedSettingsScope}.

The knowledge of how to obtain settings information from a particular back-end system is encapsulated in a plugin that implements the {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.provider.Provider} interface and extends the com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.ManagedSettingsProvider Extension Point. Providers currently exist to get settings from Portal Policy Manager, Domino, and from an XML file. This interface may be also implemented by clients. The Managed Settings Framework will periodically poll the providers to get their updated settings. The poll interval may be set by the administrator. Instead of waiting to be polled, a Provider may also inform the framework that it wants an immediate update by calling the method {@link com.ibm.rcp.managedsettings.provider.ProviderUpdateListener#onRequestUpdate(String)} on its registered listeners.