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Introducing Workspaces in Edge | New feature
Workspaces
you can create multiple Workspaces in Edge, have tabs in each of them, and when you close all Edge windows and open Edge again, you still have your w...
Well, at least we have closure, I guess. I was really hoping they'd bring it back. I'm sure this new feature will be a godsend for a lot of people, but it's odd that it's wearing the face of our cancelled feature.
AlienNation It looks like the use case from the former (circa 2020) preview is still valid.
Please provide feedback in-app (and continue discussions here) once you get a chance to try it out!
From Microsoft Edge Workspaces (Public Preview); 12 October 2022:
Edge Workspace scenarios
The following are key scenarios for using Edge Workspaces in your organization.
- ...
- If an individual is working on multiple projects, they can create a workspace to organize the open tabs they have for each project. Whenever they want to work on that project, they can easily open its Edge Workspace and have everything they need in one place.
That page also includes a seven-minute embedded YouTube video explaining Edge Workspaces.
From Getting started with Microsoft Edge Workspaces (public preview); undated:
Edge Workspaces can be used both individually or as a group to help manage projects and keep websites and files in one place. For example:
...
If you're working on multiple projects, you can create an Edge Workspace to organize the open tabs you have for each one. Whenever you want to work on a project, just open the project’s Edge Workspace and you’ll have all your websites and working files open in one place.
The shared version of workspaces only appears to be currently available to business users, at least for now - the sharing functionality appears to be facilitated by Azure AD and the SharePoint backend of OneDrive for Business (and perhaps some Substrate stuff on the backend as well?).
Enabling the feature:
- There appears to be a group policy setting (version 107 or later; EdgeWorkspacesEnabled) to enable this, as well as a command-line flag (#edge-workspaces).
- Additionally, the following url for an in-browser flag is mentioned by the first quoted page: edge://flags#edge-workspaces.
The time to provide feedback and help mould this into a useful feature for the broadest possible audience is now, while it is still in development. (Once a feature makes it into the default channel, it's much harder to change things work without impacting lots of users, of course.)
- Jim
P.S. Don't forget about positive feedback, too!
Does anyone was able to turn this ON yet? Please post step by step instructions!
Alex_Kaa I was able to turn it on as others have described... but the Workspaces feature only appears in Edge profiles connected to an Azure AD account, for now.
In my case, the main/default Edge profile is synced with a personal Microsoft account, so no sign of Workspaces appears there at all. As soon as I open a new window with my second, 'Work', profile (without restarting the browser), Workspaces are enabled and functional in any windows belonging to that Edge profile.
I tested this today with both Edge Stable (106.0.1370.52) and Edge Canary (108.0.1458.0); the results were identical in either case.
One other update: once you create a workspace, you can copy a link to 'share' it with other people. As of today, it seems that using that link can result in (at least) three separate outcomes:
- Using that link in a version of Edge that doesn't meet the requirements for Workspaces (i.e. a 'personal' account, or with the flag turned off) just redirects to the documentation for Workspaces referenced in my earlier post.
- Using that link in a version of Edge with Workspaces enabled:
- Loads the shared workspace, but only if the linked account belongs to the same Azure AD tenant!
- If the linked account belongs to a different Azure AD tenant than that which shared the Workspace link, an obscure error message appears.
Link details:
SpoilerThe links look like:
https://aka.ms/edgeworkspaces/join?id=<A>
... where '<A>' is a URL-encoded, Base64-encoded url itself, in the form:
https://TENANTNAME-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/USER_DOMAIN_TLD/E<B>
... and where '<B>' is a 45-character string (it's not 'standard' Base64-encoded again, at least not with the traditional character sets, since '-' is seen... it may 256-bit hash encoded in a similar fashion, though, possibly using the RFC3548 section 4 "URL and Filename safe" alphabet).
Here are three examples of that last portion (which appear to consistently start with a capital 'E'); the Workspace name and color were identical for the last two:
1. EUo0fBzzeVhOj-ML5-cuQSgBzWlA1Q9FdbDS0AU6xZRCew
2. EXphrzbrGthDgh3A3usuoZUBPqlIgEUbcZJlsvKQeKRhbg
3. EQmhNSxXRbBMutXLDl66bGgB2RCOsz9KUOU2UaboFfE52gThis is very possibly a just a standard sharepoint link; if the tenant allows 'external sharing' in SharePoint, perhaps cross-tenant Workspaces won't be so far off at all.
The current documentation does not mention any restrictions on sharing outside of a tenant, but I fear that at least initially that may be the case (Teams is still trying to outgrow a similar architectural assumption).
- Jim
JimGrisham Ha, thanks for update! Worked for me as well. Interesting, I guess I'll be using my MS 365/AD account for now.
- Just open edge://flags#edge-workspaces by putting it in the address bar and enable the policy.
