Introducing Workspaces in Edge | New feature

Iron Contributor

Oct 25, 2022

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:

Spoiler

The 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. EQmhNSxXRbBMutXLDl66bGgB2RCOsz9KUOU2UaboFfE52g

This 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 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

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Introducing Workspaces in Edge | New feature

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