Policy needed: "Go to an intranet site for a one-word entry in the Address bar"

JaredB81 I can confirm that "." (dot) now works as expected.
It correctly keeps to a hostname when you do dots and dashes and doesn't do a search engine search until you type a space.

Thank you for the fix!

Any status on the ability to fail back to search after a few seconds if the hostname is not resolved?
I can see that build 79 is heading to GA, so I am wondering how long we have to wait for this until we can deploy a GA Edge version to our users?

ToMMeR, the "dot" fix should now be available in the latest Dev build (79.0.309.11).  Please give it a try and let us know how it works for you.

ToMMeR, Aaron Roma, Omega47, AngelPRU, paf_skov and stesch79, we have determined a feasible and safe approach to enable the search fallback behavior. Development is underway and once the solution has been implemented, I will update this thread so we can get your feedback on the search fallback behavior.

On behalf of the Microsoft Edge team, thank you again for testing and for your valuable feedback! We appreciate it!

Jared 

ToMMeR, thank you for your feedback. 

Your testing did not match my expectation and after looking into it, it turns out the fix didn't make it into the 79.0.309.5 Dev channel build.  Our team has now checked in the fix to make sure it is in the next Dev channel release.  I'll update this thread once that has taken place and then I'll kindly request you run these test cases again.

Thank you for your patience and I apologize about the confusion.

Jared

JaredB81 in version 79.0.309.5 the logic behind when to search and when to visit a website still seems strange and in a way that would lead to quite a lot of search engine searches where a internal website was what was intended.

Take "test.vejle.intern" as an example which could be an internal hostname.
- "test" correctly tries to go to the hostname.

- "test." tries to do a search engine search (why?).

- "test.v" still tries to do a search engine search.

- "test.ve" correctly tries to go to the hostname.

- "test.vej" tries to do a search engine search.
- "test.vejl" still tries to do a search engine search.
- "test.vejle" still tries to do a search engine search.
- "test.vejle." still tries to do a search engine search.

- "test.vejle.i" still tries to do a search engine search.

- "test.vejle.in" correctly tries to go to the hostname.
- "test.vejle.int" correctly tries to go to the hostname.

- "test.vejle.inte" tries to do a search engine search.

- "test.vejle.inter" tries to do a search engine search.

- "test.vejle.intern" tries to do a search engine search.

I do not understand why the logic behind it has to be this complex.
When the group policy is set, why don't you just treat anything a hostname until a character that is not valid in a URL is typed (like for example a space)?

Update: Dev channel build 79.0.309.5 has been released.  It should contain support of dots for single-word direct navigation if the policy is enabled.

ToMMeR, please test this out and let us know how it works for you.

Thank you,
Jared

Hello ToMMeR, stesch79, paf_skov, AngelPRU, Aaron Roma, and Omega47,

We have implemented support for the dot character much like our implementation to support the dash character.  The implementation should be available in the next Dev channel release.  Once the build is available, please test it and give us your feedback.

As for the search fallback on timeout request, we are actively investigating the safest way to implement this aspect of the policy.  The relevant codepath is very complex and so it requires a detailed and carefully thought out design.  We are taking your feedback seriously and I will keep this thread updated as we make progress here.

Thanks very much,

Jared

Thanks, ToMMeR and Aaron Roma. 

Yes, we included dashes per your feedback.  I'm glad to hear that it's working for you. Our team is going to consider including dots as well per the examples provided above. 

Question to this thread's audience and the rest of the enterprise community: are there any other punctuation characters (in addition to dashes and dots) you would expect would be considered part of a "single word" for direct intranet navigation?

As for the fallback to search upon timeout, I've made a note of that as well and added it to our backlog.  It's not committed yet and I don't want to over-promise, but I hear the feedback and we're aware of the importance of search as a fallback as part of this policy functioning end-to-end for you.  I'll keep this thread posted on any decisions related to this request.

Thanks again for the great testing and detailed feedback!

Jared

JaredB81 

I have now had time for some more thorough testing combined with our typical search engine policies.
In general the solution works really well and is a big step in the right direction.

I do not experience the issue that Aaron Roma mentions with dash "-" in the name. I tested on the newest Version 79.0.279.0 - maybe it's been fixed in this build?

I do however experience as issue with a dot "." which in our case is much worse.
As soon as i type the first dot "." in a hostname it changes from resolving the hostname to doing a search engine search. This is a serious issue as an internal website usually would be either just a hostname, or a FQDN which of course includes a dot "."
It looks like the logic behind the address bar somehow recognizes known top level domains like .com, .org etc., but if you are trying to resolve an internal FQDN the internal DNS name might be different, like hostname.company.local

Also as mentioned before, it would be much better if it could fallback to a search engine search if the hostname does not resolve within the timeout - the same was it worked in Internet Explorer. That way users can still do a single word search even though the policy is enabled, they will just experience a few second delay as the browser tries to resolve the word as a hostname before using a search engine.

Best regards
Thomas

JaredB81 

Sorry for the delay, but I did finally get to test this policy as well.   I also agree with the others that the preferred behavior would be do perform a search if the intranet site doesn't resolve.

That being said, I also noticed a different issue.  This policy does not work if the intranet site has a dash "-" in the name.   For example, typing in the single word "intranet" would correctly go to the "intranet" site.   However "ab-intranet" would perform a search rather than resolving to an intranet site.

AngelPRU, ToMMeR, and Omega47, 

Thank you very much for testing so quickly and for already providing feedback! I'm glad to hear this largely meets your needs.

I've made a note about the request for a search fallback on timeout rather than the error message.  I will discuss this with the team and we will look into it.

ToMMeR, have a great vacation and I look forward to any additional feedback upon your return!

In the meantime, if anyone else has additional feedback about this policy, I will continue to monitor this thread.

Thanks again,

Jared