Enterprise New Tab - Office 365 Data on the NTP in Edge DEV

Brass Contributor

Hi, there

 

I have sent a brief feedback on this, but couldn't include the data that I needed to include (the screenshots). Basically put:

It would appear that the Enterprise version of the NTP has lost the corporate colours.

 

Before I dig in, I think I should say: Thanks for the brilliant hard work that you guys are doing. You're doing dog's work out there with this shiny new thing. I really enjoyed saying "what Chrome vulnerability?" the other day! :smile:

 

So. Yes. Really liking everything so far. However it does seem like perhaps a tiny step back has been taken here.

 

The previously announced new "Enterprise New Tab" experience (select "Office 365" instead of "Microsoft News") on the stock NTP setup, turned up, and it was fab. We had corporate colours flooding the screen, with key stuff up top, then a 'Delve-lite' interface in place of the news ... ??

 

I have a screenshot somewhere, but here's a mockup:

enterprise wrong - RIGHT LOOK.jpg

That holds our company colours from our O365 setup (or maybe it just pulled it from the desktop setup - unsure).

 

Now it's changed to this:

enterprise wrong - WRONG LOOK.jpg

 

Now that is undeniably more beautiful. I really would prefer a lovely photo set, or maybe even from an image library here ... However, this isn't not going to fly in the name of corporate branding, and fitting in with the whole 'Modern' SharePoint thing, too.

 

I can't seem to find note of this change here (I googled site:THISSITE, and searched the latest update threads), so sorry if I've missed something.

 

Is there a way that we can restrict this, and / or get some corporate branding back and replace the (beautiful, amazing) pictures from Bing? (and maybe stop it communicating with Bing in the first place?)

 

((( hope it's obvious this isn't an angry post ... just was selling this brilliant function to everyone as branding brilliance ... now it just looks like someone's browsing the internet ... ? )))

 

Best

Eliot @ projectfive

2 Replies

@eliotcole-projectfive Agreed! It looks very disjointed now having our corporate logo with a specific colour background, pasted on top of a random picture. The ability to control this is a requirement for corporate branding purposes, especially if expected to market the value of the NTP to the organization.

Phew, thanks, @Ryan Fielding , I was worried I was going mad. ;)

 

It really is an excellent idea, and it was literally something I was trying to build myself, so I'm super glad that it's a thing, it's just a real backward step to bring in that content. Not least because there's that (unfortunate) "unprofessional" feeling that might be taken from it. Especially from elder generations.

 

For what it's worth, I started to look into ways to get around it with the browser settings and / or the host.

  1. I first looked at locally blocking the image provider.
    • Hosts - I actually first tried to block the host access to BING (where the images were coming from), but now they're being sourced / stored somewhere else.
    • Then I tried the new place, and the issue there is that it's a well known CDN that MS use, or an azure resource, or something.
  2. So ... it seems that blocking anything like BING, azure, or an important CDN, can actually break important work applications. So even as a workaround it might not be the way forward.
  3. I have begun (but I also need to do actual work) to test the insides of NuEdge and it's varying inside bits and bobs.
  4. There may be a way around using user CSS ... but then ... seems like something that shouldn't really need to be done (and a pain to ping out in an enterprise environment).
  5. There may also be some options purely by pulling apart the literal settings in Edge, again, though, here's hoping that they pull through and just put a couple of toggles in the browser - or, better, some O365/SharePoint(?)/Azure controls. :)

 

Best

E