Sleeping tabs FAQ

HiEleanor_Huynh ,

I have experiemented with this feature and a couple of questions remain.

First some context: I'm working with a line of business application which requires regular callbacks to the server to keep the client and server parts functioning. The maximum interval between callbacks is configureable, but if this interval is exceeded, the server session will time-out and the client will not be able to resume. With Google Chrome, this is not an issue because the browser tab still wakens once per minute to process events and thus is able to send a request to the server. With Microsoft Edge, this becomes more complicated because here the sleeping tabs feature completely shuts down the tab and will not re-awaken the tab until the user intervenes.

For the most part, I have solved this using a web-page-lock since this will keep the tab active regardless of the foreground/background state. But there are some additional questions that remain:

1. The documentation also refers to Intranet Sites being exempt from the sleeping-tabs rules. I was not able to verify this. The sites I tested this with are part of the "Local Intranet" sites in Internet Explorer, but in Microsoft Edge, this had no effect. I also tried to find the setting in edge://settings but to no avail. Could you please point me to the documentation on how to configure Intranet Sites for Microsoft Edge?

2. The Tabs Group feature (see https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/great-new-features-tabs-groups-auto-create-tab-groups-collapse/m-p/1953865/highlight/true#M39916) will allow the user to switch tabs into sleepmode with a simple click in the tab bar. I have tried this out and discovered that manually switching a tab into sleepmode overrules any and all heurisitcs (web-page-lock, open Developer Tools, etc) as well as the explicit block-list. This is problematic for the stable operation of our LOB application because there is no way to protect the user from messing up their work by simply using the browser the way they would like to. It is partially understandable that the heuristics get overruled by a manual action, but to overrule configuration settings represents a significant problem when administering a corporate setup. Could you please check if this is a bug and/or if there is a supported work-around for this issue?

3. Will the Sleeping Tabs feature be rolled out to all users with the stable release of Microsoft Edge v88 or will it remain opt-in until a later version (e.g. Microsoft Edge v89)? This information will be important to judge the urgency in communicating with customers on how to prevent conflicts between the LOB application and Microsoft Edge.

4. In yesterday's blog post (https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/12/09/sleeping-tabs-beta-performance/) it was announced that the sleep timeout was reduced from 2 hours to 5 minutes. I updated my Microsoft Edge v88 beta and enabled the sleeping tabs feature, but the timeout remained at 2 hours. Could you please expand on the changed timeout, in particular, will the tab indeed seeze all activity after 5 minutes instead of 2 hours or will this be a two-step process, first throttling the activity to once per minute and only completely freezing after 2 hours?

Many thanks, Michael