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How to configure Edge Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer

luisdem

Microsoft

Jun 20, 2022

Internet Explorer is discontinued, what happens now?

As you know, Microsoft announced the Internet Explorer decommission:

Internet Explorer (IE) 11 is the last major version of Internet Explorer. Starting June 15, 2022, the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will no longer be supported on certain versions of Windows 10.

If you have enterprise web applications that depend on Internet Explorer, this post is for you. Despite the retirement of IE, Microsoft provides the tool Enterprise Mode Site List Manager that allows you to configure a list of web pages that needs to run on Internet Explorer mode. In that list, it is possible to define the IE version by web application or even for specifics pages. I mean, you can have your web application running on Edge, and set a specific page for IE11, another for IE9 and so on. Once you have defined it in the IE site list, you can use the IE polices to configure your environment to use the IE Enterprise Mode.

How it works

The Internet Explorer executable will not be removed from the operating system (at least not now), but only Edge will be able to run it through Enterprise Mode. That is how IE mode works, Edge uses IE to run pages in compatibility mode.

In the following image, I am logged into a Windows 11 machine, browsing to the bing page that is set to run in IE11 mode.

If you are wondering which place is shown in the image above, know that it is the Iguazu Falls that border Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

Through Process Explorer it is possible to check that Edge is calling iexplore.exe to run the bing page in compatibility mode.

There are different ways to configure Internet Explorer mode for Edge, as detailed explained in the Microsoft Edge + Internet Explorer mode Getting Started guide.

In this post, I am focusing on the corporate scenario, so I will show you how to configure Edge Enterprise Mode through policies defined on a Domain Controller.

Define the IE Site List

The Enterprise Site List Manager is an in-browser version of the standalone Enterprise Mode Site List Manager tool that lets you create, edit, and export your organization’s site list.

Click here to download the tool.

In the Enterprise Site List Manager, select Add a site.
Enter the URL for the website you'd like to add, for example: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode
Select IE11 from the Open in list, to open the site in IEMode.
Under Compat Mode, choose IE11 Document Mode.
Click Save to add the site to your site list.

Repeat steps 2-5 to add https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode-sitelist, but this time to run as IE10:

Repeat steps 2-5 to add https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode-policies, but this time to run as IE9:

Follow the site list definition:

The next step is to export the site list to XML.

In the Enterprise Site List Manager, click on File menu and select Save to XML.

Save the file in a shared folder that can be available for your client machines. I am saving it in a shared folder (sitelist) on my domain controller, just to keep it simple (not recommended):

\vm-windc\sitelist\sitelist.xml

Follows my sitelist content:

<site-list version="1">
  <created-by>
    <tool>EMIESiteListManager</tool>
    <version>12.0.0.0</version>
    <date-created>06/20/2022 11:51:39</date-created>
  </created-by>
  <site url="docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode-sitelist">
    <compat-mode>IE10</compat-mode>
    <open-in>IE11</open-in>
  </site>
  <site url="docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode-policies">
    <compat-mode>IE9</compat-mode>
    <open-in>IE11</open-in>
  </site>
  <site url="docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode">
    <compat-mode>IE11</compat-mode>
    <open-in>IE11</open-in>
  </site>
</site-list>

Configure the policies

In this session, I will demonstrate how to set the Edge Enterprise Mode policies on a Domain Controller.

Download the IE Enterprise Mode policies for Edge here. I am using Windows 64-bit Policy, since my operating system is 64-bit:

That is the file that contains the policies:

Double-click the file and copy the MicrosoftEdgePolicyTemplates.zip to outside the cab:

Extract the MicrosoftEdgePolicyTemplates.zip file:

Navigate to the folder MicrosoftEdgePolicyTemplates\windows\admx and copy the .admx (group policies settings) files:

Navigate to the SYSVOL\YourDomain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions folder of your domain controller and paste the admx files there:

In case you don't have a PolicyDefinitions folder (in case of a brand new DC), create one.

Next, go back to the extracted files and copy the adml files for the language of your environment:

Switch back to the policy definitions folder, navigate to the en-us folder (or the folder that corresponds to your language - create a new one in case you don't have it) and paste the adml files there:

Open up the Group Policy Management, go to the domain and group policy objects and create a new GPO named EdgeEnterpriseMode:

Navigate to Computer Configuration\Polices\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Edge and edit the Configure the Enterprise Mode Site List policy. Click enabled and set the shared folder that contains the sitelist.xml created previously:

Navigate to Computer Configuration\Polices\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Edge and edit the Configure Internet Explorer integration policy. Click enabled and select Internet Explorer Mode from the configure Internet Explorer integration list:

Follows the configuration:

Go ahead and close the group policy management. Now link the GPO with the OU that contains your computers. I am using the OU AVDSessionHosts that contains my machines. Select your OU and click on Link an Existing GPO...*:

Select the EdgeEnterpriseMode and click OK:

Follows my GPO settings:

Validate the settings

Once we have configured the EdgeEnterpriseMode GPO, the next step is to double-check if the settings is working on the client machines through the following steps:

I log into on one of my machines of the AVDSessionHosts OU that has the EdgeEnterpriseMode GPO applied.
Just to make sure that the GPO was applied, I ran the following command to force the group policy update on the computer: