Configure Cloud Site List Management for IE mode

Microsoft recently introduced a new feature called Cloud Site List Management for IE mode. With this new feature, we can host and manage the Enterprise Mode Site list (EML) in the cloud, without creating our own cloud-hosted solution, as I described in this previous post.
Cloud Site List Managemen is described as follows in the documentation:

The preview experience lets you store your organization’s site list in a compliant cloud location instead of needing an on-premises infrastructure to host your site list. You can create, import, export site lists, and audit changes to site list entries through the M365 Admin Center. You can publish multiple site lists to the cloud and use group policy to assign different groups of devices to use different lists.

Sounds good for companies who still need to maintain an EML, but are moving more and more service from on-premises to the cloud. Setup is pretty easy, so let’s see how that’s done.

Pre-requisites

There are some pre-requisites to use this feature in public preview (which might change when hitting General availability):

  • Customers must have an Azure AD tenant
  • The tenant subscription must include Exchange Services
  • Admins must have Microsoft Edge version 93 or greater installed
  • Admins need to be an Edge Administrator or a Global Administrator on the tenant to access the Microsoft Edge site lists experience under Org Settings on M365 Admin Center

Opt in to the public preview

to use the new feature during the public preview, we need to manually opt into the preview. This is done by changing the Release preferences in the M365 admin center to Targeted release. For this, you need to be a Global Admin.

  • Sign-in to the M365 admin center
  • Browse to Settings – Org settings
  • On the Organization profile tab click Release preferences
  • Choose Targeted release for everyone to enable targeted release for all users in the organization
  • Or choose Targeted release for selected users and select you targeted users.
  • Click Save

I’ve only tested this with targeted release set to Targeted release for everyone

It can take up to 24 hours for the following configuration changes to take effect in Microsoft 365. But for me, the new feature was already available in a few minutes, after refreshing the browser.

Publish enterprise site list to the cloud

Users who need to manage the Enterprise Mode Site list, need to be a Global Administrator or Edge Administrator. Edge Administrator is a new role found in Azure AD.

The site list is managed via the M365 admin center.

  • Browse to SettingsOrg settings
  • On the Services tab click Microsoft Edge‎ site lists (Preview)

To get started we first need to create a new list.

  • Click Create a new list
  • Give the list a Name
  • Enter a Description (optional)
  • Click Create
  • Click on the name of the list

When the list is opened, we have several options to fill the list. We can manually import a site by choosing Add a site. We can import an existing EML list (great for migrating our on-prem site list!), or export the cloud current list.

It also shows the Site list ID, which is needed to publish the list to our Windows devices.

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  • Click Add a site
  • Enter the Site address
  • Make a choice for Opens in, Compatibility mode and the other options
  • Enter a Comment (optional)
  • Click Save

And our first site is added!
But it’s not published yet as you can see on the status.

  • Click on Microsoft Edge site list at the top
  • Select the list
  • Click Publish site list
  • Enter a version number
  • Click Publish

This action processed all the previous actions and published the list.

The status of the previously added site is changed to published.

Now that we have published our list, it’s ready to use on our Windows devices.

Configure Microsoft Edge to use the cloud list

The list can be published using GPOs, but I prefer using Microsoft Intune. The setting which we need to use is Configure the Enterprise Mode Cloud Site List. But this setting only works, when we also configure Configure Internet Explorer integration.

  • Sign in to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center
  • Browse to DevicesWindowsConfiguration profiles
  • Click +Create profile

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  • Select Windows 10 and later as Platform
  • Select Templates as Profile type
  • Select Administrative Templates
  • Click Create
  • Give the profile a Name
  • Enter a Description (Optional)
  • Click Next

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  • Scroll down and Select Edge
  • Search for Cloud
  • Open Configure the Enterprise Mode Cloud Site List
  • Select Enabled
  • Enter the Site list ID in the text box
  • Click OK

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  • Search for Configure Internet Explorer integration
  • Open the settings
  • Select Enabled
  • Select Internet Explorer mode
  • Click OK

Finish creating the configuration profile and assign it to your Windows devices.

End-user experience

When we open Microsoft Edge on the end-users device, we can view all configured policy settings by browsing to Edge://policy. Here we can verify if the policy settings are applied.

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When we browse to Edge://compat we can see the configured Enterprise Mode Site List itself and the location.
As we can see the location refers to https://edge.microsoft.com/enterprisesitemanagement/edge/edgeEmieSiteLists and our list ID.

And the EML does its job, my website is opened in IE Mode.

That’s it for this blog post. Thanks for reading and happy testing!

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