Although Microsoft Edge is not the most popular browser out there, it is still used in many enterprise environments, typically where organizations are already heavily entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem. We recently learned that the Redmond tech giant is working on an Edge feature that will enable IT admins to find out which extensions are installed by tenant users in the browser. Now, it is implementing an infrastructural change that may be appreciated by organizations.
Essentially, Microsoft is building another channel for organizations to flight pre-release builds to their users. This is aptly called "Enterprise Preview", and its aim is to make it easier to adapt to changes while also improving the browser"s usage as people get more comfortable with it. The good thing is that IT admins can also configure an opt-out experience so that if users are not happy with their updated browser, they can easily roll back to the stable channel.
Enterprise Preview for Edge is currently in public preview, and admins can configure it via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Here, they can set the Target Channel policy as Dev or Beta and also enable the opt-out policy, as mentioned previously.
In order to gauge compatibility with an upcoming version of Edge, Microsoft recommends seeding a pre-release build to at least 20 devices as a minimum. However, its ideal recommended range is as follows:
| Total device count | Recommended pre-release audience size |
|---|---|
| Less than 10,000 | 10% |
| 10,000 to 100,000 | 5% |
| 100,000 to 1,000,000 | 1% |
| 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 | 0.5% |
| 10,000,000 or more | 0.1% |
Edge users enrolled in the Enterprise Preview will be able to see more details on the edge://about page. Microsoft says that this implementation is much more refined than the previous TargetChannel experience, because it enables customers to roll back.
All in all, it"s a decent improvement that gives a sufficient amount of control to admins and tenant users alike. Perhaps it will enable users to more quickly catch and fix CPU-hogging bugs before they reach the masses. Edge Enterprise Preview is in public preview right now, with general availability scheduled for April 2026. You can find out more details here.