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CCMEXEC.COM – Enterprise Mobility

MS Edge v85 roaming profile + UE-V

Posted on August 25, 2020September 3, 2020 by Jörgen Nilsson

One of the new features in MS Edge v85 is support for roaming profile settings to a local file, profile.pb.
This is great news for many organizations that cannot synchronize the user settings to Azure AD account due to for example laws, compliance or lack of Azure AD Premium. More information about the new feature in Edge version 85 can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployEdge/microsoft-edge-on-premises-sync

I wrote a blog post about two years ago on how to roam the “Profile.pb” file in Google Chrome using UE-V here: https://ccmexec.com/2018/09/using-google-chrome-roaming-profile-settings-with-ue-v/
Tested using UE-V for the new MS Edge feature and it works fine as well! The short video below shows two computers with the same user logged on to both and roaming favorites between them.

Demo Favorites roaming in MS Edge 85 and UE-V

The new setting enables the creation of the “Profile.pb file” Note that Edge and Edge Beta saves the file in different locations per default which makes sense. The default location can be changed as well using a Group Policy as well if we want to point it to another folder. For MS Edge Beta the default folder is shown below.

Default location of the profile.pb file

To enable roaming using the local file we need to enable two Group Policies. “Configure automatic sign in with an Active Directory domain account when there is no Azure AD domain account” as shown below.
NOTE: as the name indicates it will not work if the user exists in AzureAD in a Hybrid setup.

Configure automatic sign in

And then then we enable the creation of the profile.pb file by using the “Enable using roaming copies for Microsoft Edge profile data” as shown below.

Enable using roaming copies for MS edge profile data

If we look in MS Edge settings on the client we can see that the setting is applied.

MS Edge settings screenshot

I have posted the UE-V xml template for MS Edge beta as Edge Stable v.85 is not released when I write this post on Github here: https://github.com/Ccmexec/Other/tree/master/UE-V%20sample%20files
Because the Edge Beta and Edge Stable saves the files in different locations I have created one for Beta and will post the one for Stable when it is released.
The content of the file is really simple as shown below.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SettingsLocationTemplate xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/UserExperienceVirtualization/2013A/SettingsLocationTemplate">
  <Name>MSEdgeBeta</Name>
  <ID>EdgeBeta-Profile</ID>
  <Version>1</Version>
  <Author>
    <Name>Jorgen</Name>
    <Email>jorgen@ccmexec.com</Email>
  </Author>
  <Processes>
    <Process>
      <Filename>MSEdge.exe</Filename>
    </Process>
  </Processes>
  <Settings>
    <File>
      <Root>
        <EnvironmentVariable>APPDATA</EnvironmentVariable>
      </Root>
      <Path>Microsoft\Edge Beta\User Data</Path>
      <FileMask>profile.pb</FileMask>
    </File>
  </Settings>
</SettingsLocationTemplate>



In my case I simply drop the template in my UE-V template folder and the clients will pick it up and start syncing the file.

UE-V template folder

The new roaming option is great news for many organisations and if we combine it with UE-V the end user experience is really great!

  • Edge
  • Profile.pb
  • Roaming Profile
  • UE-V
  • 10 thoughts on “MS Edge v85 roaming profile + UE-V”

    1. Joris says:
      August 31, 2020 at 9:51 am

      Thanks for this info!
      Do you also know if and how we can roam History and Cookies?

      Reply
      1. Jörgen Nilsson says:
        September 3, 2020 at 10:15 am

        According to Docs it is coming.
        Regards,
        Jörgen

        Reply
    2. Jörgen Nilsson says:
      September 4, 2020 at 12:29 pm

      Test

      Reply
    3. Joris van der Struijk says:
      September 14, 2020 at 12:26 pm

      Hi Jörgen

      Thanks for the reply. Can you possible share a link to the docs you are referring?
      Greetings,
      Joris

      Reply
    4. Jörgen Nilsson says:
      September 15, 2020 at 10:19 pm

      It is actually in the screenshot above as well, under History “Coming Soon-“

      Reply
    5. Claudio Mendes says:
      September 21, 2020 at 3:25 pm

      does using the profile.qb imply any security or performance caveat

      Reply
      1. Jörgen Nilsson says:
        September 22, 2020 at 10:29 am

        Hi,
        I would say no, the file is really small and security is not worse than using the registry.

        Reply
    6. Taoufik says:
      January 9, 2021 at 6:15 pm

      Hello,
      Thank you very much for this post.
      It’s working for me, but like you i can’t give to my users the possibility to sync Passwords for example. It’s greyed out, and it’s wrote “it’s managed by your organization”.
      Do you know how to resolve activate password sync ?
      Thanks in advance.

      Best regards,
      Taoufik.

      Reply
      1. Jörgen Nilsson says:
        January 19, 2021 at 9:56 am

        Hi, it is not possible to Synchronize password to the local roaming profile that is why it is blocked. I can think of many reasons, security for once, saving password in Chrome/Edge is not recommended.

        Regards,
        Jörgen

        Reply
    7. Brandon says:
      May 24, 2022 at 5:56 pm

      Have you seen a consistent user experience with the Edge roaming profile setting?

      I started piloting it to with existing devices and there were a lot of differences in the user experience. If people already had profiles set up it would frequently not create the Domain\%username% account.

      Or it would create the account but it wouldn’t be marked as default so no one would see it.

      Reply

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    My name is Jörgen Nilsson and I work as a Senior Consultant at Onevinn in Malmö, Sweden. This is my blog where I will share tips and stuff for my own and everyone elses use on Enterprise Mobility and Windows related topics.
    All code is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties.

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