Edge 116 does not respect NewTabPageLocation policy

[AndrewSAIF]

Hello,

I've noticed in Edge Beta 116.0.1938.43 that in our environment the NewTabPageLocation policy appears in Edge://policy, but instead of loading the page I have specified in that policy, it loads the default Edge New Tab experience. The New Tab page settings are still disabled in Settings as though the policy were applied. 

I don't think this was an intentional choice, since it does not appear that this policy was deprecated in its documentation. 

Will this be addressed before Edge 116 reaches the stable channel? We have requirements at my organization to specify our intranet site as the home and new tab page. It looks like it also does this in Dev 117. 

Thanks!

Andrew

[#2]

@AndrewSAIF 

After some additional testing, I found that the policy applies correctly if I move it from Recommended to Mandatory. The documentation still shows that it can be applied either way. 

Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to address the issue where this policy is advertised as Recommended or Mandatory in its documentation, but acts like a mandatory policy regardless? 
Edge Group Policy BUG with New TAB PAGE - RECOMMENDED is getting ENFORCED and not changeable. - Micr...

My preferred outcome here would be the team adding a way for users to select between New Tab URL defined in the policy and the Edge New Tab experience when the policy is set as recommended. This has been something other organizations have echoed over the years. It's also the most common negative feedback I receive from my users. The situation is exacerbated by how convoluted the explanation is ("We do have it applied as recommended, so you should be able to change it. However...")

If the team is committed to ignoring our feedback and never fixing this, I feel like the documentation should be updated to indicate that this is only available as a mandatory policy. Especially now that it is simply broken as Recommended. If this is the route you go, the policy should also throw an error in edge://policy when applied as Recommended and not disable the New Tab settings when applied this way. 

Hopefully this feedback is helpful. Thanks!
Andrew

[#3]

I just downloaded Canary 118.0.2046.0, and it also behaves this way. So that's 116, 117, and 118.

[#4]

Interestingly, I just downloaded beta 116.0.1938.54, and this is now respecting the policy as recommended as it used to.

If someone reads this that contributed to this solution, thanks!

Andrew

[#5]

@AndrewSAIF Hey!  I reached out to the team about your issue, I'm not sure if they made any changes but I'll let them know it seems to be resolved by updating to the new Beta version.  Thanks! 

-Kelly

[#6]

@AndrewSAIF The team just confirmed the issue was related to a bug that was fixed last week.  Thanks for letting us know!  

-Kelly