Microsoft Intune configuration
Switch your company’s search engine to Ecosia and help reforest the planet!
This guide explains the different options that IT has for using Microsoft Intune to configure Ecosia in Edge and Chrome at a company, school or university.
If your organization is considering using Ecosia, let us know so we can support you through the process. We’re on hand to help!
Jump to:
- Requirements
- Create a new group
- Create a new policy
- Select the most suitable configuration for your organization
- Option 1 - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies
- Option 2 - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies (users can override)
- Option 3 - Manage Search Engines policy
- Chrome configuration
- Measure your impact
Requirements
To carry out any of the steps below this guide assumes the following requirements are already in place.
- You have an instance of Microsoft Intune setup and already manage devices
- For more information on using Intune see the learning resources under: Endpoint management documentation
- Your account has the correct role to assign Policies and Profiles
- For more information see: Role-based access control (RBAC) with Microsoft Intune
- You already have a testing and rollout strategy for new Policies and Profiles
- Making sure you test and rollout new Configurations is key to ensuring a successful deployment.
- You have your organization’s unique Ecosia reporting code to add to your Policy Values
- If you wish to track your impact as an organization, ensure you have contacted fred.henderson@ecosia.org and received a reporting code.
Create a new group
Create a new “user group” or “device group” and define the users or devices that you want to deploy the Ecosia policy to. If you already have a defined group for deployment then skip to the next step.
Create a new policy
Go to → Devices → Configuration policies → create → new policy
On the window that opens on the right-hand side enter the following values:
Select platform: Windows 10 and later
Profile type: Templates
Select Administrative templates and hit create
If you do not have an existing policy naming convention, name it something you will recognise for example, “Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies”
Select the most suitable configuration for your Organization
We recommend these three possible configuration options to deploy Ecosia in Edge:
It is up to the IT administrator to decide and test the best deployment option for your organization.
Option 1 - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies
The policy settings to configure the default search provider can be found here: User Configuration/\/Microsoft Edge/\/Default search provider
Define the following settings:
These are the policy values you must use for Microsoft Edge:
Default search provider keyword - ecosia.org
Default search provider name - Ecosia
Default search provider search URL - https://www.ecosia.org/search?q={searchTerms}&addon=edgegpo
Enable the default search provider - Enabled
The policy settings to configure the Home page and new tab page can be found here: User Configuration/\/Microsoft Edge/\/Startup, home page and new tab page
Configure the homepage URL - https://www.ecosia.org/?addon=edgegpo
Configure the new tab page URL - https://www.ecosia.org/newtab/?addon=edgegpo
Set the new tab page as the home page - Enabled
Once this policy has been applied to your defined group, this is how the settings page will look to end users / devices:
Note: this policy configures Ecosia as the default search engine and the end user cannot change the default provider. If you wish to allow end users to change their search engine you can use the following PowerShell script so that people can opt-in and opt-out of the policy.
Alternatively you can consider configuration Option 2 or Option 3.
More information on this policy can be found on the Microsoft website.
Option 2 - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies (users can override)
Follow Option 1 but instead use the “users can override” template policies. This means that end users can change back to their preferred Search Engine if they do not wish to use Ecosia.
The settings to configure can be found here: User Configuration/\/Microsoft Edge - Default Settings (users can override)/\/Default search provider
Configure the policies using the Edge policy values provided in Option 1, but use the templates with “(users can override)” in their name.
More information on this policy can be found on the Microsoft website.
Note: If you deploy Ecosia with this policy and the end-user changes their search engine manually, Ecosia disappears as a defined option. It is for this reason that we recommend you use Option 3.
Option 3 - Manage Search Engine policy
This Edge policy allows an IT administrator to configure up to 10 search engines. You can set Ecosia as the default and people can change to any other search engine on the defined list.
We have created a .txt file that contains the policy value to set Ecosia as the default and to have Bing and Google as alternative options. It is up to the IT administrator which other search engines or web crawlers to enable here.
Copy and paste the information directly into the policy as follows.
More information on this policy can be found on the Microsoft website.
Chrome configuration
Configuration in Chrome is very similar to Option 1 and Option 2 outlined above for Edge.
Note: Unlike Edge, Chrome does not have a “Managed Search Engines” policy and so only Option 1 and Option 2 are possible in Chrome.
Please use the same policies as defined in Option 1 and Option 2 but instead use the following Chrome policy values. These values are specific to the Chrome configuration.
Default search provider name - Ecosia
Default search provider keyword - ecosia.org
Default search provider search URL - https://www.ecosia.org/search?q={searchTerms}&addon=chromegpo
Enable the default search provider - Enabled
Configure the homepage URL - https://www.ecosia.org/?addon=chromegpo
Configure the new tab page URL - https://www.ecosia.org/newtab/?addon=chromegpo
Set the new tab page as the home page - Enabled
Measure your impact
Tracking your organization's impact and seeing how your searches help plant trees is a big part of motivating teams to use Ecosia. For companies with over 1,000 employees that implement Ecosia using Microsoft Intune or Windows group policy, we can help you to run a pilot and provide a monthly report via email highlighting your impact.
In order for us to track your impact you’ll need to get in touch so we can create a unique identifier called a typetag for your organization.
Once you receive your reporting typetag, IT must simply add &tt=
followed by the 8-digit typetag to the end of the URLs used in their deployment policies. The URLs to use for Edge and Chrome are as follows. Replace “xxxxxxxx” with the 8 digit reporting typetag provided to you by Ecosia.
Edge policy values:
Default search provider name -Ecosia
Default search provider keyword -ecosia.org
Default search provider search URL - https://www.ecosia.org/search?q={searchTerms}&addon=edgegpo&tt=xxxxxxxx
Enable the default search provider - Enabled
Configure the homepage URL - https://www.ecosia.org/?addon=edgegpo&tt=xxxxxxxx
Configure the new tab page URL - https://www.ecosia.org/newtab/?addon=edgegpo&tt=xxxxxxxx
Chrome policy values:
Default search provider name -Ecosia
Default search provider keyword -ecosia.org
Default search provider search URL - https://www.ecosia.org/search?q={searchTerms}&addon=chromegpo&tt=xxxxxxxx
Enable the default search provider - Enabled
Configure the homepage URL - https://www.ecosia.org/?addon=chromegpo&tt=xxxxxxxx
Configure the new tab page URL - https://www.ecosia.org/newtab/?addon=chromegpo&tt=xxxxxxxx
It’s important that you let us know once your IT team has deployed Ecosia. When we begin to attribute traffic to your organization we can schedule your monthly tree-reports. Graph showing the monthly report results.
Here is an example of the report you can expect to receive. Please note that reports show an estimated number of trees, based on the amount of searches sent to us. Trees cannot be used for carbon reporting or offsetting but it’s a great way to track your impact and to keep employees informed and engaged. For more information, please visit our internal comms support article.
Currently we can only provide reporting to organizations with more than 1,000 employees. If your company is under 1,000 employees please refer to our support materials for SMEs. Have any questions? Get in touch with us today and we’ll be on hand to support. Complete our form or book a call with Fred.