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!

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

Step 1 - 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.

Step 2 - 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:

If you do not have an existing policy naming convention, name it something you will recognize for example, “Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies”

Step 3 - Select the most suitable configuration for your organization (Edge)

We recommend these possible configuration options to deploy Ecosia in Edge:

• Option 1a - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies
• Option 1b - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies (Users can opt-out via a script)
• Option 1c - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies (Users can override policy)
• Option 2 - Manage Search Engines policy (configure a list of search engines)

It is up to the IT administrator to decide and test the best deployment option for your organization.

Option 1a - 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:

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

Once this policy has been applied to your defined group, this is how the settings page will look to end users / devices:

Option 1b - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies (Users can opt-out via a script)

You can use a PowerShell script to create an application in your internal software store so employees can opt-in and out of the default search provider policy in Edge and Chrome.

Follow the steps in Option 1a and download the PowerShell script.

Alternatively you can consider configuration Option 1c or Option 2.

Option 1c - Microsoft Edge Default search provider policies (Users can override policy)

Follow Option 1a 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 1a, but use the templates with “(users can override)” in their name.

More information on this policy can be found on the Microsoft website.

Option 2 - 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.

Step 3 - Select the most suitable configuration for your organization (Chrome)

Configuration in Chrome is very similar to Option 1a, 1b & 1c outlined above for Edge.

Please use the same policies as defined in Option 1a, 1b or 1c, but instead use the following Chrome policy values. These values are specific to the Chrome configuration.

Step 4 - 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.

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.