Coming Soon to Microsoft Edge: Keep Your Tabs Organized with Workspaces

Have you noticed how much you use your web browser these days? If you’re like most business leaders, you’re using it more than you used to, and for more types of tasks, too. As more and more of the apps and services your team uses to get work done transition to the cloud, the humble internet browser has gradually transformed into a versatile powerhouse app. It’s actually pretty amazing how much our browsers can do for us today, and the continued transition to the cloud shows no signs of stopping. But all this new activity within your browser can create a problem: too many tabs. With 15, 25, or even more tabs open, it can take forever to find the tab you’re looking for — and one errant click could close some mission-critical web app before you save your work! Thankfully, Microsoft has been teasing a solution for a while, and it finally showed up in a recent test version of Microsoft’s Edge internet browser. It’s called Workspaces, and it could bring order to your chaotic browser tabs when it launches later this year. Here’s what you need to know.

What Is Workspaces?

Workspaces is a new feature currently being tested for Microsoft Edge (the modern internet browser that replaced Internet Explorer — it’s the default browser that Windows-based businesses use today). Workspaces gives you the ability to group browser tabs together into color-coded categories, making it easier to keep straight what’s what. With Workspaces, users can create (for example) a purple tab group for email and chat, a red one for personal tabs and industry news, and a blue one for crucial business tools. Then, when a user needs to pop into your CRM platform or their web-based email, they can get there quickly — without cycling through all 25+ tabs they have open. Workspaces also looks like it will allow users to collapse and open entire tab groups with a single click. Done with your web apps for a while? You can make them go away with a single click (but retain the ability to pull them back up just as quickly). Need to hide your personal tabs or your web-based email for an unexpected screen share? It’s just as easy. Some users already do this by creating multiple browser windows: one for personal tabs, another for email, another for a critical web app, and so on. But on smaller screens — like on a laptop while traveling — this method just gets too cumbersome. Workspaces should make it much easier to navigate an increasingly browser-centric workflow, which will come as a relief to many professionals using Edge in their day-to-day work.

When Will Workspaces Come to My Browser?

Unfortunately, we don’t yet know when Workspaces will exit the testing and beta phase and roll out to the entire Microsoft Edge user base. We hope it’s soon! Usually new features like this don’t take all that long to exit the pipeline, but nothing is certain until Microsoft announces the release date. If this kind of functionality sounds like something you need yesterday, there’s good news: Google Chrome already has a similar feature available. It isn’t as robust as what Microsoft is planning, but it may be worth a look if you want to experiment with tab groups sooner.

Productivity Enhancements Are Out There. Does Your Team Know About Them?

In the modern PC-based work environment, productivity enhancements are everywhere. From better tools and ways of working like Workspaces and tab groups to simple things like keyboard shortcuts for common tasks in the software you use most, your team can work better and faster. They just need to be taught how. Blue Ridge Tech can help you find the right productivity tools and tactics that make sense for your workflows, and we can streamline and improve the rest of your IT operations, too. Reach out today to get started!