AdventHealth prescribes Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Search to boost its organizational health

Delivering whole-person healthcare for body, mind, and spirit is one of the core principles of AdventHealth, a faith-based, nonprofit healthcare system with more than 80,000 employees. Inspired by these principles, Eric Davis is passionate about providing each AdventHealth employee with the technology needed to deliver high-quality care. As one of the Microsoft 365 Enterprise Systems Administrators on the IT Collaboration Services team at AdventHealth, Davis supplies technology to empower AdventHealth’s everyday heroes, including frontline caregivers, specialists, administrators, knowledge workers, and coordinators, to sustain caregiving throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

To do their best work, AdventHealth employees rely not only on a suite of productivity apps and services like Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams but also on web browsers and enterprise search tools. It was here that the IT Application Delivery Services team saw a unique opportunity: to consolidate employees on a single, modern browser and deploy improved enterprise search capabilities to boost their efficiency and effectiveness when delivering care.

Microsoft Edge: Eliminating browser fragmentation

The number of different browsers at AdventHealth presented a challenge. Employees were using Internet Explorer alongside different versions of Chrome, often switching between browsers depending on what they were trying to achieve. That fragmentation affected not just users but also the IT support team. “We had to train technicians to support multiple browsers for different applications,” Davis says. Most importantly, multiple versions of Chrome in the environment made it more difficult for the administrative staff to move users to the latest and most secure version.

The IT Application Delivery Services team decided to consolidate around a single browser solution. With Microsoft Edge, the team recognized the advantage of clearing up the misalignment of multiple browser types and versions, speeding workflows, and of course, improving security.

Simplicity through consolidation is ideal, but administrators often dread the compatibility issues that can show up when introducing new technology into an existing environment. In this case, AdventHealth has approximately 500 existing websites and apps that staff rely on for their day-to-day work. These apps were customized for their unique organizational needs and built on Internet Explorer 11. Unfortunately, these sites were often built with technology that has become outdated, such as ActiveX controls.

The IT team found that moving to Microsoft Edge using Internet Explorer mode provided the best of both worlds, where employees could continue using critically needed existing tools and gain the benefits of a modern browser, all within a single experience. In terms of cost and time, browser consolidation didn’t require any developmental changes for those older apps thanks to the dual engine advantage of Microsoft Edge—Internet Explorer mode provides backward compatibility for older Internet Explorer 11 websites and apps, and the Chromium engine provides compatibility for modern websites and apps.

Davis and his team were able to smoothly roll out Internet Explorer mode by using a list of existing sites combined with a test process to capture other ones and confirm compatibility. Brandon Laggner, Systems Administrator, IT Application Delivery Services at AdventHealth, says the site list was sent to the IT application teams in test waves to confirm operation of their apps and to identify if any other sites need to be added to the list. ”We were able to get those Internet Explorer apps and sites working in Internet Explorer mode, and we didn’t have any situations where they worked in Internet Explorer but wouldn’t work in Internet Explorer mode on Microsoft Edge.” The result: there’s no longer a need for users to jump between multiple browsers to accommodate different sites and apps, and there’s no fear about app-to-browser incompatibilities hindering the user experience.

Improving security and managing bandwidth

Consolidating to Microsoft Edge was also largely a security improvement. “Security has been enhanced with Microsoft Edge after moving away from all the different browser versions,” says Davis. “And it’s very difficult to keep Chrome updated—people were using 50 to 100 different versions, and many of them required updating.” By consolidating to Microsoft Edge, the team found that a single default browser is much easier to maintain and update, ensuring that everyone is using the most current and secure version. “It lets us get security updates out as soon as we can.”

Because Microsoft Edge is part of the Microsoft ecosystem, the team naturally takes advantage of all the Microsoft tools already available to them. “We could use our normal update infrastructure, such as Microsoft Endpoint Manager,” says Aaron Whitaker, Manager of the Enterprise Application Delivery Services team at AdventHealth. Specifically, he uses Delivery Optimization, a technology that speeds and simplifies the update process, saving time and bandwidth by enabling those updates to be shared locally once downloaded. “With Delivery Optimization, we get the very latest updates and push them out without bogging down our network,” he says. “We have a single pipe to the internet, so it’s very important for us to be able to control the number of devices that are pulling down updates.” That process makes it easier for employees to take advantage of new features and enhancements, along with security updates, which are regularly made available with a modern browser like Microsoft Edge.

Davis received great feedback from users, too, as Microsoft Edge adoption got underway. Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)–enabled single sign-on in Microsoft Edge offers users seamless access to Microsoft 365 and other gated resources across sessions, devices, and applications without the need for repeated authentication. Microsoft Edge also works with Azure AD without requiring the installation of add-ins. “Employees and roaming frontline healthcare workers in particular can sign in to Microsoft Edge and sync their favorites and settings to their Azure AD accounts,” Davis says. “If they get new computers or switch among computers in different locations, their latest environments, including bookmarks, configuration settings, and everything, just follow them seamlessly.”

Microsoft Search: Finally, a search engine for the workplace

That wasn’t the end of the browser upgrade story. The visionary team recognized a massive opportunity to empower AdventHealth staff with Microsoft Search in Bing. This enterprise search feature is built into Microsoft Edge and provides easier access to internal data through the address bar. You can just type natural language to search—it looks and feels like internet search, but it’s for the workplace.

Before Microsoft Search, employees searched for people and information using specific SharePoint sites for internal results. Going to different places to get information was not only time-consuming but also frustrating because results were inconsistent. “Rather than searches returning what you need, you might just get what was statistically popular or was recently selected,” says Davis. “It was difficult to find things unless you knew the exact keyword.”

By combining the power of AI from Bing and personalized insights from Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Search gives AdventHealth employees fast access to relevant Microsoft 365 work information, including people, files, data, messages, and more. Now, the experience couldn’t be easier because employees have just one place to search—the usual address bar in Microsoft Edge. A search engine for the workplace made intuitive sense to Davis. He says, “It’s a holistic search experience that can search across all the Microsoft content related to your work account.”

Being sensitive to data handling in the healthcare industry, the team was further assured because Microsoft Search is part of Microsoft 365. Without specific protections, browser searches might expose users’ web search data and their identities to advertisers, and results could occasionally display inappropriate content. These are two red flags for the organization’s compliance policy, which helps protect search activity around sensitive healthcare-related information. Microsoft Search is designed for enterprise use where all workplace search requests are made through an end-to-end encrypted connection, helping keep search requests secure. “Bringing that great experience of Microsoft Search into Microsoft Edge made the whole process of negotiating the intranet and web content safer, easier, faster, and more compliant with our organization’s culture and privacy policies,” says Davis.

Search as a new channel to reach employees

The IT Collaboration Services team also recognized that enterprise search isn’t just “search”—it’s communications. The team approached Microsoft Search as an all-new internal communications channel and reached out to partner with AdventHealth’s communications team. Corporate communications teams often rely on email and newsletter blasts to spread information. Now, they can also curate content to answer employee questions through Microsoft Search.

Once a month, Davis and his communications team partner meet to create customized answers, known as bookmarks, for common employee search queries. “We look at the most searched terms as identified in the admin center and create bookmarks for them. We can also create enterprise-wide bookmarks for management’s events,” Davis says, adding, “Microsoft Search can also automatically mine internal resources such as directories and SharePoint sites to generate suggested bookmarks, and we can review those and select the ones that make sense. There’s not a lot of admin work for a lot of value in return.”

It’s not just the communications team that benefits. Davis also won over the IT security team by showing how he can set up an enterprise bookmark to support their needs. Now when employees search for “information security,” they first see the security department’s website because it’s a bookmark—the prioritized answer at the top of the results. The security team saw the value right away.

Microsoft Search is a no-cost feature of Microsoft 365, and being built into Microsoft Edge, the Microsoft investments that the organization was already making are being maximized. Employees are getting the answers they need with less effort at a time and in an environment where the right data matters. “It’s a massive improvement over the old browser experience,” Davis says.

A step that’s a leap forward

For AdventHealth, consolidating to Microsoft Edge with built-in Microsoft Search yielded security gains, ease of management, and daily efficiencies for users. “Making Microsoft Edge the default browser has made every Microsoft 365 experience smoother,” says Davis. Understanding how the positive impact multiplies across all the caregivers and employees at AdventHealth, the team takes pride in how it’s advancing AdventHealth’s mission through its choice of technology.

With the success that AdventHealth has witnessed, Davis believes that other organizations can easily follow its example and achieve similar results. “I would say to other organizations like ours, ‘Look—it works great!’” he says. “’Take advantage, show your people how moving to a new browser will help them fulfill their organization’s mission, empowering them to work better, smarter, and faster.’”