Control communication with the Experimentation and Configuration Service

The Experimentation and Configuration Service is used to deploy Experimentation and Configuration payloads to the client.

Experimentation payload consists of a list of early-in-development features that Microsoft is enabling for testing and feedback.

Configuration payload consists of a list of recommended settings that Microsoft wants to deploy to optimize the user experience.

Configuration payload may also contain a list of actions to take on certain domains for compatibility reasons. For example, the browser may override the User Agent string on a website if that website is broken. Each of these actions is intended to be temporary while Microsoft tries to resolve the issue with the site owner.

If you set this policy to 'FullMode', the full payload is downloaded from the Experimentation and Configuration Service. This includes both the experimentation and configuration payloads.

If you set this policy to 'ConfigurationsOnlyMode', only the configuration payload is downloaded.

If you set this policy to 'RestrictedMode', the communication with the Experimentation and Configuration Service is stopped completely. Microsoft doesn't recommend this setting.

If you don't configure this policy on a managed device, the behavior on Beta and Stable channels is the same as the 'ConfigurationsOnlyMode'. On Canary and Dev channels, the behavior is the same as 'FullMode'.

If you don't configure this policy on an unmanaged device, the behavior is the same as the 'FullMode'.

Policy options mapping:

* FullMode (2) = Retrieve configurations and experiments

* ConfigurationsOnlyMode (1) = Retrieve configurations only

* RestrictedMode (0) = Disable communication with the Experimentation and Configuration Service

Use the preceding information when configuring this policy.