Microsoft has rolled out a public preview of “Enterprise State Roaming”, a new feature in Windows 10 that allows enterprise users to sync settings across multiple devices. The feature promises to give companies greater organizational control over their OS settings and application-state data when using Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory service.

Enterprise State Roaming is currently only supported in the U.S. and Europe, though a global rollout is “planned” for a later date, Gunjan Jain, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft’s Windows Server and Services Division, said in a blog post.

To access Enterprise State Roaming, one will need an active Azure Active Directory Premium subscription, and they’ll need to be running Windows 10 build 1511. Windows 10 devices will also need to be joined to Azure AD, or paired with a local AD instance that has “automatic registration to Azure AD,” Jain said.

With this kind of configuration, it should be possible for admins to better handle some of the compliance, management and security concerns they have with multiple corporate devices running Windows 10. For example, the feature provides access to the Azure Rights Management Service (RMS), which is generally used to manage access to things like documents in emails. Enterprise State Roaming uses the service to automatically encrypt data before it leaves the user’s device.

Windows 10 settings will be stored in Microsoft’s cloud, with the data being encrypted at rest. Microsoft is also trying to reassure customers who have data sovereignty requirements, insisting that data will be stored in an “Azure region based on the country associated with the Azure AD directory”.

Enterprise State Roaming can be setup via the Azure Admin Portal, and once done “Azure AD will automatically start syncing settings through the Azure cloud using enterprise accounts,” Jain wrote.

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 already have a “settings sync” capability for consumers that’s linked to user’s OneDrive and Microsoft accounts. However, this service doesn’t offer the same kind of protections as Enterprise State Roaming.

Microsoft hasn’t provided any indication of when Enterprise State Roaming will hit general availability.

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