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Wildcard applications in the Microsoft Entra application proxy

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In Microsoft Entra ID, configuring a large number of on-premises applications can quickly become unmanageable and introduces unnecessary risks for configuration errors if many of them require the same settings. With Microsoft Entra application proxy, you can address this issue by using wildcard application publishing to publish and manage many applications at once. This is a solution that allows you to:

  • Simplify your administrative overhead
  • Reduce the number of potential configuration errors
  • Enable your users to securely access more resources

This article provides you with the information you need to configure wildcard application publishing in your environment.

Create a wildcard application

You can create a wildcard (*) application if you have a group of applications with the same configuration. Potential candidates for a wildcard application are applications sharing the following settings:

  • The group of users having access to them
  • The SSO method
  • The access protocol (http, https)

You can publish applications with wildcards if both, the internal and external URLs are in the following format:

http(s)://*.<domain>

For example: http(s)://*.adventure-works.com.

While the internal and external URLs can use different domains, as a best practice, they should be same. When publishing the application, you see an error if one of the URLs doesn't have a wildcard.

Creating a wildcard application is based on the same application publishing flow that is available for all other applications. The only difference is that you include a wildcard in the URLs and potentially the SSO configuration.

Prerequisites

To get started, make sure you've met these requirements.

Custom domains

While custom domains are optional for all other applications, they are a prerequisite for wildcard applications. Creating custom domains requires you to:

  1. Create a verified domain within Azure.
  2. Upload a TLS/SSL certificate in the PFX format to your application proxy.

You should consider using a wildcard certificate to match the application you plan to create.

For security reasons, this is a hard requirement and we will not support wildcards for applications that cannot use a custom domain for the external URL.

DNS updates

When using custom domains, you need to create a DNS entry with a CNAME record for the external URL (for example, *.adventure-works.com) pointing to the external URL of the application proxy endpoint. For wildcard applications, the CNAME record needs to point to the relevant external URL:

<yourAADTenantId>.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net

To confirm that you have configured your CNAME correctly, you can use nslookup on one of the target endpoints, for example, expenses.adventure-works.com. Your response should include the already mentioned alias (<yourAADTenantId>.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net).

Using connector groups assigned to an application proxy cloud service region other than the default region

If you have connectors installed in regions different from your default tenant region, it is beneficial to change which region your connector group is optimized for to improve performance accessing these applications. To learn more see, Optimize connector groups to use closest application proxy cloud service.

If the connector group assigned to the wildcard application uses a different region than your default region, you will need to update the CNAME record to point to a regional specific external URL. Use the following table to determine the relevant URL:

Connector Assigned Region External URL
Asia <yourAADTenantId>.asia.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net
Australia <yourAADTenantId>.aus.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net
Europe <yourAADTenantId>.eur.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net
North America <yourAADTenantId>.nam.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net

Considerations

Here are some considerations you should take into account for wildcard applications.

Accepted formats

For wildcard applications, the Internal URL must be formatted as http(s)://*.<domain>.

For internal URL, use the format http(s)://*.<domain>

When you configure an External URL, you must use the following format: https://*.<custom domain>

For external URL, use the format https://*.<custom domain>

Other positions of the wildcard, multiple wildcards, or other regex strings are not supported and are causing errors.

Excluding applications from the wildcard

You can exclude an application from the wildcard application by

  • Publishing the exception application as regular application
  • Enabling the wildcard only for specific applications through your DNS settings

Publishing an application as regular application is the preferred method to exclude an application from a wildcard. You should publish the excluded applications before the wildcard applications to ensure that your exceptions are enforced from the beginning. The most specific application will always take precedence – an application published as budgets.finance.adventure-works.com takes precedence over the application *.finance.adventure-works.com, which in turn takes precedence over the application *.adventure-works.com.

You can also limit the wildcard to only work for specific applications through your DNS management. As a best practice, you should create a CNAME entry that includes a wildcard and matches the format of the external URL you have configured. However, you can instead point specific application URLs to the wildcards. For example, instead of *.adventure-works.com, point hr.adventure-works.com, expenses.adventure-works.com and travel.adventure-works.com individually to 00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net.

If you use this option, you also need another CNAME entry for the value AppId.domain, for example, 00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444.adventure-works.com, also pointing to the same location. You can find the AppId on the application properties page of the wildcard application.

Setting the homepage URL for the MyApps panel

The wildcard application is represented with just one tile in the MyApps panel. By default this tile is hidden. To show the tile and have users land on a specific page:

  1. Follow the guidelines for setting a homepage URL.
  2. Set Show Application to true on the application properties page.

Kerberos constrained delegation

For applications using kerberos constrained delegation (KCD) as the SSO method, the SPN listed for the SSO method needs a wildcard. For example, the SPN could be: HTTP/*.adventure-works.com. You still need to have the individual SPNs configured on your backend servers (for example, HTTP/expenses.adventure-works.com and HTTP/travel.adventure-works.com).

Scenario 1: General wildcard application

In this scenario, you have three different applications you want to publish:

  • expenses.adventure-works.com
  • hr.adventure-works.com
  • travel.adventure-works.com

All three applications:

  • Are used by all your users
  • Use Integrated Windows authentication
  • Have the same properties

You can publish the wildcard application using the steps outlined in Publish applications using Microsoft Entra application proxy. This scenario assumes:

  • A tenant with the following ID: aaaabbbb-0000-cccc-1111-dddd2222eeee
  • A verified domain called adventure-works.com has been configured.
  • A CNAME entry that points *.adventure-works.com to 00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444.tenant.runtime.msappproxy.net has been created.

Following the documented steps, you create a new application proxy application in your tenant. In this example, the wildcard is in the following fields:

  • Internal URL:

    Example: Wildcard in internal URL

  • External URL:

    Example: Wildcard in external URL

  • Internal Application SPN:

    Example: Wildcard in SPN configuration

By publishing the wildcard application, you can now access your three applications by navigating to the URLs you are used to (for example, travel.adventure-works.com).

The configuration implements the following structure:

Shows the structure implemented by the example configuration

Color Description
Blue Applications explicitly published and visible in the Microsoft Entra admin center.
Gray Applications you can access through the parent application.

Scenario 2: General wildcard application with exception

In this scenario, you have in addition to the three general applications another application, finance.adventure-works.com, which should only be accessible by Finance division. With the current application structure, your finance application would be accessible through the wildcard application and by all employees. To change this, you exclude your application from your wildcard by configuring Finance as a separate application with more restrictive permissions.

Make sure that a CNAME record exists that points finance.adventure-works.com to the application specific endpoint, specified on the application proxy page for the application. For this scenario, finance.adventure-works.com points to https://finance-awcycles.msappproxy.net/.

Following the documented steps, this scenario requires the following settings:

  • In the Internal URL, you set finance instead of a wildcard.

    Example: Set finance instead of a wildcard in internal URL

  • In the External URL, you set finance instead of a wildcard.

    Example: Set finance instead of a wildcard in external URL

  • Internal Application SPN you set finance instead of a wildcard.

    Example: Set finance instead of a wildcard in SPN configuration

This configuration implements the following scenario:

Shows the configuration implemented by the sample scenario

The URL finance.adventure-works.com is specific. The URL *.adventure-works.com is not specific. The more specific URL takes precedence. Users navigating to finance.adventure-works.com have the experience specified in the Finance Resources application. In this case, only finance employees are able to access finance.adventure-works.com.

If you have multiple applications published for finance and you have finance.adventure-works.com as a verified domain, you could publish another wildcard application *.finance.adventure-works.com. Because this is more specific than the generic *.adventure-works.com, it takes precedence if a user accesses an application in the finance domain.

Next steps