The vast and complex Azure Virtual Desktop service is being improved every day. While that’s welcome, sometimes the community steps in just that little bit faster with a great solution to a known problem.
As Dean Cefola of Azure Academy lets us know is his latest video, Microsoft “MVP” Tom Hickling has written a bit of code which lets you set your own custom URL for Azure Virtual Desktop’s web browser client.
While you’ll need to have some basic coding knowledge to utilize this Azure Functions-based solution, it does the trick and is cheap, as 1,000,000 executions per month are included in a free grant (more details on Azure Functions’ resource consumption subscription plan here).
What Exactly Is the Current Problem?
Right now, the default way for all users to access their browser-based virtual desktops is via the same link:
https://rdweb.wvd.microsoft.com/webclient/index.html
Obviously, this isn’t particularly sustainable: practically all organizations out there will want to define their own custom URL and align access with their own corporate domain, if it is easy enough to implement.
Not only that, but the link is relatively long and some users (myself included) will have trouble remembering it if they forget to bookmark it straight away.
How to Set Up Your Custom URL for the AVD Web Client
The video shows nicely how you can change the URL in Azure.
This approach uses Azure Functions, which allows you to execute your code in a serverless environment, saving you the hassle of having to first create a virtual machine or to publish a web application.
Functions are triggered by events, which means users need to create a simple HTTP trigger. A step by step description and all the code that needs to be inputted can be found on Tom Hickling’s blog, and you just need to replace the default URL with your new custom URL. The whole process is very simple because everything can be completed without having to leave the Azure portal.
And that’s all there is to it. We thought this was another video that helps users get the most out of Azure Virtual Desktop and deserved a mention.
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What to Expect
- What are the use cases for virtual desktops?
- How is Azure Virtual Desktop licensed?
- What are the requirements for Azure Virtual Desktop?
- What needs to be considered when migrating existing desktops?