Deploying Office WebApps (PWA) with file handlers via Intune

For your frontline users, the M365 F-sku licenses are an excellent option, you get all of the advantages of an E-sku, just without the Office apps.

These days even your frontline users are going to need to click mailto links on webpages or emails and the last thing an enteprise admin needs is the Mail app suddenly being used.

Fortunately Edge has the option to deploy Progressive Web Apps (PWA) including desktop shortcuts so you can publish Office apps to appear on the users destkop AND set it as the default mail client, all via Intune.

For this we will be using Settings Catalog so first lets create a new policy:

In Settings Picker, first step is to add the PWA apps and we are looking for “Configure list of force-installed Web Apps” under “Microsoft Edge”

Once you have enabled the setting, you need to enter JSON code into the field, for all office apps use this. I have included file handling which is currently an experimental feature (see here), but will give you options should it go GA in the future, for now, opening office files doesn’t work out of the box.

[
	{      		
		"fallback_app_name": "Word", 	
        "file_handlers": [
            {
                "action": "/openFile",
                "accept": {
                    "text/*": [
                        ".docx"
                    ]
                }
            }
        ],	
		"create_desktop_shortcut": true, 
     		"default_launch_container": "window",
      		"url": "https://word.office.com" 
  	},
    {      		
		"fallback_app_name": "Excel", 
        "file_handlers": [
            {
                "action": "/openFile",
                "accept": {
                    "text/*": [
                        ".xlsx"
                    ]
                }
            }
        ],		
		"create_desktop_shortcut": true, 
     		"default_launch_container": "window",
      		"url": "https://excel.office.com" 
  	},
    {      		
		"fallback_app_name": "PowerPoint", 	
        "file_handlers": [
            {
                "action": "/openFile",
                "accept": {
                    "text/*": [
                        ".pptx"
                    ]
                }
            }
        ],	
		"create_desktop_shortcut": true, 
     		"default_launch_container": "window",
      		"url": "https://powerpoint.office.com" 
  	},
 	{
      		"fallback_app_name": "Outlook",
 		"create_desktop_shortcut": true,
      		"default_launch_container": "window",
      		"url": "https://outlook.office.com"
 	}
]

NOTE: It will escape the speechmarks so don’t worry about backslashes suddenly appearing.

Now we need to set Outlook PWA as the default for mailto links.

We need to set the file handlers by setting the “Register Protocol Handlers” setting, this one is in Microsoft Edge – Default Settings (users can override)

In here you want to add this JSON:

[ { "url": "https://outlook.office.com/?extsrc=mailtou0026url=%s", "default": true, "protocol": "mailto" } ]

Once assigned, your users will see desktop shortcuts for Office apps (including the icon) which open up the web versions. Clicking a mailto link will automatically launch the Outlook PWA app and start a new email.