Technical Note: Allowing Facebook Workplace but blocking Facebook

[JohnDevNet_FTNT]

Description

Facebook Workplace is a collaborative platform created by Facebook in 2016.  It is effectively social networking but in a corporate environment. This article explains how to allow access to Facebook Workplace whilst blocking Facebook.

Solution

This article provides a solution using only Webfilter, and a configuration when using Application Control and Webfilter combined.

Access to Facebook Workplace is done through the same Facebook domain as Facebook itself.  A connection made to http://workplace.fb.com/ will be redirected to https://www.facebook.com/workplace.

The page that needs to be allowed is www.facebook.com/workplace

One of the most common configurations is to block the “Social Networking” category in WebFilter as shown below:

However this configuration also blocks the Facebook Workplace page.

The solution in this case is to create two Static URL Filters on the Web Filter profile as shown below:

In CLI:

config webfilter profile
edit <WF Name>
config web
set urlfilter-table 2
end

config webfilter urlfilter
edit 2
config entries
edit 1
set url "YOUR_COMPANY.facebook.com*"
set type wildcard
next
edit 2
set url "*facebook*"
set type wildcard
set action block
next
end
end

 Note that the company name should be used to create the first static URL filter entry.