Test if users can access a specific URL

This article applies to our On-Premise Appliance Filter and Firewall product only, not to Cloud.

 

You can use the Policy tester to see if a URL can be accessed by a specific person at a specific location and time. You can see whether someone could have had access to the URL in the past, or help prevent unintended consequences of adding a User Group, Location or Time slot to a Web Filter Policy.

Note

Although the Policy tester tests aren’t logged by Smoothwall Filter, an upstream proxy might capture and log the request as coming from the user or group being tested.

 

Dashboard Policy tester

Enable the Policy tester on the dashboard

  1. Go to System > Preferences > User interface.
  2. In Dashboard sections, ensure Web filter is selected.
  3. Select Save.

Use the Policy tester on the dashboard

  1. On the dashboard, go to the Web filter > Quick policy tester section.
  2. Enter the URL to be requested. Include www. if the URL includes it.
  3. For Who, select a User Group.
  4. For Where, select a Location.
  5. Select Test.
  6. You will be taken to the Guardian > Quick links > Policy tester page with your chosen configuration applied. Run the test.

Main Policy tester

  1. Go to Guardian > Quick links > Policy tester.
  2. If you are part of a multi-tenant environment, fselect one of these options from the Tenant drop-down:
    • A Tenant.
    • Temporarily create a new tenant: The test is run from a hypothetical new tenant to only take into account Web Filter Policies that apply to all tenants.
    • None: The test is run as if a user is attempting to access content whilst not assigned to a tenant, so the request is blocked.
  3. Enter the URL to be requested. Include www. if the URL includes it.
  4. For Who, select from:
    • Group: Select a User Group.
    • User: Enter a username.
  5. For Where, select from:
    • Location: Select a Location.
    • IP address: Enter an IP address.
  6. For When, select from:
    • Time: Select the calendar icon to set a date and time, or select Today.
    • Time slot: Select a Time slot.
  7. Decide whether to select the Detailed diagnostics checkbox. This option can take a little longer to return results.
  8. Select Test.

Image 1: When Detailed diagnostics is not selected, the report shows how policies are applied to the main page.

 

If you selected Detailed diagnostics, it will show how policies are applied to all resources on the webpage, such as images, JavaScript, CSS tags, HTML5 multimedia tags and redirections. This is useful to identify page components that may require additional actions to be taken, such as adding the URL to Authentication Exceptions or disabling HTTP Strict mode from Web Proxy > Web Proxy > Settings).

Tip

Content in pages linked to from the tested page isn’t checked, but you can test redirect URLs by selecting Test this result.

 

Image 2: Additional lines are shown in the report when Detailed diagnostics is selected.