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Access and use the User Portal

Updated
This article applies only to On-Premise Appliance, not to our Cloud products.

 

The User Portal is a simplified version of your administrator’s access to the Smoothwall On-Premise Appliance. Depending on the access your administrators gave you, you can use it to:

  • Test Web Filter policies.
  • Generate reports.
  • Manage web access by blocking access for groups of users or locations.
  • Manage categories by adding or removing domains and search terms.
  • Download software.

Your Smoothwall Administrators can see any changes you have made, and any reports you have run, through their Admin Portal.

  Note

If you don’t have access to certain areas, this is due to how your organisation has set up the User Portal. Contact the Smoothwall Administrator in your organisation.

 

Sign into the User Portal

  1. Go to https://<Smoothwall_IPAddress>/portal, where Smoothwall_IPAddress is the IP address assigned to your Smoothwall. For example: http://192.168.72.141/portal
  2. Accept any certificates and security information.
  3. Enter your Username and Password.
  4. Select Login.

  Tip

If you don’t have your IP address or sign-in credentials, contact the Smoothwall Administrator in your organisation.

 

Sign out of the User Portal

If you try to take an action after 30 minutes of inactivity, User Portal will automatically sign you out.

Alternatively, you can select LOG OUT.

Using the User Portal

The Home page is the first page you see when you sign in. It will show a welcome message if your school has added one.

If enabled, the Downloads section will appear on every page in the User Portal. Select SSL VPN client archive to download the two PEM files and the OpenVPN configuration file needed if you will be using your organisation’s VPN.

Temporarily block web access

You can block users from accessing web content in two ways:

  • Locations: You can ban everyone with a certain location (an IP or range of IPs) from accessing the web until you manually lift the ban.
  • Users: You can ban an individual user from accessing the web for a set duration.

Location bans

  1. Go to Ban > Locations.
  2. Select the location.
  3. Choose to allow or block it.
  4. Select Save.

User bans

  1. Go to Ban > Users.
  2. Enter the Username of the user that you want to ban.
  3. Select the length of time for the ban.
  4. Select Add.
    • If you can add bans for this user, it will be added.
    • If you have not been given permission to ban users in a particular User Group, you will see a message saying: ‘You do not have the required permissions to create a temporary ban rule’. Contact the Smoothwall Administrator in your organisation if you should have access.

  Important

If you need to lift the ban before the length of time set has elapsed, this is not possible for you to do through the User Portal. Contact the Smoothwall Administrator in your organisation for them to amend it.

 

Filter lists, groups and policies

You can Block or Allow access to different types of web content using the Filter area.

  Important

  • You cannot add or delete filter lists or list groups, or edit policies through the User Portal. Contact your organisation’s Smoothwall Administrator to do this for you.
  • If you have a multi-tenant setup, only items for your tenant are shown. Contact your organisation’s Smoothwall Administrator if you want to change your Global policies.

 

Customise filter lists

  1. Go to Filter > List.
  2. Find the list that you want to change.
  3. Select Websites or Search terms.
  4. Enter or remove domains or search terms.
  5. Select Save.

Customise list groups

  1. Go to Filter > List Groups.
  2. Find and select the group you want to change.
    • To add a new item, select the relevant item.
    • To delete an item, clear the relevant selection.
  3. Select Save.

See Web Filter policies

You can see your policies by going to Filter > Policies.

Test your Web filter policies

You can use the Policy tester to check if a certain URL is blocked or if your end users have access to the web content.

Test if a URL is allowed or blocked

  1. Go to Policy Tester.
  2. Enter the URL.
  3. Enter the username of a user who may try to access the URL to check if they specifically have access.
  4. Enter a Location to check if access is allowed specifically at that location.
  5. Enter the time to check if access is allowed specifically at that time.
  6. Select Test.

You will see if the URL is allowed or blocked for the option(s) you’ve specified.

  Tip

If you can't see the full Description, hover over the cell in the table.

 

Send a block or unblock request

You can send a request to your Smoothwall Administrator to block or unblock URLs.

  1. Run your policy test (shown above).
  2. Next to the test result, select Request block or Request unblock.
  3. Enter any supporting information needed.
  4. Select Send request.

Generate Reports in the User Portal

Run a report

  1. Go to Reports.
  2. In the Generate a new report using current data section, expand the report listings to find the report you want to run.

      Note

    If you don’t see the report you’re expecting, contact your organisation’s Smoothwall Administrator to make this available for you.

  3. Enter a Report name and report parameters to customise the report, such as the Date range.
  4. Select Run Report.
  5. Select OK.

Your report will appear in the View a previously generated report section. You can:

  • Select the report name to view it.
  • Open the report in another format by opening the Select format drop-down and selecting Download as csv, Download as pdf or Download as tsv.

Delete reports

Find the report that you want to delete, select the checkbox next to it, and select Delete. Select multiple boxes to delete multiple reports at once, or select the option in the list header to select all reports for that section.

Safeguarding reports

Go to Safeguarding.

This works similar to the Safeguarding Full Report for Administrators on the On-Premise Appliance. See Generate Safeguarding Reports.