See what URLs Cloud Filter blocks and allows in real time

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

 

You can see a log of websites the device’s user has tried to access, as well as whether access was allowed or blocked, using Real Time Filtering Log Viewer. You’ll also see the Category the content was categorised as, so you can decide whether changes to your Web Filter Policies are needed.

Note

Only activity with a Log Level of 3, 4 or 5 are included in the logs. You can’t view access logs for Log Levels 1 or 2.

 

Access the logs

Through the Cloud Filter Portal

  1. Sign in to Cloud Filter.
  2. Go to Filter > Policies.
  3. Select Launch Realtime Log Viewer.
  4. If you have a multi-tenant setup, select the tenant.
  5. In the Target Username section, select the username from the dropdown. If you can’t find the username, enter the username and press your Enter key.

    Tip

    Usernames can either be the hostname of the target computer (for example, for Windows devices it’ll look like hostname//gwynm) or usernames (for example, for Chromebooks it’ll look like gwynm@domain.com).

  6. Select the device from the drop-down. If you get a message that says ‘No devices for the selected username’, check the username entered.
  7. Select Start Realtime Log Viewer.

The list updates live. When the browsing session ends, the logs no longer show after five minutes. To switch off updates and prevent current logs from disappearing, select Stop Realtime Log Viewer.

Image 1: Realtime Filtering Log Viewer in Cloud Filter.

 

When the Cloud Filter Portal Real Time Log Viewer is running, you’ll see an icon in front of the Smoothwall logo on the user’s device on the Smoothwall browser address bar.

Image 2: Smoothwall logo in the browser.

 

On the user’s device

  1. Sign in to the user's device.
  2. Open a browser.
  3. Check for the Smoothwall logo next to the browser address bar. If you don’t see the logo, enable the extension first to be able to use the Real Time Filtering Log Viewer page.

    Image 3: Your browser with Smoothwall Extension next to the Search bar.
  4. Select the browser address bar.
  5. Enter smoothwall://

    Image 4: Enter into the Search bar.
  6. Press the Space or Tab key on your keyboard.

    Image 5: Press Space or Tab.
  7. Enter “real time” and select the Smoothwall Real Time Filtering Log Viewer result.

    Image 6: Select the item.
  8. You will be taken to the Real Time Filtering Log Viewer page.

By default, the toggle in the top right is set to On and the list updates every 30 seconds. When the browsing session ends, the logs no longer show after five minutes. To switch off updates and prevent the current logs from disappearing, change the toggle to Off.

Image 7: Realtime Filtering Log Viewer on the user’s device.

 

View the data in the logs

You can search for specific URLs or websites using the Search bar.

  • Timestamp: When the user accessed the site.
  • URL: The web address of the website that the user tried to access. Select the URL to attempt to open this page yourself for testing.
  • Categories: The Category the website falls under.
  • Action: Whether the user could access the website (allow) or not (block).
  • Matched Rule: The Web Filter Policy that was used to block or allow the website. The number corresponds to where the Web Filter Policy appears in the list (from top to bottom) in the table in Filter > Policies. No Match means there is no Web Filter Policy in place and the website was allowed.

Select the column header (apart from the Action column) to sort or group the results.