Captive Portal Features (Quantum+ & Evolution+)

The following page will guide you through the various settings you can change in relation to how the Captive Portal is displayed and how users interact with it. 
 

It will cover how to set the time settings, the options that are displayed to a user and how to enable the PIN sign-in option.

Editing the Time Settings

By default, when a user accesses the Captive Portal to sign in, they will be presented with a sign-in page like the one below, where the Sign out in time is set to 1 hour, and the option to Stay signed in is selectable.

Some schools may wish to change the default time,  or remove the option for users to change this and/or the stay signed in options all together.

To do this, you will need to access the school's SurfProtect panel via either https://panel.exa-networks.co.uk/ or https://surfprotectpanel.exa-networks.co.uk/.

Once logged in, navigate to the Location settings tab along the top of the page.

And on the right-hand side, you will see the 3 options for editing the time settings of the captive portal.

Default Time Setting

Option 1 is to set the default time that a user will see when accessing the captive portal. This can be set to intervals from 15 minutes to 14 hours.

Restrict Time Setting 

Option 2 is to enforce the time setting so that a user does not have the ability to change this when logging in.

With this setting enabled, a user will no longer have the option to change the time setting, and will instead be informed of the time they will be signed out, as set in the default time set on the previous option.

Remove Stay Signed In Option

And the final option is to remove the option to stay signed in. 

(Please note, the Stay signed in option allows a user to sign in and and remain signed in for 8 hours, or until midnight is reached)

With the setting set to Disabled, the option to stay signed in will be removed from the Captive Portal sign-in screen.

If you need any assistance on how to use these features, help with setting them up, or need access to your school's filtering setup, please contact the Helpdesk on 0345 145 1234, and the team will be happy to help.

Enabling PIN Sign In

To start, you will need to log in to the school's SurfProtect Panel.

Once on the SurfProtect page, you need to navigate to the Location Settings page.

In Location Settings, click the green Enable button under the Captive Portal PIN Sign-In section.

Once that has been enabled, navigate to the Manage SSO section.

This is where you will control who can use the PINs to sign in, view the PINs, generate new PINs if needed, and download them to store locally.

You will now need to select the authentication method currently used to access the captive portal. For this guide, we will be using a dummy setup of an on-site Active Directory setup, but this will work with both GSuite and Azure/Entra.

From here, you can choose to enable the PIN sign-in option for all users, some users, or certain user groups. The search bar will allow you to filter the list down. (You can add multiple groups to the filter at one time. Just search and click on the name, and repeat this as many times as you need to select the groups you want to allow to sign in via PINs)

You can also use the tick boxes on the left-hand side to select individual users, or use the select all option.

Once you have selected the users you want to allow to use PIN sign-in, simply click on the green Enable PINs button. You will then see the PIN status change for the selected users.

After all of the users have been updated, you can choose to download a copy of the PINs and PIN status from the option at the top. You can download this as a CSV or as a PDF.

Captive Portal Sign In Screen

Once the PIN sign-in option has been enabled for a SurfProtect location, the PIN sign-in option will be the default option on the sign-in screen.

Desktop Sign In Screen

Mobile Sign In Screen 

Managing PINs

If at any point you need to amend the current settings, you have two options;

If you need to amend the PIN that has been assigned to a user, or you want to do a full refresh, you can use the steps above, but instead choose Regenerate PINs. All selected users will now be allocated a new unique PIN, and their previous one will no longer work.

Similarly, if you need to disable the use of PIN sign-in for any user or group, use the same method to select the users and choose the option to Disable Pins. Users will now show PIN Status disabled, and they will no longer be able to sign in with a PIN, and will need to revert to signing in via a Username and Password.