Hi all - I am a bit confused as to how the vouchers system works and cannot see a clear guide anywhere to tell me how to implement a voucher system.
What I plan to do is this:
We are looking to allow people access to wi-fi on a paid structure. They pay up front and get a voucher, which is time limited. Once it expires then a new voucher is needed.
The way I understand it works in a broad is that once someone tries to access the internet the system takes them to a splash page where they enter the voucher code and access is granted.
Here are some inmmediate questions.
Do you have to use guest access? if not what is the advantages.
The portal - do you have to use the built in portals? Can you design your own as a webpage and then use that?
Is there a clear guide somewhere that I can read and also give to my web designer?
Hi,
To implement a paid structure guest access would be the easiest.
We support three guest access portal modes for guest WiFi access - internal access point, external hotspot, or cnMaestro’s built in guest access portal. If you navigate to WiFi Profiles under the Configuration section of cnMaestro and then go to WLANs tab you can create a test WLAN to explore these options under the guest access section of the WLAN configuration.
You can design your own webpage if you’re using the internal AP or external hotspot options.
To use the vouchers supported in cnMaestro you do have to use our guest access portal. This can be configured by navigating to the Guest Access Portal option in the Network Services section of cnMaestro. You can create a test portal here to view and edit the splash page designs and to also create a voucher plan. Alternatively we support paid access as well. This requires cnMaestro X subscriptions. Some of the payment portals we support for paid access include PayPal, IPpay, etc.
This is were the confusion comes in. What is what? forget about everything but vouchers. Do I use the Guest Access under the WLAN tab in tandem with the Guest Access Portal under network services? Do I just use the Guest Access Portal?
Yes, that’s right. Enable guest access for the WLAN where you want to support guest access and then you can tie this to the cnMaestro guest access portal under network services. Within guest access portal we support free and voucher access as well as paid and enterprise, which are cnMaestro X features.
I have went into the Guest portal in Network services, into Access tab and ticked the “Enabled Voucher Access”. Set up a single unlimited voucher for testing and then went into the WLAN. In the WLAN I enabled Guest Access and choose cnmaestro option and choose the Portal designed above, it was the only one.
When trying to connect to the ssid just get a blank as if the splash page is not displaying.
Forget about it - found the issue, the user had been using the wifi under a different voucher and had set the system up to remember the ssid, which it did along with the voucher number hence the issue.