Create Guest Accounts

Sponsor Portal Create Accounts Page

You can use the Create Accounts page to create accounts for the following authorized visitors:

  • Guests whose personal information, such as last name, email address, or phone number, is available to you.

  • Guests whose personal information is not available or when you need to create multiple accounts quickly.

  • Guests whose information is available in an external database in the form of a file that you can import.

Create a Known Guest Account

You can create individual accounts for guests whose personal information is available, one account at a time.

Procedure

Step 1

Click Known on the Create Accounts page.

Your system administrator configures which fields display on this page and are required for creating guest accounts. Some fields are mandatory (marked with *) and display with default information that you can change.

Step 2

Retain or update the Guest Type you want to assign to the guest.

The various types of guests and their access privileges are defined by your system administrator.

The maximum number of devices that guests can simultaneously connect to the network and the maximum duration time for network access are displayed for the guest type you select.

Step 3

If displayed and required, enter the guest’s personal information, such as First name and Last name or Email address to create the username.

The personal information you enter will be used to generate a username. If not entered, a username is generated randomly, depending on the username policies set by your system administrator.

Step 4

Retain or update the defaults for the mandatory settings and enter information in the other fields, as desired.

The system administrator can configure multiple selections for Language, SMS Provider, Location, and SSID. However, if only one selection is specified, it will not display, but is automatically assigned when you create the guest account. You can view this selection in the guest account details after the account is created.
Note 

When setting time durations for accounts, the start and end times you define are applicable in the time zone for the location you pick.

Step 5

Click Create to create the guest account.

An Account Information dialog box displays with the account details, including the guest username and password.

What to do next

You can email or print the account details for guests, if these facilities are available to you. You can also text the account details to guests, if your system administrator has enabled this functionality.

Create Random Guest Accounts

You can create a set of multiple random guest accounts in advance, record the details separately, and store them in the system for future use. For example, if you are a lobby ambassador who needs to distribute guest accounts on a regular basis, you can save time by using these generic, randomly created accounts.

Procedure

Step 1

Click Random on the Create Accounts page.

Your system administrator configures which fields display on this page and are required for creating guest accounts. Some fields are mandatory (marked with *) and display with default information that you can change.

Step 2

Retain or update the Guest Type you want to assign to the guest.

The various types of guests and their access privileges are defined by your system administrator.

The maximum number of devices that guests can simultaneously connect to the network and the maximum duration time for network access are displayed for the guest type you select.

Step 3

Enter the Number of Accounts to create.

The maximum number of random guest accounts displayed that you can create at a time is configured by your system administrator.

Step 4

Based on how your system administrator configured this setting, you can either enter, edit or use the predefined Username Prefix to add to each account name.

The remainder of the username is generated randomly adhering to the username policies set by your system administrator.

Step 5

Retain or update the defaults for the mandatory settings and enter information in the other fields, as desired.

The system administrator can configure multiple selections for Language, Location, and SSID. However, if only one selection is specified, it will not display, but is automatically assigned when you create the guest accounts. You can view this selection in the guest account details after the accounts are created.
Note 

When setting time durations for accounts, the start and end times you define are applicable in the time zone for the location you pick.

Step 6

Click Create to create the specified number of random guest accounts.

If you created:

  • 50 or less random accounts—An Account Information dialog box displays with the randomly generated usernames and passwords for the multiple accounts you created.

  • More than 50 random accounts—A message informs you that the accounts are being created in the background and to check the Notices page for a status on the operation.

What to do next

When you generate random guest accounts, you probably do not have guest information such as email addresses or phone numbers. You can print the account details and manually distribute the login credentials to the guests. If you created more than 50 accounts, open the specific notice on the Notices page to view account details for up to 50 accounts. To view all the accounts created, go to the Manage Accounts page.

Import Guest Accounts

If your company maintains account information for authorized visitors in an external database or file, you can create guest accounts for these users by importing their information into the Sponsor portal. The file containing the account information must be a .csv file, which the Sponsor portal then parses and creates new guest user accounts for each entry in the file.

Before you begin

  • Make sure that you have the necessary permissions to import guest account information.

  • You cannot import guest account information from a mobile device (running Apple iOS, Android, and so on), so ensure that you are importing account information using a desktop device (running Apple OSX, Windows, and so on).

Procedure

Step 1

Click Import on the Create Accounts page.

Your system administrator configures which fields display on this page and are required for creating guest accounts. Some fields are mandatory (marked with *) and display with default information that you can change.

Step 2

Retain or update the Guest Type you want to assign to the guest.

Your system administrator defines the various types of guests and their access privileges.

The maximum number of devices that guests can simultaneously connect to the network and the maximum duration time for network access are displayed for the guest type you select.

Step 3

Click Download Template to get a template to use for the import file. Ensure that the file you are importing conforms to the required structure before importing it.

Step 4

Click Browse to locate and select the .csv file that contains the guest information is required to create the guest accounts.

Note 
If the .csv file includes non-English characters, then enable UTF-8 character encoding, before importing the file. If UTF-8 character encoding is not enabled, the non-English characters are not parsed properly.
Step 5

Retain or update the defaults for the mandatory settings and enter information in the other fields, as desired.

The system administrator can configure multiple selections for Language, Location, and SSID. However, if only one selection is specified, it does not display, but is automatically assigned when you create the guest accounts. You can view this selection in the guest account details after the accounts are created.
Note 
When setting time durations for accounts, the start and end times you define are applicable in the time zone for the location you pick.
Step 6

Click Import to import the account information from the external database or file.

A message informs you that the accounts are being created in the background and to check the Notices page for a status on the operation.

What to do next

You can email or print the account details for guests, if these facilities are available to you. You can also text the account details to guests, if your system administrator has enabled this functionality.

On the Notices page, open the specific notice to view account details for up to 50 accounts. If you imported more than 50 accounts, go to the Manage Accounts page, to view all the accounts created.

Privacy of Guest Passwords

You can create guest accounts for authorized visitors requiring access to your company’s network and internal resources. When you create accounts, whether it is for a known guest, or randomly for a multiple set of guests, or when importing a batch of guest accounts from an external database, Cisco ISE generates passwords for these accounts.

If your system administrator set you up with the required privileges, you can view these system generated passwords:
  • When managing guest accounts in the account details for each account.
  • If you choose to be notified of the account details at the same time you notify your guests.

However, if your guests are permitted to change their passwords and do so after they log into the Guest portals, you can no longer view these passwords, as they are considered private.

If guests lose or forget their passwords after they change them, you cannot simply resend their passwords to them. You have to reset their passwords to random passwords and notify them of the new passwords.

Create Account Settings

You can retain the defaults or change these settings when creating guest accounts. Your system administrator may enable additional settings for which you may need to enter information.

Table 1. Create Account Settings
Field Usage Guidelines

Guest Type

Select the type of guests whose accounts you are creating. If only one guest type is configured by your system administrator, you can only use this type to create guest accounts.

Cisco ISE includes these default guest types to map guests to their appropriate network access privileges:

  • Daily—Default settings allow guests network access for just 1-5 days.

  • Weekly—Default settings allow guests network access for a couple of weeks.

  • Contractor—Default settings allow guests network access for up to a year.

Your system administrator might restrict this list or create additional guest types.

The system administrator can set up guest types to Allow guest to bypass the Guest portal. In this case, the guest accounts created using this guest type are enabled automatically, and their states display as Active, even if the guests have not yet logged into a Cisco ISE web portal. If this option is not configured, the accounts are not enabled until the guests actually log into a web portal and their initial states display as Created.

SMS Provider

This field displays only if more than one SMS provider has been configured for selection by your system administrator. If only one provider is configured, it will not display as it is the only option available for this Sponsor portal.

If you know your guest's cellular provider and it is listed under SMS Provider, select it to send a SMS notification with the login credentials to the guest. If the cellular provider is not listed, then select the default global provider listed. Include the country code of the guest's phone number if using the default global provider. The supported phone number formats include: +1 ### ### ####, ###-###-####, (###) ### ####, ##########, 1########## and so on.

Group Tag

Groups certain guests accounts for tracking and searching purposes. For instance, you can assign a tag to all the guests attending training at a certain location. You can then search for these guests to either extend their account duration if the training is not completed in time or delete their accounts after the training is finished.

Location

This field displays only if more than one location has been configured for selection by your system administrator. If only one location is configured, it will not display as it is the only option available for this Sponsor portal.

Select the location to be used for the guest accounts. This determines the time zones that applies to the guests and helps define valid time ranges and other time parameters that apply to their accounts.

The time left for a guest account is related to the specific location assigned to it, and not the sponsor's local time.

SSID

This field displays only if more than one SSID has been configured for selection by your system administrator. If only one SSID is configured, it will not display as it is the only option available for this Sponsor portal.

Select the SSID of the network that guests will log into. This SSID is included in the account notifications sent to the guests.

Language

This field displays only if more than one language has been configured for selection by your system administrator. If only one language is configured, it will not display as it is the only option available for this Sponsor portal.

Choose the language used when sending account notifications (email, text, and print) to the guests.

Days; From date, To date; From time, To time

Define the account duration in terms of the maximum number of days, the dates, and the hours when the guests can access the network. Make sure that the amount of time does not exceed the maximum defined by the system administrator.