LiveStream 5 Administration Guide

The Dashboard

LiveStream 5 introduces the Dashboard, bringing together the most important system information and configuration details on one screen.

The Dashboard information and functionality covers four areas:

  1. System Alerts
  2. Today's Usage
  3. Policy Overview
  4. Look up a denial event

Screen

System Alerts

The operation of LiveStream 5 is dependent on a myriad of technologies working together to provide a seamless experience for end users and a comprehensive internet management tool for organisations.

Some of these technologies are external to the server, yet LiveStream 5's dependency requires that network connectivity, categorisation and reporting services, directory integration and licensing are constantly monitored via a number of system status checks.

If LiveStream 5 detects an operational issue the Dashboard will display an alert describing the issue, a suggestion of what to do, and a link to relevant section to the management console, where appropriate. Screen

When all the system status checks pass, and there no issues to should, you will see this: Screen

System alerts aim to provide the Network Administrator with:

  • Immediate notification of any system issues.
  • The information required to resolve the issue quickly.

Today's Usage

Clicking the Today's Usage bar will expand it to display some general statistics about today's web browsing activity.

Screen

These stats can give an Administrator an impression of whether the system is functioning normally, or whether they are issues within the system. If any of these metrics are abnormally high or low, it may indicate an issue.

ProTip: You can access these metrics aggregated by weeks and months, including graphs and averages, in the Reports section.

Policy Overview

The Policy Overview provides an at-a-glance view of all your Policy Groups, their Policy Sets and time-based access rules. The policy configuration can't be edited directly from this screen, but if there's a option you wish to change selecting it will present you with the relevant edit page for the item.

Screen

Let's step through each element of the Policy Overview:

  1. Policy Groups — A list of all the current Policy Groups. If there are many Policy Groups you can scroll through the list. The item selected is highlighted with a blue background. This is the current selected Policy Group and it's data is reflected within the other elements of the Policy Overview. The Junior School Policy Group is selected and this is reflected in the title of the overview.

  2. Members — These counters represent how many of your client groups have been joined to the Policy Group. There is also a count of how many individual users and device IDs are represented by these client groups. Select any of these numbers if you wish to edit the Policy Group's members.

  3. Policy Sets — The segmented button shows each Policy Set that's applied the selected Policy Group. The default Policy Set is shown on the left and any Policy Sets being applied on a time-basis on the right — identifiable by a clock icon. Select a Policy Set to display its rules, and metadata.

    ProTip: The Policy Overview reference where each Policy Set is also applied.

    In the example shown above, the Policy Set Primary School - Late is applied as a Time-based policy. The same Policy Set is also currently being used by other Policy Groups including Intermediate School etc. The schedule indicates when these rules will apply, in this case, on Monday from 12 midday to 2:30PM.

  4. Policy Set Summary — this summary describes the rules within the selected Policy Set. Selecting any one of these rules will navigate you to the Policy Set edit screen where it can be modified:

    • Which safety modes are enforced — strict safe searching and/or YouTube for Schools

    • Which content Categories are being denied. The summary shows how many categories in each classification are being blocked.

    • Which custom List Groups will be allowed and which will be denied.

    • Maximum download size

    • Download speed restrictions — if and when download speed will be limited and by how much.

    • Quotas — whether daily, weekly or monthly quota limits are being applied.

    • Credit — if and when members' credit is charged for web access.

    Additionally, hovering over certain elements of a rule will reveal more details. For example, the denied categories:

    Screen](../assets/severe-categories.png)

    Or the allowed and denied List Groups: Screen

Looking up denial events

When a client attempts to access web content which is prohibited by their Policy Set they will be presented with a LiveStream redirect page informing them of what occurred and why the request was denied. Included on every redirect page is a unique event ID which acts as a reference to the denial event.

As demonstrated in this screenshot, the event ID is displayed both in the redirect message and in the page footer: Screen

In cases where the individual would like to request that the content be unblocked, they can contact a LiveStream administrator and reference the event ID. An administrator can subsequently look-up the event using the from the Dashboard and see all the details pertaining the the denial including:

  • Who requested it — The user or device I.D. that requested the URL.
  • Which Policy Group the rules were inherited from
  • Which Policy Set was effective — and therefore contained the rule responsible for the denial.
  • What was requested — the URL of the content the client requested.
  • When it was requested — the timestamp of the web request.
  • Why it was denied — what kind of policy rule triggered the denial.
  • How it was classified — Which categories was the URL classified as.

Viewing all of the relevant context for a denial makes it easy to determine what policy changes should be made — if any — and for whom.

To look up a denial event just click the look up an event button, type or paste the ID into the dialogue and click show details.

Screen

The denial event details will be presented on a separate page like so: Screen