Tips & Tricks: How to Customize Your Response Pages

[kiwi]

Ever wanted to have a more dynamic or explanatory response page? The default response pages are pretty good, but sometimes you want to add that little bit extra.

So how do you go about spicing up these response pages?

With custom response pages, you can add your own HTML code to display your own customized page. Each virtual system can have its own custom response pages. There are different types of custom response pages and all of them can be found under Device (1) > Response Pages (2) as illustrated below:

Device > Response Pages

Block pages are only relevant to user browsers. Application block pages only appear when the application is browser-based.

The system provides variables to be used within block pages for substitution at the time of the block event. Some variables, like <user/>, can be used with all block pages. Others, like <pan_form/>, can only be used with certain Block Page types. Here's a list of some of the variables you can use:

<user/>	Username (if available) or IP address of the user
<url/>	Requested URL Destination IP address for SSL Decryption
<category/>	URL filtering category of the blocked request
<appname/>	Application type of the blocked request
<pan_form/>	applicable HTML code for page type function - differs depending on the custom block page is used. URL FIltering Continue and Override Page returns a continue button. Captive Portal Comfort Page returns a user login.
<fname/>	filename.
<rulename/>	The name of the policy/rule that triggered the event
<certname/>	The name of the certificate used for SSL decryption. Other cert variables include: <issuer/>, <status/>, <reason/>, <badcert/>.
<cookie/>	Used in a file blocking continue page and will save a cookie and reload the page to download the file when continue is clicked.
<threatname/>	The name of the threat that triggered the event

If it seems daunting to start coding your HTML page from scratch then you can go to a Predefined response page (1), export it (2) and edit the HTML code to your liking (3).  Editing the predefined pages allows you to see how some of the variables mentioned above are used.  Once you're happy with your edits, save the customized HTML page (4) and import it to your device (5) so you can start using it.

Edit a Predefined Response Page & Import a customized page.

Notice in the example that I'm referencing to an image hosted on a different server <img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/images/Stop-EVIL-APP.jpg">. While you can't upload resources to your device, it's perfectly possible to reference to them on a different server. Just make sure that you use a fully qualified URL when referencing them and also make sure they are accessible. Some examples of externally hosted resources are graphics, sounds or stylesheets.

You can even modify and upload custom response pages using XML-API.

As you can see, there are plenty of options!

Don't settle for default, get those creative juices flowing and start creating your custom response pages today!

Make sure you also check out our admin pages on Device Response and URL Filtering Response for more information!

Feel free to share your questions, comments and ideas in the section below.

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Kiwi out!