AAA, NAC, Guest Access & BYOD

You might have a requirement where you need to integrate SMS services of a 3rd party to Clearpass which is not in the list of default SMS gateways. In that case you need to make use of a Custom HTTP handler provided the SMS gateway has a HTTP interface.

This article shows you how you need to configure Clearpass to integrate with Custom HTTP handler as the SMS Gateway. 

Every SMS API Service would have a Service URL that needs to be used in order to send an SMS. For instance the complete URL that can send the SMS using HTTP POST could like below

https://samplesmsgateway.com/esms/sendsmsrequest?username=<username>&password=<password>&smsservicetype=singlemsg&content=<Message>&mobileno=<ToPhoneNumber>&senderid=<FromID>

In order to make ClearPass send the HTTP POST as shown above, Please find below, the configuration that needs to be done on ClearPass:

To start with we need to create a new SMS gateway by navigating in the Guest Module as shown below

Home » Configuration » SMS Services » Gateways

The next page will ask you to choose an SMS gateway and it needs to be chosen as "Custom HTTP Handler"

The next piece of the configuration is the Service URL and for the desired POST as shown above the Service URL needs to be as shown below

https://samplesmsgateway.com/esms/sendsmsrequest

The next piece is the Service method which needs to be chosen appropriately. In this example we are using HTTP POST.

You would have a few substitutions available as shown below to fill in the username, password etc from the configuration of the gateway to the actual POST content

  @USERNAME@ – Service Username
  @PASSWORD@ – Service Password
  @API_ID@ – API ID
  @FROM@ – SMS Source Address
  @TO@ – Recipient
  @MESSAGE@ – Message
  @MESSAGE_ENC@ – Message that has already been URL encoded

The next piece is the HTTP Post, this is where we make use of the variables referencing the data that we are going to fill in the gateway configuration and also dynamic content like the message and the "To" phone number which will be gathered from the form that will send the SMS.

The HTTP Post would like below 

username=@USERNAME@&password=@PASSWORD@&smsservicetype=singlemsg&content=@MESSAGE@&mobileno=@TO@&senderid=@FROM@

next comes Authentication Method, in this example its going to be Substituted parameters, however it depends on the SMS service

next comes the Service Username, Service Password which are the credentials that are provided to you by the SMS Gateway and these are values that are being referenced above in the HTTP POST as @USERNAME@ and @PASSWORD@

and finally the SMS source address which is present in the final HTTP POST data in our example, but this is an optional field. This field is being referenced by @FROM@

Once all this configuration is complete you should be able to use this SMS service and send SMS through ClearPass

Once the SMS gateway configuration is complete you can click on the Send SMS option under the gateway enter a valid phone number and verify that the SMS is received.