Security

I am looking to get some guidance on who I could engage for help regarding integrating ClearPass with a 3rd party vendor.

 

We are currently looking at Who On Location (cloud based), which is a visitor management system. I would like to be able to take the user information that is entered into this system and feed it back to ClearPass and have ClearPass create the appropriate guest account. Basically, it would be the same thing that already exists for Teem.

 

What I don't know is how to get started. I know Whos On Location has an extensive API which appears to be fairly well documented. I have never attempted anything like this though so I am not entirely sure of where to start. Would it make sense for me to engage with Aruba? Or Who On Location? Or both?

 

Has anyone gone down this path themselves? Any suggestions?

If you are looking for a native integration like we have through Teem, you should request it through your account team. If you do not require native integration and are fine with external middleware, the REST APIs should offer all of the functionality that you need.

I would assume that going via the account team to have a native integration will take a little more time? Would this trigger Aruba to reach out to Whos On Location to see if they want to work together? Or could this be something that Aruba could help us to develop just for our situation?

 

When you say "external middleware" are you referring to just the REST APIs? Or in order to orchestrate something like this, would there need to more setup between ClearPass and Whos On Location in order for them to correctly exchange information?

Yes, it would take more time and would be based on demand.

Regarding middleware, it would be an application/service/server that sits in the middle that brokers communication between the cloud service and ClearPass. Our native integrations utilize the Extensions framework as the middleware.

Thank you for the clarification @cappalli.

 

It sounds like the middleware option is probably my best bet, but I have no idea how to go about setting something like that up. I may have bitten off more then I can chew. 

 

I appreciate you taking the time to educate me!

 

Cheers

So I had a thought, and it is probably laughable, but I wanted to ask.

I believe this system can send email at the completion of a visitor registration. I had the idea to use Microsoft Flow as the middleware layer (probably not describing it properly).

 

We could have the system send an email to a specific email address that we use Microsoft Flow to monitor. Each email that comes in would be parsed for name, email address, and company name. This would then create an API call back to ClearPass to create a guest user account. Once the account is created in ClearPass, the user would be emailed from ClearPass with their credentials.

 

Does this sound like something that is feasible? Or am I completely stupid for considering this as a serious solution?