OpenKiosk NodeView 2.0

Intended audience:

Summary

New features

• Client-server communication is now handled by XML-RPC. The old sockets-based line-oriented protocol is discarded in favor of this protocol for extensive data transfer across networks.
• Viewing reports
• Overall site status viewer
• Managing Operators
• Member accounts
• Kiosk-Mode User Interface Administration
• Remote reports
• Prepaid and member accounts now have expiry dates
• Prepaid and member accounts access can be limited to a particular workgroup(s)

Viewing reports

NodeView has a monitoring object that monitors the events on your site. In addition to generating operator statistics (described in the main documentation), it generates site logs that will be useful for tracing problems and producing reports for the overall status of your establishment.

NodeView currently monitors the following:

• Offline stations – NodeView notices when a particular station can no longer be tracked. This is either caused by an inactive workstation or the client software is being disabled by something, which is unlikely due to the secure design of the client software. However, when things do go wrong, viewing this log can be helpful.
• Member access – When a user that has a membership account logs-in, NodeView registers the event in the member access log. This is useful for determining the time when a particular member uses his/her account and from what station he/she is logging from.
• Ticket access – When a walk-in user logs-in to the system using the generated access numbers, NodeView registers the event in the ticket access log. This is useful for tracing access number disputes when problems arise.
• Bonuses – If bonus support is enabled for certain membership accounts and the bonus condition is met, NodeView registers the event in the bonus log. You can view when and who achieved a bonus.

To view reports, go to reports page in the configuration window. In the site logs section, select the desired log category and select the date range to generate. Click print if you want to print the report directly. To view it on screen, click print preview.

Overall site status viewer

The main screen of the NodeView controller, by default, contains icons representing the kiosks in your network. When a kiosk goes offline for some reason, the icon representing it turns red.

Managing Operators

Operators are your employees who manage NodeView for your site. Operators can be delegated limited responsibilities in managing NodeView. This is achieved by using ACLs or access control lists on their accounts.

In the operator properties window, highlight the settings in which you allow an operator to access. Click again on a highlighted item to deselect an item. If you wish to hide an operator from the login dialog, uncheck the “Display user name on login dialog” option.

Member accounts

In addition to prepaid access numbers for walk-in customers, OpenKiosk now supports member accounts. This is useful for sites that has large base of regular users who wish to use the services of your network regularly. Member accounts have the advantage of reusability, personalized passwords, and bonus incentives.

Select Tickets and Members in the configuration window and click member to create and remove member accounts. If you wish the member to set the password themselves on the clients, leave the set password on the client option checked. Otherwise, uncheck it to set the password initially. The member can later change it if desired.

Click enable bonuses to access additional settings for bonus features. You can set the condition for bonus achievement by setting the “Total minutes member must accumulate to achieve bonus.” On bonus achievement, NodeView can either just inform the operator and the member or it can automatically add a predefined value to the balance of the member account. If you wish to give tangible or physical incentives to your customers, select inform the operator to notify you when the bonus has been achieved. Otherwise, set “Minutes automatically added to account on bonus” to a value that will be automatically added to the member account if auto-consume is enabled.

Kiosk-Mode User Interface Administration

To specify which applications are allowed to run on an OpenKiosk client:

1. As an administrator or an operator with workgroup applications access, go to site configuration -> workgroup applications.
2. Select the workgroup you want to restrict to specific applications from the Workgroup drop-down list.
3. In the left is a list of pre-set applications that you can transfer to the allowed application list for the selected workgroup. Highlight the desired applications and click the >> button to add it to the application list for the particular workgroup.
4. To add more applications in the pre-set list, click the add button. To edit a particular application, highlight it first and click edit.

Example

You have two divisions in your cybercafe. You would like to separate gamers from people who just surf the Internet. In this scenario, you would set up two workgroups. The first workgroup we might call "Netbrowsers" and the second, "Gamers". You can specify the application list for Netbrowser as:

Name:                          Path:
----------------               -------------
Internet Explorer              C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
Mirc Chat                      C:\Program Files\Mirc\mirc.exe
Yahoo Messenger                C:\Program Files\Yahoo\Yahoo Messenger\ymessenger.exe
Microsoft Word                 C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Winword.exe

The gamers would typically be playing:

Name:                          Path:
---------------                ------------
Conquer Online                 C:\Progam Files\conquer online\conquer.exe
Warcraft III                   C:\Program Files\Blizzard\warcraft.exe
Need for Speed Underground     C:\Program Files\EAGames\nfsu\nfsu.exe

You can fine tune the restrictions further by specifying which workgroup should give access to a particular prepaid or member account. In the ticket and member generation dialogs, you can specify the workgroups that allow access to the ticket or member account.

Remote reports

To automatically send reports to specified e-mail addresses

1. As an administrator or an operator with remote reporting configuration access, go to site configuration -> remote reporting.
2. Add the e-mail addresses in which NodeView mails the reports by clicking the add button below the e-mails list.
3. Make sure to specify a return address so that spam filters will not block report e-mails from NodeView as spam.
4. Select categories to send by selecting from the category list
5. You can specify how often Nodeview sends the reports by specifying the interval in the interval drop down list.