This section serves the purpose to manage tickets (and the rates they are based on): Whether they are cyclic or not and whether they are time-based or traffic-based. The options are grouped in three categories, shown in the Tickets submenu: Rates, Quick Ticket, and Ticket Generator.
The Endian UTM Appliance gives the possibility to define several rates in the specific page, by clicking on the Add Rates link. Here, by selecting different combinations of the payment (post-paid vs. prepaid), measure (traffic-based vs. time-based), price, and cyclic options, different types of ticket can be created.
In particular for the rate’s price, postpaid payment allow to define the price per one hour (time-based) or per 10 MB (traffic-based). The prepaid payment, instead, allows the definition of a more precise price and even the unit. In this case, indeed, even the amount of time (in minutes, hours, or days) or traffic (in Mb or Gb) and either the ticket price or the unit price can be supplied.
Note
When entering the ticket price, the price per unit is automatically calculated, and vice versa. This proves useful when offering different prepaid types of tickets and verify, for example, that the cost of four prepaid, 15 minutes duration tickets are more expensive than one prepaid, one hour duration ticket.
Cyclic tickets
Cyclic tickets are a new type of tickets that can be offered to Hotspot users. The idea behind the introduction is to assign to a user the same amount of traffic within a period (cycle), that can be repeated an arbitrary number of times (cycle duration). Every user can be assigned one cyclic ticket at a time.
More in details, a cyclic ticket consist of three parts:
A rate, which is the cost per amount of time or of MB of traffic, exactly like other rates.
A cycle duration, which is a period of either one day, one week, one month, or one year, during which the traffic must be consumed.
A number of cycles, that shows how many consecutive times the ticket can be used. This number is decided by the hotspot’s administrator and is by default 1.
Although all types of ticket can be purchased at any moment and being used immediately, there is one exception: Cyclic tickets whose cycle duration is Monthly always start a cycle on the first day of the month and expire on the last day of the month. As an example, consider a monthly cyclic ticket purchased on the 20th of June. While it is possible to start using it immediately, the first cycle will finish on the 30th of June. It is therefore suggested to start the validity of this ticket on the first day of a month.
Cyclic ticket can only be prepaid, i.e., they must be purchased in advance. Residual traffic within a cycle is not added to the next one, ie., it must be used before the end of the cycle or is lost. Cyclic rates can not be used for quick tickets, smartconnect tickets, ticket generator, and account generator: They must be explicitly assigned to an existent user or during the creation of a new user.
The tickets can be made available for SmartConnect™ transactions (see below).
The available types of tickets are shown when opening the Ticket page in a table composed by several columns, which correspond to the options that can be defined when clicking on the Add Rates link. The tuples can be ordered by Rate Name, Payment, or Measuring Mode using the drop-down menu above the table. The ordering criteria can be reversed if the Reverse Order checkbox is ticked. To search for a particular rate name or to filter among them, fill in the input form located on top of the table with at least one character and press Enter.
When defining a new Normal rate, the following options are available. A few more options are available for cyclic tickets, see below for more.
The name given to the ticket rate.
The ASA code for the ticket rate. Although used only for the ASA hotel management system, this field is mandatory.
Hint
In case no ASA system is in use, fill this field with the same string used for the rate name.
Select between a Normal or a Cyclic rate. See here for the definition of cyclic ticket.
This column shows whether this rate is available for SmartConnect™
transactions, in which case a 
icon will appear in the list,
otherwise a 
is displayed.
Hint
In the table, a click on the icon toggles the stuatus of the rate.
Tick the checkbox to set a fixed bandwidth limit to the rate. If enabled, the next two options appear. This option is not available for cyclic tickets.
The highest download bandwidth available for the rate.
The highest upload bandwidth available for the rate.
Tick the checkbox to use this rate for the creation of new quick
tickets. In this case a icon will appear in the list of
tickets, otherwise a is displayed.
Hint
In the table, a click on the icon toggles the stuatus of the rate.
This column shows if the rate requires Pre-Paid or Post-Paid payment.
This column show whether the rate is Time-based or Traffic-based. Depending on the choice, the next options (Amount and Price) changes.
Write in the textfield the amount of time or traffic available when a single ticket is created with this rate, then choose from the drop-down menu the time (number of minutes, hours, or days) or traffic (number of megabytes or gigabytes) units available according to the Measuring Mode.
This option defines the expiry dates for the single tickets created out of this type and appears only in the rate editor. The four possible values, chosen from the drop-down menu are:
Always, unlimited validity
From ticket creation allows to specify the length of validity of the ticket, measured in either minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months from its creation.
From ticket first use like the previous one, but the validity starts when the ticket is first used to access the hotspot.
Until the end of the day, the ticket shall be used within the current day.
These values will be the default for the new tickets that will be created, though they can be overridded on a user basis when associated to a user under .
This shows the hourly or per-10MB price and the ticket price specified for this rate. In the rates editor, two textboxes appear that quickly convert the price for unity (10Mb or one hour) into the price for ticket, which proves useful to control the average price per unit of the variout rates defined.
When the choice of the Rate type is Cyclic, the rates editor changes slightly, displaying the following configuration options, instead of Price:
The duration of one cycle of the rate, that can be either Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.
The cost of each cycle.
Hint
The currency can be changed in the Hotspot’s settings ().
The default number of cycles for the validity of the ticket. If it is not specified, the value 1 will be applied.
As soon as the price per cycle has been entered, this table calculates the total price for the cyclic ticket for some relevant number of cycle (e.g., 7 or 14 Days, 3 or 6 months and so on).
Warning
After one ticket rate has been saved, only the rate name, the rate code, or the availability for SmartConnect™ transactions can be modified. Changing anything else would lead to inconsistencies in the accounting data. In order to modify a price for a rate, rename the existing rate and create a new rate with the original name. Suppose for example that there is a rate called hourly whose cost should be modified. First, rename that rate to something like OLD-hourly, then create a new rate with the original name hourly.
This page is used to create a new, single user account, whose username and password are automatically generated. To do so, optionally supply the first and last name of the user, then click on the desired rate among those displayed.
Note
Only rates with Pre-Paid payment method can be selected for quick tickets.
After clicking on the rate button, the username, password, and rate are shown on the screen: At this point the selection of the language for the user is possible. These accounting data can be printed by clicking on the Print information button. The new account inherits all the default settings -defined in - and is listed in the Accounts page, since it is an account like the other.
With the ticket generator it is possible to create a specific number of tickets which share common settings, including a predefined ticket rate. This option proves useful when there is the need to create a large set of prepaid ticket codes for customers that can directly use it on SmartConnect™ to access the hotspot, or even to use them as demo or evaluation codes. To be able to use a ticket created here, however, the customer must be registered or must create a new account.
The Ticket Generator page is split into two boxes: On the upper side the input forms can be filled in to quickly create new tickets, while the lower side contains a table listing the already generated bulks of tickets. After at least bulk of tickets has been produced, a link will appear between the two sides, Show generated tickets, that can be clicked to show all the tickets available (see below).
There are two groups of options available in the generator to create new tickets:
Define the string that will be the common prefix of all tickets in the bulk.
The number of characters used for the ticket.
Select which of the four available character sets should be used to generate the tickets.
How many tickets should be created.
The rate on which the ticket is based. The rate must already be present in the defined Rates.
To generate the bulk of tickets with the specified settings, click on the Generate tickets button: A sample of the first 5 ticket - code combinations will appear. The whole bulk will be generated only after clicking on Confirm, otherwise a click on Cancel will delete even the 5 samples shown.
Beneath the ticket generator options, all previously generated bulk of tickets are listed in a table whose columns are:
The date and time on which the tickets have been generated.
The number of tickets that have been generated.
There are three available actions on each bulk:
Load Settings. Use the setting used in that bulk to generate a new one.
Delete tickets. Remove all the tickets created in that generation. Only delete tickets that have been used.
Export as CSV. Export the list of tickets in CSV format.
Clicking on the Show generated tickets link leads to the page showing a table with all the generated tickets, that can be sorted by either the ticket’s code or creation date, with the option to hide unused or expired tickets. Specific codes can also be searched for using the input form next to the Code: label.
The table shows the ticket code, which user has used or has been assigned a ticket -if any, the ticket rate, the ticket creation date, and an optional link to either delete a single unused ticket code or to expire a ticket code in use. When the table contains a large number of tickets, pagination is available to split the list.