Rules Page

The rules engine allows Proton administrators to either ignore specific web applications or map a URL to a specific web application. Enabled rules are applied to all Proton clients and are processed and updated on clients each time they report data to the Proton server.

By default, there are no pre-configured or pre-enabled rules in Proton. To add a new rule, select the New Rule button.

Two types of rules supported in Proton: Map and Ignore. Map rules allow Proton administrators to assign URLs to a specific web application. This is useful when a single Web application has multiple URLs and allows the administrator to make them appear as a single web application in the Proton reports. Ignore rules allow Proton administrators to filter out web applications that may be of no interest, for example search or shopping websites.

You may want to exclude a range of activity to categories of sites, such as social media or search engines, etc., accessed by Proton clients. Proton enables you to define multiple Map or Ignore rules in one step. To upload a premade or custom set of rules, select the Upload Rules button.

When uploading rules, be sure to select the desired append or replace option. Selecting ‘Append new rules’ will add any rules after all existing rules. ‘Replace all rules’ will overwrite any existing rules, without additional warning.

The bulk rules file should be in tab-separated format with each line having the following fields: Match string, Match type (simple, regex or Zone), Action (map or ignore), Enabled (0 or 1), Web application name (blank for ignore rules), and Description (optional). The format of the upload file is the same as the Full Export option available on the Rules page.

Building a rule

The rule builder allows great flexibility in building a rule:

Match Type allows you to select between a “simple” match or a SQLLike match. Simple matches to simple prefix matching, e.g. “www.google.com” will match any URL under “www.google.com” but will not match a subdomain like “maps.google.com.” In SQLLike, a specific character string is matched to a specified pattern. A pattern can include regular characters and wildcard characters. During pattern matching, regular characters must exactly match the characters specified in the character string. However, wildcard characters can be matched with arbitrary fragments of the character string. 

Please refer to Microsoft’s documentation of LIKE Operator under T-SQL at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/language-elements/like-transact-sql

Enter the appropriate URL or URL fragment in the Match String field, e.g., “google.com”.

For Map rules, you are then presented with a list of web applications that have already been reported by Proton clients in the system, or you can enter a new name to represent a new web application. Ignore rules are not associated with existing web applications and this option does not appear for Ignore rules.

A specific rule can be enabled or disabled at any time by flipping the ‘Enabled’ button. The default for a new rule is Disabled, so be sure to enable the rule prior to saving changes.

Finally, enter descriptive text for any new rules (to help administrators identify rules) and select the ‘Save changes’ button.

Once saved, Rules will appear in the view:

Editing a rule

Existing rules can be modified by using the four buttons:

From left to right, these buttons are Edit, Delete, Move up, and Move down.

Edit will allow the administrator to modify the behavior of that particular rule using the same rule building UI used to create the rule.

Delete will permanently delete the rule from the list. For rules that you wish to temporarily remove, it is recommended that you simply disable them (via the Edit button) so they can be easily restored when necessary.

Rules are executed in order that they are listed, from top to bottom. As soon as a rule match is found for a specific web application, that rule takes affect and subsequent rules are ignored. For this reason, you should make sure that the rules are in the correct order; typically, from most specific (at the top) to most general (at the bottom). Use the ‘Move up’ or ‘Move down’ buttons on the rule list to re-order your rules.