Signing up new clients is something that we love to do here at MyPlace. Controller online – check!, Hostname? – check!, SSL cert? – check! Username/password? – check! Everything is looking great until we get to the final stage and…the site ID is displayed as default! A little bit of us sinks inside when we know that this not yet finished, and we have to go back to the client for one more request
This is how it used to be at MyPlace but that is no more. To explain this, and without getting too technical, it is related to the way that the MyPlace system works with UniFi. Unlike many other captive portal providers, we have designed and developed our product to align as closely as possible to the UniFi platform. The principal is that the link between MyPlace and UniFi should be as seamless as possible and to maximize the opportunity for useful product features for UniFi customers.
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UniFi Site ID replaced with UUID
MyPlace utilizes the UniFi API to help guests navigate the WiFi hotspot captive portal and get authenticated onto the WiFi network. Each site within UniFi has a unique ID, that is visible in the url and it is this site ID that we use to identify the venue. As well as having a unique ID, UniFi also use a site ID called “default” and it is typically the first site setup on any controller
Obviously having multiple sites with same unique identifier caused an issue as there was no way of separately identifying new venues. This particular issue did have workarounds but was exasperated with the move to the new UniFi OS by Ubiquiti. Put simply, most new clients were using UDM and UDM Pros or Cloud Key Gen 2. Not only was the site ID default in all of them, but it was impossible to change it or migrate sites to a new controller. This is certainly the case at time of writing
It was time for a change and while it was something we had always planned on doing, we brought it forward and prioritised it on the product roadmap. Now we have moved to a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) method and the default site id issue that caused us issues in the past is no more
With this new enhancement, we are now even closer aligned to the Ubiquiti UniFi platform and we can continue with our product roadmap to bring more useful features for our clients.
