[ad_1]
In collaboration with Fernando Quintanilla, Ervin Carrillo, and German Cheung
We work from nearly wherever. Espresso retailers, airplanes, kitchen tables. The character of our work is hybrid and once we aren’t in shared areas with our colleagues, we depend on our collaboration suite to maintain us related. Because the collaboration chief for video endpoints throughout Cisco, my day revolves fairly closely round Webex and delivering constant collaboration experiences to Webex customers.
As we work internationally utilizing collaboration instruments each internally and externally, managing that have is changing into extra advanced. With earlier instruments, studying when, the place, and why our collaboration providers, gadgets, or functions faltered was like looking for a rogue brace in 100,000 traces of code. Shortly after we migrated to our Cisco Collaboration Assembly Rooms Cloud resolution, we started engaged on Webex Management Hub. Ever since, we’ve change into smarter about pinpointing these rogue braces.
Management Hub is a centralized collaboration administration portal that gives troubleshooting, analytics and compliance capabilities for our collaboration portfolio. We’ve got a number of providers, like Webex Conferences, Webex App, Webex Gadgets, Webex Calling, and with Management Hub, we get to see what’s occurring throughout the board in our surroundings. In a phrase, it’s wonderful.
Diving into Webex knowledge to troubleshoot
Up to now, let’s say Fernando referred to as to escalate a connection concern he had with Webex Conferences. We’d have to attend on Cisco Technical Help Heart (TAC) to get backend Webex knowledge and ship it our manner. Then, we’d go down a rabbit gap attempting to pinpoint the difficulty, pulling data from completely different sources whereas attempting to piece collectively an image of what went improper. In the meantime Fernando is pissed off he can’t be part of calls. It’s affecting his work productiveness. It’s not nice for enterprise.
Immediately, when Fernando says he has an issue, we discover it shortly. Management Hub populates a single dashboard with knowledge from our complete atmosphere, from elements like customers, gadgets, locations, and providers. Management Hub visually organizes that knowledge to indicate me the place Fernando is having points, whether or not it’s a community concern, or a unfastened cable on his Cisco Webex Desktop Professional gadget. It’s a user-friendly interface, and immediately, I spot when Fernando’s name is disrupted, for a way lengthy, what his bandwidth was, his latency – I get your entire image, not items.
An administrator’s view of Webex Management Hub
If Fernando was on a convention name on the time of his connection concern, Management Hub presents up assembly data in a single view. All of the contributors, the varieties of endpoint purchasers they’re utilizing, the assembly kind, how lengthy it takes to affix the assembly, and community statistics of the decision are seen. As an admin, becoming a member of the decision to judge it in actual time and troubleshoot reside is an possibility.
In Management Hub, we pull logs from a tool, whether or not it’s on the community or not. We adjust to knowledge privateness in each area, and whereas we are able to’t see every part, alerts and a few diagnostics pop up, which is at all times higher than nothing. We get far more troubleshooting capabilities for gadgets that aren’t on the community.
When viewing the logs, the straightforward dashboard reviews when adjustments occur, and this data is collected. It narrows down the sphere of what’s going on when a consumer says, ‘my gadget isn’t working’.
I’ve helped Fernando inside a couple of minutes as a substitute of some hours. With analytics, I’ve recognized if this can be a specific sample different customers could also be having and proactively monitor or alert them earlier than it turns into a difficulty. Management Hub allows us to be extra environment friendly, extra resilient, and extra centered on offering an distinctive collaboration expertise.
Profitable with consumer and gadget administration
Managing 1000’s of gadgets and customers comes with its personal nuances, to not point out safety safety challenges. Management Hub simplifies provisioning, authentication, and authorizing customers on our Webex platform. We be certain that solely efficiently authenticated customers are accessing areas and providers they’re meant to, utilizing Key Administration Service (KMS) – that means unauthorized customers will be unable to affix your calls or areas.
As soon as customers are added, we handle their providers and settings from Management Hub. This makes onboarding a lot extra easy. When new hires be part of Cisco, they flip their laptops on, sign up, and get straight to work assembly their new colleagues. When staff refresh their laptops or purchase a brand new gadget, they don’t must undergo a protracted migration or setup. They log in, authenticate with Single Signal-On and Duo, and it really works. We obtain gadget logs and push configuration adjustments to gadgets as nicely. It helps us make the collaboration expertise higher for everybody.
We additionally run proactive scripts that assist us monitor gadgets often. These scripts carry out audits on the gadgets for standing, and if one thing pops up a few occasions, we open a case. The explanation we do that is to be sure that the gadgets in our demo facilities and workplaces are working to specification. That means, if Sam walks right into a convention room in San Jose one week and into Bangalore one other, her expertise of the gadgets is constant, irrespective of the place she is on the planet.
Simplified assist and APIs
Numerous inner growth went into simplifying the bot creation course of with BotLite, a bot-making platform powered by MindMeld and Webex Groups. Utilizing bots transforms a lot of our work when it comes to how we’re capable of higher assist our consumer base and the way our consumer base turns into extra snug with self-service.
German Cheung, a Cisco technical methods engineer, has developed various instruments through Webex Bots that add loads of worth to our providers. The BVE Assist bot, for instance, offers numerous instruments to our multi-tiers assist groups based mostly on their roles with out breaking up the role-based entry permission in Management Hub. With the clever workflows and automations constructed into the bot, our assist groups can work together with the bot to examine, diagnose, pinpoint, and repair the problems in a number of clicks. The bot helps to standardize the procedures of analysis, troubleshooting, validation and fixing. It additionally helps to scale back human intervention and the misconfiguration attributable to human errors. MTTR (Imply Time to Restore) has decreased considerably. The bot remediates points attributable to entry permissions, case escalations, and repeated steps. For instance, one bot device, UCM Calling Enablement in Webex, completes all checks throughout a number of infrastructures and providers, and fixes points robotically in about 15 seconds. Manually, that job often takes wherever from a number of minutes to a number of hours. The bot resolves instances shortly and extra importantly, the consumer expertise is that a lot better.
An excessive amount of data comes from numerous contributing platforms that assist us make calls, launch functions, and develop bots. Once we consider Webex, it’s not solely about video endpoints and Webex conferences. We even have Webex apps that encourage engagement or streamline our workspaces too, like Miro, Slido, and M365. We handle these configurations inside Management Hub.
Cisco IT has a tradition of creating inventive options. Webex has an open structure; it lets you develop your personal resolution. If we don’t supply it, it means the APIs are there if you’ll want to develop one thing, simply on your firm and your customers.
Needles in haystacks are painful and pointless
Is there a method to keep away from twenty-questions when a senior chief says, ‘my gadget isn’t working’? Sure. What about when a consumer encounters dropped calls in Webex? Certain. Knowledge is a gorgeous factor when it’s used insightfully. Whereas it’s nonetheless a piece in progress, Management Hub provides us extra time to make an incredible collaboration experiences even higher – and with distinctive assist.
Do you could have a Management Hub story? We’d love to listen to it.
Share:
[ad_2]