Archive for October, 2019

Meraki Go: Small Business Solution Goes Beyond Wi-Fi

 

We’re excited to welcome new additions to Meraki Go, a networking solution created by Cisco Meraki and built specifically for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Meraki Go is an easy cloud-based solution that allows business owners to self-manage the internet and Wi-Fi at their businesses. 

The newest products—a security gateway and network switches–are entirely app-managed and do not require any recurring fees. For additional security, users can purchase a Meraki Go Security Subscription, powered by Cisco Umbrella. 

To know more about these new products, and how Meraki Go is empowering small business owners, check out the announcement.

Stop, you had me at “dashboard.”

Whether you’ve just started looking at Cisco Meraki, or you’ve been a partner or customer for years, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the Meraki dashboard: our one stop, full-featured, out of the box, auto-provisioning, simple-to-use interface for managing our cloud IT products.  

With everything the dashboard has to offer, why wouldn’t we simply stop there? Why are we amping up our outreach about APIs services and the programmability of the Meraki cloud platform? Why are we focusing on developer resources and making our APIs simple and easy to use? Why are you seeing API-talk in the Community, hearing it on our podcast, and finding it featured at events?

Whether or not it’s on your radar today, our APIs could matter to your business. While many of our customers live happy, fulfilled lives without ever getting under the hood with these services, we’re seeing a sharp increase in the number of users (at all sizes of organizations) who turn to the Meraki cloud platform and APIs to solve significant business needs, including:

 – Further automating network tasks (who wouldn’t like to offload as much tedium as possible?)

 – Deploying Meraki networks in tight timelines

 – Integrating third party technologies 

 – Pulling advanced reporting out of the Meraki platform for auditing 

As our customers are increasingly tasked with MORE – integrating more, automating more, reporting more, surfacing more – we’re committed to helping more. By extending the cloud platform through our API services, we’re making dashboard experiences and data easier to automate, leverage, and tailor to your business needs. Plus, to better support developers at all levels, we’re dedicated to making the use of APIs a painless experience by providing clarity in our framework, sample code, and other resources (even drag and drop programming tools!) to help. We’re hoping the APIs will have your back when a business need or operational imperative emerges that a bit of coding can solve! 

If you’re new to programming with APIs, join us in this on-demand webinar to learn more about what the API services entail, how others are using them, and what resources are available to help beginners get started. 

 

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Take the work out of programming

There are so many things one could use the dashboard API to do – from automating network setup and management tasks, to creating more tailored alerts, to building custom reporting flows, apps, or experiences on top of Meraki technologies. With everything that’s possible and the source code available to get started, you likely have one or two projects you’ve been meaning to get to – but it can be hard to find time to write or compile the clean, reliable script you’d trust to push to production.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could drag and drop commands into a task flow, and hire someone (or something?) to fill in all the boilerplate code around these actions? 

Introducing our latest Node-RED project: the drag and drop tool of your dreams for building solutions with the Meraki Dashboard API! This project is the latest example of our commitment to simplicity across the cloud platform – making it easier for developers at all levels to work with the Dashboard API. 

Node-RED allows you to easily drag and drop commands to create flows that do almost anything with the Meraki Dashboard API, and fills in all the “blanks” or boilerplate code around those actions for you.

The Meraki “node” is built using the Dashboard OpenAPI spec and includes every operation available in the API. It allows you to instantly start working with all of the Meraki API endpoints to start those projects you’ve been considering, such as:

  • Building an automation flow to provision or update a network
  • Using Meraki Webhooks to trigger events (such as a Tweet) or saving the alert into a database
  • Quickly building forms to create custom tools and utilities
  • Designing a custom dashboard to monitor your networks, devices and clients

…and the list goes on! 

Check out our complete guide on this project to get started, or join us in this on-demand webinar, Meraki APIs for Beginners to hear more about this and other open source projects with Meraki APIs! 

 

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Back by popular demand – a second podcast about APIs

This August we released Episode 6 of the Meraki Unboxed podcast, where Product Manager Tony Carmichael and emcee Simon Tompson talked about all things APIs – from our product strategy and involved teams at Cisco, to some real-world examples of how folks are using APIs in the wild. To date, this has been our most popular episode of the podcast!

To give listeners more of what they love, we just released Episode 11, Putting APIs to Work – another session focused on the APIs, where MC Simon and I sat down with:

  • Nash King – Developer, Meraki Managed Services Provider (MSP) and Meraki Community ALL-STAR
  • Matt Denapoli – Developer Evangelist (and Meraki guru!) at Cisco DevNet

Tune in to this episode to hear a developer’s perspective on using the API and learn more about the Cisco DevNet team and partnership around Meraki API services. Also, hear firsthand about the upcoming DevNet certifications and your resources to up-level your career with this track! 

Lastly, if you’re new to APIs and looking for ways to get started, take a look at this on-demand webinar to learn why we’re focusing so heavily on the programmability of the Meraki Cloud Platform, how developers from SMB to enterprise are using the API services today, and what tools are available to get started!

All links from this episode will be available in the Meraki Community – where we will keep the discussion going.

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NUEVAS CARACTERÍSTICAS Y ACTUALIZACIONES PARA CÁMARAS INTELIGENTES MV

Los usuarios de Meraki saben que uno de los beneficios de la gestión de la nube son las actualizaciones integradas, obtener nuevas características y funcionalidades sin hacer ningún trabajo adicional. A partir de hoy, los usuarios de cámaras inteligentes MV tienen acceso a varias características nuevas y mejoradas diseñadas para hacer que la solución sea aún más fácil de usar y completa.

Cambios de navegación en la línea de tiempo

Es posible que la línea de tiempo no sea algo que la gente piense como una característica, pero es una parte fundamental de cómo los usuarios interactúan con el video. Nuestro objetivo ha sido hacer que esa experiencia sea lo más simple posible. El procesamiento del lenguaje natural es un ejemplo de esto: los usuarios pueden escribir “ayer por la noche” o “hace una semana al mediodía” para acceder al video correspondiente. Ahora, los usuarios tienen nuevas opciones para navegar fluidamente por la línea de tiempo usando la rueda de desplazamiento de un mouse o los controles equivalentes en un panel táctil:

Acercar y alejar desplazándose con el mouse

Avance o retroceda en la barra de la línea de tiempo deslizando el dedo sobre un panel táctil, o presione Mayúscula + Desplazarse con el mouse

Finalmente, en una búsqueda de movimiento, aparecerán barras deslizantes en la línea de tiempo para indicar el rango de tiempo para los resultados. Los resultados de búsqueda están predeterminados al 50% del medio de la barra de línea de tiempo visible actual, y se pueden ajustar moviendo las barras deslizantes o cambiando los selectores de fecha de inicio y finalización por encima de los resultados de búsqueda de movimiento. Consulte nuestra documentación para obtener más información sobre la navegación de la línea de tiempo.

Alertas de movimiento 2.0

Las alertas de movimiento fueron una de nuestras funciones más solicitadas después del lanzamiento, y nuestro equipo de ingeniería concedió ese deseo a principios del año pasado. Las alertas se pueden programar y configurar para el marco completo o área de interés. Cuando se lanzó Motion Recap, se incluyeron imágenes con correos electrónicos de alerta de movimiento para que las alertas sean más fáciles de entender. Pero nuestro equipo de ingeniería no iba a detenerse allí. Han estado trabajando en formas de mejorar las alertas de movimiento haciéndolas más significativas y potencialmente reduciendo la frecuencia de alertas falsas.

Motion Alerts 2.0 ofrece nuevas herramientas para seleccionar niveles de sensibilidad al movimiento y múltiples áreas de interés, lo que permite una mayor flexibilidad. Las alertas de movimiento promedio esperadas por día ahora se muestran en el Dashboard, lo que facilita la comprensión del impacto de cualquier configuración realizada. Para obtener más información, consulte nuestra documentación de alertas de movimiento.

Detección de vehículos

Con este nuevo lanzamiento, las cámaras inteligentes MV se están volviendo más inteligentes. En 2018, anunciamos análisis avanzados con detección de personas. Ahora, utilizando las mismas capacidades ML / AI, las cámaras MV podrán detectar vehículos en el marco de la cámara. El modelo de detección del vehículo se habilitará en cámaras exteriores (MV72), y la información del conteo del vehículo se mostrará en el tablero en el mismo formato que el conteo de personas es hoy.

La capacidad de la cámara para detectar vehículos abre una variedad de nuevas aplicaciones. Además de poder descubrir eventos de movimiento con vehículos más rápidamente, el tráfico de vehículos y las tendencias se pueden monitorear fácilmente en áreas como estacionamientos o garajes. Los datos de detección de vehículos también están disponibles a través de MV Sense API, lo que permite integraciones y aplicaciones personalizadas. Consulte nuestro artículo de documentación de MV Object Detection para obtener más información sobre la detección de vehículos.

Campo de visión de la cámara en mapas

Completando la lista de nuevas características es una mejora para los mapas y planos de planta. En diciembre de 2018, agregamos cámaras a mapas y planos de planta. Ahora, el campo de visión de la cámara (FoV) se puede mostrar para una fácil referencia. La vista de la cámara MV32 (ojo de pez) se indica mediante un círculo, mientras que otros modelos tendrán un triángulo direccional. Simplemente use su mouse para colocar el FoV según sea necesario. Encontrará más información sobre cómo colocar cámaras en mapas y planos de planta en nuestro artículo de documentación, aquí.

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Landing on green with Meraki at the U.S. Open

For the 119th U.S. Open Championship at Pebble Beach, Cisco delivered the most connected U.S. Open in history. With over 200,000 expected in attendance, the USGA wanted to provide new ways for fans to consume and share content, both on-site and around the world. As 156 golfers and hundreds of thousands of fans walked the course, Meraki provided first of its kind, course-wide Wi-Fi. This included wireless for indoor, outdoor, and the first-ever test of Wi-Fi 6 access points at a major sporting event. 

“For the first time ever, thanks to Cisco, we had the confidence that our fans would be able to stay connected to all the action inside the ropes and with friends and family back home no matter where they went on the course.” – Amanda Weiner, Senior Director, Digital Media, USGA

Hundreds of access points were deployed in a matter of days to blanket an ultra high density environment, and close to 39TB of internet traffic was transferred during the event. 70,000 unique clients roamed across the four-mile long Pebble Beach course, during a nationally televised event with 32 million people watching.

Meraki Wi-Fi U.S. Open

While Meraki Access Points are deployed in stadiums, golf courses add several unique challenges. These include the size of the course, weather conditions, and variability of Wi-Fi hot zones. Physical mounting, directional antennas, and RF settings must be configured to ensure a seamless fan experience. In addition, high-density areas like the media center and U.S. Open merchandise tent needed to be carefully planned to ensure high performance. The onsite media center at the course required connectivity for over 2,000 daily unique clients.

Meraki dashboard at U.S. Open

With Meraki Wi-Fi as the first point of network access across the course, we were able to introduce a number of innovative features within our U.S. Open App and video boards to enhance the fan experience.” – Amanda Weiner, Senior Director, Digital Media, USGA

The visibility of the Meraki dashboard and simplicity of configuring Wi-Fi was critical in delivering the connected course. The team was able to detect hot zones, deploy and tune the entire network in under a week. New Wi-Fi 6 APs were installed to allow the high density merchandise pavilion on the course to transfer close to 3TB of data. To learn more, take a look at the on-demand webinar to understand their technology strategy, and learn how the Meraki Wi-Fi network helped deliver a connected fan experience. Watch now

Less presenting, more DOING at Cisco Smart Spaces Summit

This September in Richardson, TX, Cisco Product Managers, partners, and customers gathered to do more than talk about “what’s possible” with Cisco technologies: they brainstormed and executed code sprints across Cisco technologies to build better workplace experiences and business outcomes. 

This event was staged in three tracks; a Business Summit, Hackathon and Customer Summit. The Business Summit incorporated a Google Design Sprint fused with a Double Diamond Design Process. Teams from the Business Summit presented their strategic use cases at the Hackathon, kicking off the code creation and sprint cycles for their new solutions. Each new solution was then demoed at the Customer Summit, where enterprise customers also got to hear Cisco’s Workplace Transformation vision in presentations from Cisco Workplace Resources Team and Cisco IT. 

Our API product team was thrilled to facilitate and witness the engagement and excitement in this workshop, alongside other Cisco product teams!

“It’s amazing to see how fast even an entry-level developer can take an idea, pair it with cloud APIs and have a prototype built sometimes within minutes – it really validates our commitment to making Meraki APIs easy to use, allowing partners and customers the flexibility to enrich their workflows and workplace applications.” – API Product Manager, Tony Carmichael

“We just made Cisco history and a Cisco first! This was and outcome-based event focusing on Workplace Transformation and it was great having other Cisco BU’s like Meraki involved to stress the importance of cross architectures.” – Josh Reola, Business Development Manager, Webex Innovations 

A project team presents a strategic use case to Cisco leadership, including Amy Chang, EVP and General Manager, Cisco Collaboration

Some favorite example solutions from this week include:

Office Environments and Meeting Experiences:

Space Use

This solution used Meraki location and presence analytics to measure space use, capacity, and allocation / desk placement to report on employee productivity and space efficiency. IBM Watson AI was then integrated to process this data and make recommendations on how to better use office environments. 

Executive Greeting

This solution used the Meraki location API, WebEx API, Joan (e-ink signage), and the Phunware location & mobile SDK to automatically detect an executive, greet them via digital Joan signage, direct them to the meeting room, welcome them to the room, and auto-start their scheduled meeting. 

In Meeting Assistant 

In this solution, Meraki cameras were used during the meeting to identify attendee location in the room and suggest attendees move closer to the microphone (when appropriate) for a better experience.

This event further illustrates how easy it is to leverage Cisco Meraki technologies to build creative solutions for your office environment or customer workplaces:

“Some of the solutions being built here today are ingenious – super practical solutions for common situations that we just never imagined when building out these API endpoints. It’s so cool to see how people can creatively use these tools to address problems with easy, smart solutions, and I wish we had some of these ideas implemented at our office already!” – Shiyue Cheng, Solutions Architect, Meraki APIs

“Thank you and it was a pleasure for us all being there – we learnt so much in the few days and delivered a great deal. Fantastic event – well organized, amazing and great location.”  – Andrew Barnes, IBM Watson Internet of Things

“One of the most worthwhile events I’ve been to in a while. I discovered new capabilities of Cisco and ISVs [Independent Software Vendors] that I will immediately start using in our projects.”  – Jonathan McFarlane, Director and Co-founder, ACA Projects 

Check out the video from this event to hear more!

To get started building (or leverage what others have built!) check out the Meraki Developer Hub for full code libraries, sandboxed environments for testing, and real examples of pre-built solutions

 

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Giving back, where it counts

Three years ago we had a visit from Cisco’s Tactical Operations (TacOps) team, who brought their Emergency Response Vehicle to Meraki HQ and gave us a talk about their work. The visit was such a success that we decided to repeat it as part of a series of events for National Preparedness Month.

Meraki technology is used extensively by the TacOps group, predominantly in their Rapid Response Kits. As the name suggests, these are often required and deployed at short notice, where the ability to spin-up a network in minutes can make a real difference. Of course, simplicity and speed of deployment are hallmarks of the Meraki solution, and we’re proud to work alongside TacOps to help put the technology to good use. We’ve even had Merakians participating in their work, so it’s not just the APs and Security Appliances we’re supplying, but people-power as well!

     

While they were here, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to record a podcast episode with the TacOps team to share outside Meraki. It turned out to be a great discussion, covering all the important aspects of their work, and also providing guidance to those interested in getting involved with this kind of work.

The best way to enjoy the podcasts we’re creating, and be notified when a new episode is published, is to subscribe. Just search for ‘Meraki Unboxed’ in your favorite podcast app. Alternatively, here’s the TacOps episode, ready to go!

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