Hybrid work has made collaboration apps the crucial hyperlink between distant staff and workplace conferences. Cisco DNA Center has new AIOps improvements for each Webex and Microsoft Teams that may proactively optimize the person expertise for these functions.
The unprecedented shift to hybrid work has made collaboration instruments like Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams crucial productiveness enablers for workplace operations. In addition to this, many companions, distributors, and clients now favor video conferences over in-person conferences since a lot of their employees could also be working remotely. Businesses now rely upon collaboration software program for many of their communications, each inner and exterior, and thus they require high efficiency and absolute reliability from these methods. This signifies that troubleshooting collaboration software efficiency points have grow to be a high precedence for IT. The newest Cisco DNA Center launch delivers AIOps improvements that permit IT groups to rapidly troubleshoot community points which might be affecting the efficiency of Webex and MS Teams. More importantly, in addition they present instruments to proactively optimize the community in areas the place these apps are struggling, so groups can preserve forward of points as an alternative of chasing them.
The Cisco DNA Center Application Experience Dashboard
You could already know that Cisco DNA Center has a dashboard devoted to software expertise, which follows crucial functions and the minimal parameters acceptable for KPIs. Users can customise the apps and parameters, however collaboration apps, together with Webex and MS Teams, are arrange as crucial by default.
The high graph reveals the final 24 hours of total software well being, and this may be prolonged as much as 14 days, must you need to troubleshoot a particular occasion up to now. Below this graph, you’ll be able to see the applying utilization of all of the apps being tracked. Below that (not proven) is a list of every particular person software with a hyperlink to its 360 dashboards.
The Microsoft Teams 360 dashboard (proven above) reveals the applying utilization in information, minutes, and shoppers, in addition to total well being. At the underside of the display are any points (none proven) in MS Teams efficiency. Any deviation in efficiency will end in an alert within the points part right here and on the principle DNA Center Assurance dashboard. Customers utilizing ITSM or incident monitoring software program, similar to ServiceNow or PagerDuty, can use Cisco’s turn-key API templates to export these notifications to that platform and obtain alerts there as nicely.
Troubleshooting a Webex efficiency alert
Cisco DNA Center is utilizing three key sections of the analytics platform to detect software points, immediately find and supply, discover the basis trigger, and remediate the problem.
- The Webex 360 dashboard in Figure 3 above is exhibiting a Webex alert for prime latency. I can click on on the alert hyperlink to resolve, however let’s scroll down on the web page and see what triggered this.
Figure 4: The packet loss that brought on this Webex alert. - The determine above is a screenshot taken from additional down on the identical Webex 360 dashboard. the decision metrics like audio high quality, video high quality, and share high quality, in addition to information metrics like packet loss, jitter, media bit charge, and many others. In Figure 4 under, I can see that I’ve packet loss within the community (the blue line). The packet loss shouldn’t be that large, in actual fact solely 5%, nevertheless it is sufficient to have brought on a small high quality downside on this Webex name. The line above, in purple, reveals the applying packet loss, which is zero. This tells me that my high quality downside is within the native community. If the packet loss was within the software, this is able to point out that the issue is outdoors of the campus community, and I’d use Cisco ThousandEyes to find the problem. I’ll present you ways this works additional down.
- Since I do know the issue is on my native campus, let’s click on immediately on the problem hyperlink to see the place the issue is and how you can resolve it. In Figure 5 under you’ll be able to see the remediation web page for this explicit difficulty: “Network Latency for Application ‘WebEx’ is Above the Threshold Value of 262ms.” Notice the “AI” in a field subsequent to the problem title. This signifies that the issue was identified within the DNA Center AI-Network Analytics cloud. If you have an interest within the precise root trigger evaluation, take a look at the graph underneath “Network Causes.” Notice the inexperienced space alongside the graph, which represents the appropriate norm for throughput throughout this time of day on this space of my community. This is the “baseline” which is created by the DNA Center machine studying engine. The blue line represents the precise throughput, and you’ll see that this blue line has dropped under the inexperienced space, which is why the alert was triggered. The alert is highlighted in purple. Below this space, we see the prompt actions the place we’re being suggested that further 5 GHz Wi-Fi protection is really helpful at this location.
The very first thing I’d wish to level out is that for the IT particular person attending to this difficulty, the method is far shorter than my clarification makes it appear. Usually, when an alert is available in, the admin will click on immediately on the alert, after which go instantly to the prompt remediation. It’s quick and easy! The different attention-grabbing level is that the smallest packet loss (5%) throughout a Webex name has triggered an alert that identified that we’re low on Wi-Fi capability on this space. This is proactive administration at its finest. I can now take a look at one of the simplest ways to extend capability on this space with out an emergency hanging over my head.
Troubleshooting Application points outdoors of the campus with ThousandEyes
In level 1 above I discussed that if this downside had been outdoors of my native community, I may launch ThousandEyes to troubleshoot the problem. Let’s check out what that appears like. In Figure 6 under you’ll be able to see my software well being dashboard, and proper above my Webex alert, there’s a Salesforce itemizing. Notice the ThousandEyes emblem proper under the phrase Salesforce. This is a hyperlink that may launch the ThousandEyes dashboard, proper from inside DNA Center, in order that I can troubleshoot the Salesforce difficulty within the WAN, information heart, and cloud. And in case you didn’t know, ThousandEyes is included along with your Cisco DNA Advantage license. So, in case you are utilizing software expertise, you’ll at all times have ThousandEyes out there for points outdoors of the native community. For extra info on ThousandEyes in Cisco DNA Center take a look at the weblog “Better Together: Cisco DNA Center and ThousandEyes.”
When collaboration apps present a flawless communication expertise for everybody, location is now not a barrier to workforce productiveness. Businesses know this and have made giant investments in collaboration software program for his or her hybrid workforce. But even a superb software program product can not ship high quality audio and video when the IP community it runs on is defective. Now these software servers are positioned within the cloud and staff log in from anyplace, offering the optimum collaboration expertise has grow to be a herculean endeavor. Let Cisco DNA Center do the heaving lifting and can help you carry on high of your collaboration expertise and proactively optimize your community within the course of.
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