Enhance hybrid work collaboration with Cisco DNA Middle AIOps for MS Groups and Webex

Hybrid work has made collaboration apps the crucial hyperlink between distant employees and workplace conferences. Cisco DNA Middle has new AIOps improvements for each Webex and Microsoft Groups that may proactively optimize the consumer expertise for these functions.  

The unprecedented shift to hybrid work has made collaboration instruments like Cisco Webex and Microsoft Groups crucial productiveness enablers for workplace operations. Along with this, many companions, distributors, and clients now choose video conferences over in-person conferences since a lot of their employees could also be working remotely. Companies now rely upon collaboration software program for many of their communications, each inside and exterior, and thus they require high efficiency and absolute reliability from these techniques. Which means that troubleshooting collaboration software efficiency points have turn into a high precedence for IT. The newest Cisco DNA Middle launch delivers AIOps improvements that permit IT groups to shortly troubleshoot community points which can be affecting the efficiency of Webex and MS Groups. Extra importantly, additionally they present instruments to proactively optimize the community in areas the place these apps are struggling, so groups can maintain forward of points as a substitute of chasing them.

The Cisco DNA Middle Utility Expertise Dashboard

It’s possible you’ll already know that Cisco DNA Middle has a dashboard devoted to software expertise, which follows crucial functions and the minimal parameters acceptable for KPIs. Customers can customise the apps and parameters, however collaboration apps, together with Webex and MS Groups, are arrange as crucial by default.

The highest graph exhibits the final 24 hours of total software well being, and this may be prolonged as much as 14 days, do you have to need to troubleshoot a particular occasion previously. Under this graph, you may see the appliance utilization of all of the apps being tracked. Under that (not proven) is an inventory of every particular person software with a hyperlink to its 360 dashboards.

The Microsoft Groups 360 dashboard (proven above) exhibits the appliance utilization in knowledge, minutes, and shoppers, in addition to total well being. On the backside of the display are any points (none proven) in MS Groups efficiency. Any deviation in efficiency will lead to an alert within the points part right here and on the principle DNA Middle Assurance dashboard. Clients utilizing ITSM or incident monitoring software program, comparable 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 Middle is utilizing three key sections of the analytics platform to detect software points, immediately find and supply, discover the foundation trigger, and remediate the difficulty.

1. The Webex 360 dashboard in Determine 3 above is displaying a Webex alert for top 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.

   

2. 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 knowledge metrics like packet loss, jitter, media bit fee, and many others. In Determine 4 beneath, I can see that I’ve packet loss within the community (the blue line). The packet loss is just not that large, in reality solely 5%, but it surely is sufficient to have induced a small high quality drawback on this Webex name. The road above, in purple, exhibits the appliance packet loss, which is zero. This tells me that my high quality drawback 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 difficulty. I’ll present you the way this works additional down.
3. Since I do know the issue is on my native campus, let’s click on straight on the difficulty hyperlink to see the place the issue is and the best way to resolve it. In Determine 5 beneath you may see the remediation web page for this specific subject: “Community Latency for Utility ‘WebEx’ is Above the Threshold Worth of 262ms.” Discover the “AI” in a field subsequent to the difficulty identify. This means that the issue was recognized within the DNA Middle AI-Community Analytics cloud. In case you are within the precise root trigger evaluation, take a look at the graph below “Community Causes.” Discover the inexperienced space alongside the graph, which represents the appropriate norm for throughput throughout this time of day on this space of my community. That is the “baseline” which is created by the DNA Middle machine studying engine. The blue line represents the precise throughput, and you’ll see that this blue line has dropped beneath the inexperienced space, which is why the alert was triggered. The alert is highlighted in pink. Under this space, we see the steered actions the place we’re being suggested that further 5 GHz Wi-Fi protection is beneficial at this location.

The very first thing I’d wish to level out is that for the IT particular person attending to this subject, the method is way shorter than my clarification makes it appear. Normally, when an alert is available in, the admin will click on straight on the alert, after which go instantly to the steered remediation. It’s quick and easy! The opposite 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. That is proactive administration at its finest. I can now take a look at the easiest way to extend capability on this space with out an emergency hanging over my head.

Troubleshooting Utility points outdoors of the campus with ThousandEyes

In level 1 above I discussed that if this drawback have been outdoors of my native community, I might launch ThousandEyes to troubleshoot the difficulty. Let’s check out what that appears like. In Determine 6 beneath you may see my software well being dashboard, and proper above my Webex alert, there’s a Salesforce itemizing. Discover the ThousandEyes brand proper beneath the phrase Salesforce. This can be a hyperlink that may launch the ThousandEyes dashboard, proper from inside DNA Middle, in order that I can troubleshoot the Salesforce subject within the WAN, knowledge heart, and cloud. And in case you didn’t know, ThousandEyes is included along with your Cisco DNA Benefit 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 data on ThousandEyes in Cisco DNA Middle take a look at the weblog “Higher Collectively: Cisco DNA Middle and ThousandEyes.”

When collaboration apps present a flawless communication expertise for everybody, location is not a barrier to crew productiveness. Companies know this and have made giant investments in collaboration software program for his or her hybrid workforce. However 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 situated within the cloud and employees log in from wherever, offering the optimum collaboration expertise has turn into a herculean endeavor. Let Cisco DNA Middle do the heaving lifting and mean you can carry on high of your collaboration expertise and proactively optimize your community within the course of.

Get all of the technical particulars on Utility Expertise at Cisco DNA Middle

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