July 2019

Introduction to Cisco Spaces

Cisco Spaces is a powerful location services platform that leverages existing wireless and/or IoT (BLE) infrastructure to provide actionable insights and drive business outcomes through spaces built-in applications.

Insights from Cisco Spaces include:

  • Location Analytics that provides the capability to slice and dice location data by time or location and get a deeper visibility into behaviour of people that are connected to your network.

  • Right Now Reports provide real time count of the number of visitors (identified by devices connected to WiFi) within your physical space and how it compares to the historical average. Based on the authentication method in use, Right Now reports can detect multiple devices belonging to a person and count them as one visitor.

  • Business Insights gives the capability to measure how frequently people visit your physical location and how much time do they spend at your business locations. This data is benchmarked monthly across all locations. It also provides the capability to compare and benchmark the performance of your locations historically, by group or by industry.

  • Impact Analysis provides the capability to measure the impact of at-location events, campaigns and layout changes on behaviour. It is easy to create an Event using the tool and measure the impact of this event based on specific timeline such as Before, After and During the impact on time spent and frequency.

Cisco Spaces applications include customer experience management apps such as Captive Portals, Location Personas, and Engagemens that allows you to connect with your customers in real time when they are at your physical location. Additional applications also include an Asset Tracking app, a service manager to manage and configure IoT Services (Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)) as well as an open API framework in case you would like to extract this data and correlate it or integrate it into other enterprise systems.

Cisco Spaces provides a single dashboard interface to avail these multiple services through various location based technologies and intelligence. Cisco Spaces enables you to connect and engage with visitors at your physical business locations. It covers various verticals of business such as work spaces, retail, manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, education, financial services, and so on. The asset tracking application in Cisco Spaces provides solutions for monitoring and managing assets in your premises. Cisco Spaces offers a variety of toolkits, apps and APIs to turn these insights into actions.

Cisco Spaces through its partner program, offers businesses access to various different partner applications across verticals.

Cisco Spaces is compatible across Cisco Catalyst, Cisco AireOS and Cisco Meraki infrastructure.

In addition to the above services, the scope of Cisco Spaces apps have been extended to meet the business requirements that arise due to the global pandemic, COVID 19. Extensions have been built on existing applications and newer applications have been added to meet specific requirements for COVID 19. Extensions to apps such as Impact Analytics, Location analytics, Behaviour Metrics, and Right Now, allow you to analyse the impact of COVID 19 at your business locations as well as take appropriate actions. For example you can now create a rule based on device density at your location such that you will be automatically notified if the number of people at your location exceeds a specific count or density (people/area). The Location Analytics app now has the capability to share executive summary reports with your colleagues in the organization. Additionally, COVID-19 based trend analysis for individual/group locations can now be done using the Behaviour Metrics app, and you can compare specific business locations with that of the overall organisation as well as specific industry vertical.

Cisco Spaces has added a new Proximity Reporting App that provides a quick way to review the location history as well as device proximity history of any impacted device. One needs to just enter the user ID or MAC address, and a report for the device location in the building for the last 14 days along with the proximity of other devices is generated. This report can be exported or shared using the share feature. Similarly the Detect and Locate app now has the capability to cluster devices into specific counts to check and report on areas that may be violating social distancing guidelines.

The following are the major features of this release:

  • Provision to add and view the profile details of the Cisco Spaces user.

  • Added a new license type Extend in Cisco Spaces.

  • New App, Cisco Spaces: IoT Services that enables you to claim, manage, and monitor IoT devices using Cisco's wireless infrastructure.

  • Opt In support for the SMS with Link Verification authentication.

  • Enhanced the location hierarchy to display the More Actions menu when hover over a location name.

  • Provision to display controller IP address for access points.

  • Restricted the Total Area value that can be defined for the locations to avoid impractical entries.

  • Displays the Detect and Locate app under the SEE license.

  • Support to provide independent access rights to Map Services and DNASpaces using Roles.

  • Updated the Terms and Conditions for the Partner dashboard.

New Feature - July19

Cisco Spaces Dashboard

The following new features are added to the Cisco Spaces dashboard:

Cisco CMX-CMX Zone Support

Cisco Spaces dashboard now supports to import the CMX Zones added to Cisco CMX. CMX Zones can be added under floors.

CMX Zones will just have X,Y cordinates, and will not have any access points associated with them.

You can now import the CMX Zone manually using the Add CMX Zone option.

In the Cisco Spaces dashboard, in the Location Hierarchy window, a new option Add CMX Zone is now available under the More Actions menu for floors.

Map Services - CMX Zone Support

Cisco Spaces dashboard now provides CMX Zone support for Map Services. The CMX Zones added to Setup > Map Services can now be imported to Cisco Spaces location hierarchy.

CMX zones will just have X,Y cordinates, and will not have any access points associated with them.

For the existing locations in Cisco Spaces, if any CMX Zone was created in Map Services before this CMX Zone support, that CMX Zone will not be imported automatically during synchronzation. You have to manually add it to the location hierarchy using the Add CMX Zone option. Once added, all the updates done for this partucular CMX Zone will be synchronized automatically. All the CMX Zones added to Map Services after this CMX Zone support, will get imported automatically to Cisco Spaces location hierarchy.

In the Cisco Spaces dashboard, in the Location Hierarchy window, a new option Add CMX Zone is now available under the More Actions menu for floors.

Map Services for WLC Direct Connect

Cisco AireOS customers connected through Wireless Controller Cloud Connect can now import the locations using the Setup > Map Services option in the Cisco Spaces dashboard. This functionality enables you to import the locations in the same hierarchy structure (Campus-Building-Floor) in which they are defined in Cisco Prime. Previously, Cisco AireOS customers connected through Wireless Cloud Connect could import only the Wireless Controller IPs and access points as locations.

To use the Map Services feature, you have to download the required locations from the CMX Prime, and then import them to the Map Services option. Then, you can import these locations to the location hierarchy. To support this feature, in the Add a Wireless Network window, for WLC Direct Connect, two separate options Access Point Prefix and Map Services are now available.

Network Sync Server-CMX Zone Support

Cisco Spaces network sync server now supports the synchronization of CMX Zones. The support is available for CMX Zones added to Cisco CMX and Map Services.

Network Sync server will add, update, and delete the CMX Zones in the location heirarchy based on the changes made in Cisco CMX or Map Services.

However, for the existing locations in Cisco Spaces, if any CMX Zone was created in Map Services before this CMX Zone support, that CMX Zone will not be imported automatically during synchronization. You have to manually add it to the location hierarchy using the Add CMX Zone option. Once added, all the updates done for this particular CMX Zone will be synchronized automatically. Also, the CMX zones added previously from backend will get updated or deleted based on changes in Map Services.

Enhancements - July19

Cisco Spaces Dashboard

The following changes are made to the Cisco Spaces dashboard:

License-Exclude Security Appliances

During network Synchronization, the Security Appliances are now excluded when counting the access points for a Cisco Spaces license. Previously, security appliances were also counted along with access points, which did not allow for using all the permitted number of access points for a given license.

Behavior Metrics

The following changes are made to the Behavior Metrics report.

  • If there is no data for a particular chart or graph for the selected period, the graph will be dimmed, and the label "No data available for the selected time period" appears in the chart. Previously, the label "Report data unavailable" appeared in red if data was not available.

  • If there is no data for a sub brand defined, the graph for the sub brand appears as dimmed in the report. Also the label, "You have not created any brands” appears in the chart. Previously, the label "Report data unavailable" appeared in red if there is no data for a sub brand.

SSIDs- Support for Independent Deletions

Cisco Spaces now enables you to delete the SSIDs even if they are not deleted from the wireless network such as Meraki. This enhancement enables you to delete unwanted SSIDs during delay in network synchronization.

Issues

Issues describe unexpected behavior in the Cisco Spaces application. The Resolved Issues and Open Issues sections list the issues in this release.

The following information is provided for each issue:

  • Identifier: Each issue is assigned a unique identifier (ID) with a pattern of CSCxxNNNNN, where x is any letter (a-z) and N is any number (0-9). These IDs are frequently referenced in Cisco documentation, such as Security Advisories, Field Notices, and other Cisco support documents. Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) engineers or other Cisco staff can also provide you with the ID for a specific issue.

  • Description: A description of what is observed when the issue occurs.

This section contains the following topics:

Cisco Bug Search Tool

Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST) is a gateway to the Cisco bug-tracking system, which maintains a comprehensive list of defects and vulnerabilities in Cisco products and software. The BST provides you with detailed defect information about your products and software.

Open Issues

Table 1. Open Issues
Issue Identifier Issue Description

CSCvp46851

Tooltip had multiple pointer while placing cursor in the scatter plot charts.

Resolved Issues

Table 2. Resolved Issues
Issue Identifier Issue Description

CSCvp28767

LocationDistribution API response giving only one AP Mac when there are 2 APs with same names.

CSCvo00172

Cumulative Stats - Location Count and AP counts are mismatched

CSCvo19097

Visitor, Locupdate and Visits data is displayed as N/A after removing the location