Enterprise Operations Console - 2020.2 - A New Identity
As a part of the 2020.2 releases we are very excited to announce some awesome improvements to the Enterprise Operations Console! These changes provide some serious power for visualizing your data in EOC while also breaking new ground on some game changing management functionality.
Orion Maps in EOC
For those of you familiar with the web based Orion Maps, this is quickly becoming the new alternative to Network Atlas and is now available in EOC! With the updated feature set you have a wide variety of options for transforming data into unique representations of your environment.
In the 2020.2 release of EOC you have the ability to either create new maps from EOC directly, or use widgets to show off maps already generated from your remote instances. When accessing the Orion Maps Management view you may notice a few changes to specifically help support the Enterprise Operations Console. For example, multiple filters have been added that allow you to toggle between users and/ or sites depending upon the map you are trying to access.
For a detailed review of Orion Maps - please check out my post: Orion Platform 2020.2 - An Orion Map to Success!
Modern Dashboards in EOC
The first version of Modern Dashboards are also making their debut in this release. tony.johnson and team did an awesome job to bring this first version to life, and they also took the time to make sure it played nice with EOC!
For details check out Tony's post - Orion Platform 2020.2 - Modern Dashboards
Be mindful there are slight nuances between SWQL queries in EOC compared to the same query you would write for a single Orion instance, but these typically involve a reference to a specific site in most cases. I had the opportunity to play with some of this in my lab and built a quick dashboard myself.
Centralized Custom Property Management from EOC
Similar to Clark Kent transitioning to a more heroic figure, EOC is also making a drastic transformation. Moving beyond a basic roll up of data, we are breaking new ground and delivering the first version of Custom Property Management within EOC. For those of you unaware, custom properties are the fuel that feed alerting, reporting, and customization's throughout the Orion Platform.
To say these are heavily used components would be an understatement, and for those of you running multiple instances, the overhead of managing these critical attributes can be painful. Tasks such as validating whether a custom property exists on a particular instance, or just simply editing/ adding a new value means you are forced to jump from console to console to compare or make these changes. The more sites you are responsible for the more overhead you have.
With the hope of minimizing that overhead, Custom Property Management from EOC was designed. Accessible through the same means in which you would normally access Custom Property Management from a single instance, EOC users will find this under Settings, All Settings, Node & Group Management, and Manage Custom Properties.
When clicking on this link, you will see an all new re-vamped version of the Custom Property Management Console. The goal was to avoid deviating from what works well today, but ensure we made improvements and added value where it made sense. As you will see below, it's some of the little things that immediately stand out. Like actually taking advantage of the screen real estate, or finally being able to utilize some filters versus a single "group by" option.
A couple other standouts specific to EOC are the addition of the Source and Site(s) columns. When you initially log into this page, obviously any custom properties that exist at each of the attached sites will be visible. For example, you can see City is repeated 3 times for each of my 3 instances attached to this EOC. This should demonstrate how the filters can quickly become valuable but also that EOC differentiates these similar properties by the source or the instance from which it came from.
The Site(s) column will for the most part display a 1of X indicating that this property is associated to 1 out of x instances in the EOC environment but more on that in a bit.
The beauty of this entire function however, is that you have the ability to perform "push" and "pull" capabilities from a single location. Want to add some more values underneath the City for Site 1, go ahead. Want to check what the Site 2 local administrator added underneath City there, easy.
You also have the option to create custom properties from EOC. Don't want to manage 3 separate City properties individually? Create a global property and push that to each of the sites. By clicking the Add button, you get taken to a simplified workflow where you select the Entity type and properties no different than the original Custom Property Manager.
Create drop-downs, select how the property will be used, and even specify the site or sites you wish to push this property too.
Note: it is beneficial for those of you running EOC 2020.2 to ensure your remote instances are also on 2020.2. If a site is not on 2020.2, it cannot be consolidated into a single global property. For example, my Test Lab 2 is actually a NAM deployment running 2019.4. Lets see what happens when I push out this property to all 3 sites.
As you can see in the screenshot below, it forced the 2019.4 to be an isolated property by itself, but does show that the other two locations were consolidated to a single Custom Property. Under the Site(s) column it confirms that 2 of 3 sites now have the Global_City property.
If I go and look at one of those sites from the local Custom Property Manager, this is what that might look like.
And like magic!
Now the Assign Values scene received the same treatment, and one of the most important aspects at this stage is being able to refine that list of entities in which you want to assign your custom properties too. Again, it was rather difficult before. A single "Group By" just doesn't cut it, and it can be frustrating when you are needing to be ultra selective.
In the new EOC Custom Property Manager, Assign Values has the option to use multiple filters. We will use the Global City property we just created, and by clicking the 3 dots at the top of the Filters Panel, you have the option to select from a list of any property associated to that entity type. In the example below, Machine Type was added to specify a certain set of devices.
In the following step, we selected the check boxes for the ALTEREGO & PM Lab sites, as well as the specific 2811's, 2821's, 2960's, and ASA's. We will perform a bulk assignment, and can call this a wrap.
Check this out for yourselves, and we hope you are as excited to see this change as we are to bring it to you. Obviously we did not get all aspects of the existing Custom Property Editor into this release, so functions such as import and export just aren't there yet. Stay tuned for more as we hope to incorporate those functions in the future.
We are anxious to hear your feedback on all of these topics and more! Don't forget to check out, A Gateway to Your Fastest Upgrade Ever, and Enhanced Volume Status along with the posts mentioned above. We have packed a lot of great updates into this release and hope they are truly helpful to you and your organization.