Generate FMC Reports for VPN Users

Introduction

This document describes how to generate reports which provide at-a-glance views of consolidated information about VPN users, including the current status of users, device types, client OS, client applications, and duration of connections on the Firepower Management Center.

Prerequisites

Requirements

Cisco recommends that you have the knowledge of these topics:

• Cisco Firepower Threat Defence (FTD)
• Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC)
• Anyconnect Secure Mobility Client 

Components Used

The information in this document is based on these software versions:

• Cisco FMC for VMware with version 7.x
• AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client 4.x

The information in this document was created from the devices in a specific lab environment. All of the devices used in this document started with a cleared (default) configuration. If your network is live, ensure that you understand the potential impact of any command.

Background Information

The Firepower System provides a flexible reporting system that allows you to quickly and easily generate reports on your Firepower Management Center. You can also design your custom reports from scratch. A report is a document file formatted in PDF, HTML, or CSV with the content you want to communicate while a report template specifies the data searches and formats for the report and its sections. The Firepower System includes a powerful report designer that automates the design of report templates. You can include field parameters like authentication type, connection duration and so on in a template to expand its usefulness.

Remote access VPNs provide secure connections for remote users, such as mobile users or telecommuters. Monitoring these connections provides important indicators of connection and user session performance at a glance. You must be an Admin user in a leaf domain to perform this task. The Firepower System monitoring capabilities enable you to determine quickly whether remote access VPN problems exist and you can then apply this knowledge and use your network management tools to reduce or eliminate problems for your network and users.

Configure

Configurations

Step 1. Select  Overview > Dashboards > Reporting > Report Templates  and click on  Create Report Template as shown in the image.

Create Report Template

Step 2. Enter a name for the template in the  Report Title  field as shown in the image.

Report Title

Step 3. Select  Add Table View from the set of views available on the right side. You can also use charts such as bar charts, line charts, pie charts, and so on as per your requirements.

Add Table View

Step 4. Enter a title for the section in the  Report Section Title  field. Here,  Table View of Events  and  Users  table views have been added as shown in the image.

Title for Report Section

Step 5. Select  User Activity  under the Table drop-down menu as shown in the image.

Select User Activity

Step 6. Choose a Preset value if required, otherwise, keep it as  None .

Add a Preset Value

Step 7. Select the  Table View  as the output format as shown in the image.

Table View as Output Format

Step 8. (Optional) From the search menu, select the attributes you want to use to constrain the report. Select  None if you do not want to enforce any search constraints.

Search Constraints

Step 9. Select the time frame for which you want to generate the report. Click on  Last hour  and a new pop-up window will open with options of 1 hour, 6 hours, 1 day, 1 month, and so on as shown in the image.

Select Time Frame

Add TimeFrame

Step 10. To record the specific number of results, provide any value between the range of 1 - 400000 in  Maximum Results  field.

Maximum Results to display

Step 11. Click on the  Save  button at the top of the report sections for the template to be ready for use. 

Save Report

Generate Report

Once you create and customize your report template, you are ready to generate the report. There are different output formats like HTML, PDF or CSV to view the user data.

Note: For PDF reports, file names using Unicode (UTF-8) characters are not supported. 

Procedure

Step 1. Select  Overview > Reporting  and click on  Report Templates .

Step 2. Click on the  Generate Report  icon next to the template that you have configured as shown in the image.

Generate Reports View

Step 3. Enter a new File Name. This name is used to save the report. If you do not enter a new name, the system uses the default name specified in the report template.

Add Filename

Step 4. Choose the output format for the report by clicking: HTML, PDF, or CSV.

Select File Output Format

Step 5. (Optional) Change the global time frame for the report from "Time Window". This gets ignored if "Inherit Time Window" is not used in the report template.

Note: Setting the global time window affects the content of individual report sections only if they are configured to inherit the global setting.

Step 6. (Optional) If the generated report has to be delivered via email, configure a "Relay Host" on the FMC.

Step 7. Click on  Generate  and files will be available for download under "Reports". For CSV format, a zip folder will be created with each section of the template as a separate file.

Generate Report

Report Generated

Result

This section provides the information of the report generated for the VPN user in a PDF format.

View Generated Reports