Cisco Workflows - Enhancing Cisco Catalyst Center Automation

Oh Hello, everyone, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. Thank you for joining this expert insight series webinar on.00:00Cisco workflows.00:20Enhancing Cisco Catalyst Center automation. My name is Alex and I'm gonna present this session. With me, I have Lorenzo opened with a panelist who will try to moderate your questions if you have issues he can also try to.00:21Take care of them. A disclaimer before we start, as always, please have in mind that what you hear today is best practices from our side best recommended practices from, from Cisco.00:41It's not something that we force you to do or follow. If you want to follow, if you want to go deeper feel free to contact us for more information but business decision technical decision, the design, all these are are yours.00:58Regarding the schedule, we had the session last week mastering AI tools in Cisco Catalyst Center and the recording as with all the recordings from previous sessions will be in the community page, CS dot.01:19That's EIS-cat C today of course we have the Cisco workflows and with that we finished the execision and we hope that we see you again in September or early October with.01:39Regarding logistics, you are muted. If you have any questions, please post them in the Q and A panel, not in chat, in Q and A panel. You can find the three dots bottom right corner and in there it's the Q and A.02:01And you can send your questions. We will try to answer them if we cannot, if we don't, then we will respond offline by email so you will have your answers in any way.02:17For any technical difficulties, please send a direct chat message and we will see what we can do. From a agenda's perspective, we will see what these Cisco workflows, what's the cost, the basics and workflows.02:34In action. This session is.02:54Someone could say that it's like a workshop, we will have lots of demos and could be hands on eh but of course it's a webinar, so it maybe shorter. It will be the basics. If you want to go deeper, we are happy to do it together.02:58You can always request a one on one session in the post webinar survey.03:19Before we start, let me remind you Cisco IT, the new platform for asset management, the evolution, if you like for from six cloud. If you have not been onboarded, please do it. You will see lots of improvements, lots of.03:26AI, if.03:46You want help again, we are here to support you. There are two different paths. If you had six cloud, you can migrate. If not, if you are the 1st if you are going to use this asset management tool for the 1st time, you can create.03:48Create a Cisco IT account and then with a contractor too, you can have access and you can see and you can navigate and find out what is the offer there.04:08Okay, last week, mastering AI in Cisco Catalyst Center, we saw the evolution of AI in Catalyst Center. We saw the different tools that we have in Catalyst Center and they use AI to provide insights including.04:21The AI RRM including assurance site analytics, the issues based on AI, the AI driven issues and a lot more.04:41We also saw the AI assistant which can be found in 23711 and we expect the new version, the three.X version of catalyst center to see AI assistant in there. And during that the.04:54We show how we can get information without going through the different dashboards we how we get information by asking in a natural language, e.g., can you provide me the sites with low health scores and we could.05:14See the results there. We did mention and please have that in mind that AI assistant for now cannot modify the network.05:34And I say keep that in mind be because it's important for today's session. Finally, we saw the MCP and the host server communic communication, the servers and how we can use the MCP server in order.05:44To connect, catalyst center with agents and so on. But from last.06:04Weeks session I would like to keep the AI assistant which can be found in Meraki and Catalyst Center and in other Cisco platforms as well. So what is Cisco workflows? We will start with a demo and in the demo.06:12We have the the role of a network engineer, a network engineer who manages a hybrid network. We have catalyst center and we also have Meraki. Wireless in both networks both Catalyst Center and.06:32We have some ssids, we have our networks and we want to create an SSID in both networks. So a unified wireless network service.06:53In catalyst center and Meraki. And if I start the video, I see that I have my three ssids in catalyst center. If I go to Meraki, I have an unconfigured SSID available for what I want to do.07:04And in Meraki I actually, ok, I need to get customed to the control of the video. So in Meraki dashboard, I use AI assistant.07:24And I use a system to ask for an automation that deploys a unified wireless network service on both Meraki and Catalyst Center. Before the AI error, we should go to catalyst center, create an SSID, then go to Meraki, create the.07:44SSID there and so on. Now we are trying something in AI assistant. We just ask for it.08:04And we are waiting for a response, and the response is that the AI assistant has found a workflow and it asks for our confirmation if we want to proceed with that workflow. What that workflow would do, it will do is create an analyze.08:12Meraki and catalyst center networks and generate the combined Meraki and catalyst center output report.08:32So we confirmed that we want to proceed with this workflow. We just reply yes and then the AI assistant will ask us for some variables, some parameters like the name the.08:42The pass key encryption mode and so on. These are important of course because we talk about the creation of a new SSID.09:01We provide the information in the form that you see and once this is done, we have the process continue. Now, this is what I was talking about just minutes ago.09:12AI assistant will now, create something in our network. We'll modify our catalyst center and Meraki networks, ok? Now, if I click yes, again, it asks for confirmation, we get the summary and it asks for confirmation. We confirm.09:31And, we will see that in in a minute or two, it will create those two ssids in both platforms and this is the summary and the recommendation.09:51For our next steps and so on. We see everything that has been done, the results, and this is in a form of of a report if you like. And I can extract this report and so on, but this is not this is out of scope for today's session. So if I go to.10:10Meraki can refresh and also catalyst center and refresh. I will see the new the new ssids in both platforms. This is the marketing SSID in Meraki and this is the marketing SSID in catalyst center.10:29Okay, so what I've done, I used AI assistant to create ssids. Now, this is not entirely correct because I used AI assistant to trigger.10:50The workflow that created the ssids. AI assistant found the workflow and used that workflow to do something. It didn't create it on its own, ok? And this is what we will see today. The workflows that we can use.11:06Either within AI assistant or outside to do things in an automated way, in catalyst center, in Meraki and many many other platforms. One thing to note is that the workflows we have in catalyst center.11:24Are not the workflows we will see today. So in catalyst center we we have this menu workflows and if we, go to the menu we have a set of workflows.11:44Version by version we get more and more. These are sets of actions, sets of activities if you like that help you e.g. replace a device or refresh an access point, but we cannot change the set of actions or activities. These are set, preset if you like.12:01And help us follow those actions.12:21In a, in a sequence. What we will see today is completely different and in fact, it's outside catalyst center although it has to do with catalyst center as well as Meraki and other platforms, as I said.12:25So what is Cisco workflows? It's cloud hosted automation in Meraki cloud. And, the fact that it is in Meraki Cloud doesn't mean that it's for Meraki only. You can, we can use workflows for many targets.12:41It is very easy to use. We will see that we can create and edit workflows by just drag dragging and dropping blocks and typing some variables. We have pre built workflows from Cisco.13:01From partners, from community and we can also create our own.13:21And these workflows have to do with Cisco but also 3rd party and even AI integrations. So the the scope is huge I'd say, and it's not only for Meraki because we have it hosted in the Meraki cloud.13:27Flexible consumption, as I said, we have pre built managed by Cisco or by partners. We'll see that in a bit. We can get those pre built workflows and modify them to.13:44Fit our specific needs. E.g., we have a workflow for a firewall and we want to modify a couple of actions so we can get the Cisco managed workflow, we can unlock it, we can edit.14:00And then we can create our own, or we can even create our automation from scratch, custom automation from scratch. And remember, NO code is something that you will see in here today quite a lot.14:19Oh. The environment we will see a demo as well of course live demo, but, the automation in the Meraki dashboard has two main sections.14:38Exchange and workplace. The exchange is where we find all the pre built workflows and you can see that there are quite a lot and they are increasing, the number is increasing week by week.14:58Why? Because.15:18Many people can create workflows, send them to exchange. Cisco will validate them, validate them and publish them to exchange. So this is the place where we can find the workflows that exist in, in exchange. We then have the work.15:20Workspace, this is where we work on the workflows, we have the list of our own installed and we can click on them, we can edit them, modify them, and so on. So this is 2nd area if you like and this is where we do all the.15:39All the jobs. And within the workspace, we have the workflow editor where as we will see we have all the boxes and we move the boxes, drag and drop, we provide variables, we provide inputs, outputs, and so on and we.15:59Finalize the workflows, validate them, run them, and so on. Now, as I said, workflows are not just for Meraki. These are the targets or at least some of the targets. You see here Catalyst Center, you see catalyst.16:20As the one with Cisco ICE.16:39A Meraki endpoint HTTP endpoint, a generic endpoint, anything that has or can be pinked by HTTP. We can use it POP3 SMTP, all sorts of things. These are the targets for our workflows, ok?16:42And for today's demo, we will use Meraki because it's easier, but we also have some recorded demos for catalyst center. As I said, you can have many targets as you see. Even ServiceNow we have integration with ServiceNow.17:01And we can use that as well. How do we run a workflow? Various ways manually through the automation/workspace environment we can run it by APIs, we can schedule a workflow to.17:20Done. We can have a webhook triggering a workflow or we, as we saw, we can run a workflow within the AI assistant.17:40The most important thing to remember for workflows and in regards with AI is that workflows are deterministic, ok? So if we run a workflow 1000 times, 1000 times we will get the same result.17:53If we have, let's say or even AI assistant in there if we ask something the 1st time we may get a solution 2nd time solution maybe different, the agent may learn from this and may modify.18:14The 3rd time and so on with the Cisco workflows.18:33We have the same result NO matter how many times we run the workflow, ok? So it's deterministic deterministic, and this is something that is very important especially for network engineers. If I want to create an SSID, I will have this SSID created or I.18:37We will have an error message saying that this is his ID exists or whatever, and this will happen.18:57Every time we run the the workflow. Question that I think all of us ask what is the cost and the cost for now and I hope for for the future, the cost is zero. It doesn't cost anything.19:06For you to use Cisco workflows and it doesn't cost anything to have access to Meraki dashboard where you have.19:26The Cisco workflows, the automation section. And to show you this, I have another recorded demo. So I am gonna use I'm gonna create an account. I don't have an account and I just use an email.19:36So I go to dashboard.Meraki.com, create an account, I choose my region, Europe and then I enter the details, email, 1st, name passwords, stuff like that.19:57So I create a Meraki account. Now, what happens next is you get two emails. The 1st one is a verification code. 2nd one is to verify your email, but you do get two emails at the email that you.20:14Provided and then you use that email.20:34To log in the password that we had. Here is the 1st screen when you create an account in Meraki. You are prompted to create or to register Meraki devices and create networks and stuff. You don't need to go through that. You will.20:37Already see the automation tab on the left hand side, so you can skip that process. You can click next or you can even click anywhere in the screen and it will disappear. What you want to do is you want to go to the automation tab and.20:57But here is where you see all the.21:17Sections that are available for us. As you saw, NO licenses, NO cost, nothing needed you can do it once we finish and you can create your account and you can start playing with automo.21:21And workflows.21:40Okay. All right, so let's see the basics. 1st of all, we usually have resources at the end but I want to show you that there is a lot of.21:42Information support if you want to play with the workflows. So, there is a YouTube playlist with eleven videos from seven to 27 or 30 min on different aspects. We start with a tool and.22:00With the hello web service and we finish with AI LLM actions in workflows or even managing GitHub repositories in a workflow. These are not dedicated to these are learning samples for.22:21Or Cisco workflows and you can find them in YouTube. You can also find information in exchange. We will see that in a second, but in exchange, if you select getting started, you get the workflows that we use in.22:41Via YouTube as well.23:00So, you can install them and you can modify them, you can go through them and so on. Okay, so these two are resources and of course there is a lot of documentation happy to send you anything you like if you are interested in exploring our workflow.23:02The automation menu, this is the dashboard. So in automation we have the workflows section and in here we have the exchange and workspace. As I mentioned, these are the most important.23:22Bits of this workflows section in monitoring, we can see the runs for the different workspaces and any errors we had and so on. And the rest are variables rules and the targets in the targets you can create.23:39Like your targets for your workflows, and.23:58If it's a Meraki one, it's easy. If it's a catalyst center, there is a small cats there. We need to create a small VM if we want, if we don't want to expose catalyst center to the internet, that VM will talk to Catalyst Center and also.24:03The Meraki dashboard and play the intermediate role there, but this is also done through the dashboard so you don't need to worry about that.24:23So automation and the rest of the the section. Now, in exchange, we have the workflows, we will see them in in a bit. In workspace, we have our workflows, the ones that we installed on.24:35The ones that we created.24:54And once we have the work flow editor, we will see activities, logic, atomics, and workflows. These are the the blocks that we have in the workflow editor and these are the blocks that we use to create the workflows.24:57Activities. Basically these handle operations like API requests, JSON parsing the requests, everything that we do in in there and you have them on the menu categorized and you see that.25:18We have lots of categories and that's why we should use the search option because if I open and I will in a bit category you will see subsections and then activities and so on. So activities are, if you like the calls or the actions.25:38That we do in in a workflow.25:58We can have tables and operations with tables for structured data and we use these in in a loop. We have tasks where we use for user input and we have two different types, approvals or prompts.26:00A user prompt means that we want to provide something before the workflow continues and approval means that someone else will get the message to approve and then the workflow will continue. And we can also execute python scripts, but we won't go that far today.26:20But we do have this option and it's something that it's it's really interesting I'd say for those who are familiar with Python scripts. Now, before we continue, let's review the.26:39Environment so we don't have.26:59Everything at once. So this is the login to dashboard. As you see I have one network, keep that in mind. We will need that in a bit. I want the automation and in here I have the exchange, the workspace and the rest of.27:02The options. Let's quickly review the exchange.27:22So, what we get is, the popular or all the workflows. I have the filters over here and in the integration.27:29I have the getting started, the one that contains the workflows for you to start with the YouTube videos, but I can also filter by catalyst center, by Meraki or what is of interest to me, ok? I have installed four.27:44So these are the four that I have selected in the past from the exchange and if I want to submit then I will create my own. I will export it and I will submit it from this from this page. Now.28:042nd interesting area is the workspace, and this is where we will focus today.28:24In workspace, we have the workflows that we have created that we have installed that we have modified and again I have the filters so categorized by catalyst.28:33Sender and so on. I have the status created failed or anything else and I also have the atomics see that in a bit.28:53What what is the atomics tab, ok? And if I go to this workflow, the review environment, it's a blank workflow. I created for us to see the environment of the editor.29:06These are the actions and you see that e.g. for we have subsections and then we have the blocks that we can use. We have activities, we have logic, workflows and more of those in in a bit. But this is.29:27How it looks and if we go back to the.29:47Presentation if we choose one activity, we get the properties on the right hand side. Here we need to provide the display name and the description.29:54The display name is mandatory, the description is optional but it's more than best practices to have a description, a meaningful description because this is gonna be used by AI assistant or any other agent.30:07To summarize actions for your workflow and provide the reports and so on. So display name and the description we also have the activity timeout. Again, this is required. Default is 180 s, you can change it if you want.30:25Continue workflow execution failure is an option which we usually tick when we want to, to check that everything went well or not. So we have this option here and.30:472nd option that again helps us in debugging is skip activity execution. So if I have lots of workflows, then I can use this one if I know that the specific workflow works well and I want to skip the execution for.31:05For the biking purposes.31:25The target of the, activity and the workflow is where the actions will take place. So we can have one target for the workflow or we can have targets different.31:26Targets for activities.31:46Okay, and this is where we choose what where things will happen, ok? Now 2nd tab, the 1st tab is the activities, 2nd tab is the logic and here we have the two loops for.31:48Needs.32:08Activity loop and while loop. The 1st one is a loop that runs on a specific array items of the RA, so if I want to run something four times, I provide an array from one to four or from zero to three and.32:09Then this looks four times taking the.32:29The values that I provided. The while loop is something similar but we don't have a certain number of repetitions. We have a condition and the loop executes based on that condition. We have break and continue this.32:35Has to do with the loops.32:55We also have condition blocks and these are the if the analysis and the completed activity that we can use once this is completed to provide some feedback. We'll see those in in the live demo so you'll understand.32:58Much better what's, what's happening.33:18And we also have the group and parallel block blocks if you like, where we can use them in order to run workflows in parallel or group the workflows and make things easy.33:20We'll see those in in detail. Now, I mentioned atomics and you see atomics next to workflows. Atomics are basically small self contained workflows that can be used in.33:41Workflows, not in other atomics. So, the anatomic is let's say a call, an API call that is available to be used in a workflow. You can create your own atomic, but you cannot use an atomic within an atomic.33:58Week.34:18You can use atomics within workflows. I'd say consider them as workflows and let's see in the in the demo what they are doing, how we create those, we will see how we create a workflow. There is a tick if we click.34:19Atomic workflow then this will be considered anatomic we need to provide a group name.34:39We use all the groups. If we want to have a custom atomic then we create a custom atomic group. Same with the category we can add a new category and place the atomic in in there.34:46Okay, now you see that in these screenshots, the atomics were 974. You will see that in our environment they are now in 1152. So as I said, these increase.35:03Week by week I'd say. The workflows remember the basics, activities, all the blocks that we can use loops and sorry logic that has a loops conditions and stuff, atomics and.35:20Workflows. The workflows are.35:41The total of blocks or the group of blocks that we use in order to have the actions we want. Once we create a workflow, we have the variables to.35:43Provide and then we can pick the different boxes, create our own workflow and have the action that require that we require. Again, display name and description are important because as I said the description.36:01And maybe optional but is gonna be used by AI assistant or any other agent, so it's better to have something meaningful in there rather than keep the books empty and have NO information in in AI assistant.36:21The different variables that we can use, we have input output, input to provide information before the workflow runs or the activity outputs to get something out of the workflow local that we have within just one.36:40Workflow and we don't need for further users once the workflow finishes static or persistent.37:00These are the variables that we keep them and we can use them across the workflow runs and global global variables can be used between different workflows.37:11And how do we declare variables? So if we are in a workflow, we see that we have this section over here variables, we click add variable and we have the window where we need to do three things.37:26The data type, we need to select the data type, although there is NO star that after is over here, it is important to choose the correct data type. So we choose the data type, we choose the display name, and we choose the scope. Input, local, output.37:47For static. The global variables that I mentioned are actually defined in.38:07The automation menu, so here we have input local output or static. How do we use the variables? We will see that in boxes like Meraki network name input, we have this.38:15Icon on the top right corner. If we click there, we can select variables that have been defined earlier. Again, all those we will see in the live demo in a bit. You will also see that some of the, available variables.38:32Are grayed out. Why? Because there is a type mismatch. So for this specific case we cannot use because there is a mismatch a type mismatch and this is not for.38:52For this option how we use conditionals, this is the block condition block. You have two branches. Basically you can have even one branch if then.39:08This is the if then else representation if you like, you have the the properties for each branch and in those properties, you have to select the conditions. So if you want for.39:27Example to check if a variable is larger than zero, you can enter it in the property.39:46You have to enter the comparison and you have to enter the value of zero in this case, so it would be something like x, greater than and the value zero.39:56Now, notice here these are the different comparisons. Notice here that we have all of these conditions must be met. If we have only one condition, we are good. If we want to add more conditions, we click that button, we create more conditions and we have.40:12The options to have either all, which means.40:31It's an end or any of these which means it's an or. And we can make it even more complicated, we can go with advanced and there we can have end or combinations and stuff like that.40:35And if I want to have an if then else or if then if then if then else and so on, so nested if then else is I can add more branches and I can.40:53Make my workflow follow the the design I want, ok? This is just a tip if I have if then else then I can duplicate the branch.41:08The one that I created for the success condition and if I duplicate it, then I just change the the comparison if it's equal, not equal or whatever and I have the.41:27The opposite case for the failed condition. For its loops we need the source array and that array will be used for the repetitions for the for the loop. The while loop, we have.41:46Condition not an array but a condition just like the conditionals, the condition block. Again, we can have all of these conditions, any of these conditions, we can add conditions and so on.42:07And of course the the loop will repeat for for as long as the conditions are true. This is the group, the group is used for.42:19Lots of activities. If we group activities like in the example then we make it easier to read, but also we make it easier for AI assistant.42:35To provide the summary because if we have a workflow with 20 activities then the AI assistant will provide steps, 20 steps and descriptions for each activity. If we group, group those activities.42:51Let's say.43:11Five activities then five then, I don't know, six and then four. So we have four groups then the AI assistant will provide the summary from the description of the groups so we will have four steps and as you probably understand, it's a lot easier.43:12To read.43:32If it's four steps rather than go through 20. And the parallel blocks, this is actually what we used in our 1st demo recorded demo. Parallel blocks are basically workflows that run in parallel. So.43:33So catalyst center and Meraki, we used two different workflows combined in a parallel block and the workflow finished once both branches are finished, but they run in parallel, ok? So this is how we use parallel blocks.43:53And this is an example, this is a compliance audit and we have a DHCP audit, a device tag audit, a group policy and layer three firewall rules audit all these four run in parallel and they.44:13Workflow will continue or will end depending on on the flow, once all four are completed. Okay, now we'll try to have a live demo.44:33And, I will try to create a new workflow and I hope it goes well because you know what happens when we have live demos. So I'm going to create a workflow from blank.44:50And I want to create a network, not in Greek though, create network and ssids. So I want to create a network and I want to create, three.45:08Or four ssids. I'm going to use Meraki because it's easier as a target. We have the same environment and it's in the cloud. I could use a catalyst center. The difference would be, 1st of all, the target.45:26And, second of all, the blocks that I will use, there are different blocks for Merakian catalyst. But the logic is the same. So I'm going to use a Meraki.45:44Endpoint and I'm going to use the current organization for this demo. I also need to provide a name. I have the name sorry I have to provide the description. So.46:00Create network, network and let's say for SSI deals. Of course, it's better to have more but don't have the time. Now.46:17I'm let's say ok to start building my workflow. And what I want is 1st a block from Meraki. I know what I'm looking for, create.46:33Create a organization organization network. Of course I can go through ok that's a fail.46:54There you go. We can go through all the activities, search and find what we are looking for, but I know that I want this one, I drag, I drop, and this is my 1st block in, in the workflow.47:08You see that this symbol here shows that this is an atomic?47:26Okay, Cisco manager atomic. It means that I cannot change it, but I can use it of course for my own benefit. I have a name, I have a description and in the description it says what you need to do.47:30Okay, so there is information in here. Now, here I also get a notification that something is missing. There are two warnings actually and these are the inputs. So I need to provide some inputs. I need to provide the.47:46Product types in Meraki we have different product types, appliance for security, wireless suites and so on. And based on the product types, we have either a wireless network if it's only wireless.48:05Or a combined network if we have many types. So this is why we need to to define the product types. I also need the organization ID because in Meraki, like in catalyst center we have an organization.48:22And then we have the different networks, here we need the organization ID. So in that organization we add the network. And I also need.48:42A name, a name for the new network, ok? So I need three variables here. Now I can type them here or I can actually go to the workflow. Now.48:54I clicked in the space in the workspace, in the canvas if you like. So I see the workflow properties. If I click on any of the boxes, I see the properties of those activities. Workflow properties, I can.49:09Define the variables here. So I have them available for the entire workflow and I need, let's start from, from that from bottom to top. So I need the name, network name.49:26And it's a it's a string and this is an input, ok? So I want to input a name that I want to create. It is required for workflow to run.49:44And, I can provide the default value but I wouldn't go for that. I also need the organization ID, oops, sorry. Organization ID is again a string.49:57The name goes here and it's an input, it's an input again. So I will input the organization ID again required for the workflow to run. And I also need.50:18The product types and the product types are actually an a string array and it's product types.50:35And in here I need to provide an array, so it's gonna be appliance, it's gonna be wireless, and it's going to be suites.50:51Oh Sweets. So this is my array of products. Now, because of the Meraki operation, the type of network will be combined.51:10Okay, so I have my variables here and if I now click on the activity, I can go and I can click on the variable reference. I can find the variable that I.51:27I want, this is a local variable and the yellow notification disappeared. I can then go to organization ID. Now this is an input and I will take organization ID and I do the same with the name.51:46And I choose network name and here I go. I've got everything. Now, here you saw the error message because there was an empty array, but I had to delete that and use the reference to our array that we defi.52:06Time at the beginning. Okay, now notice that this activity has become blue and also notice that there are other boxes below. It means that it's not just one.52:26Activity. This is a grouped activity and we can use it as it is. Now, if I run this, I'm ok but the thing is I want to make sure that once it finishes, we have.52:46We have either a success or a failure message. Also I want to create a SSID because with this we just created a network. So I need a condition block.53:07And this is the the fail fail condition branch and in here I'd say that.53:25If, the condition fails succeed succeeded.53:41Equals false, and I have my condition. Do what? I want to complete.53:59The workflow with an error message. So what I've done here is I chose the fail condition branch. I checked the Meraki creation of the network. Now.54:13If that failed, if that atomic returned the failure, I want to see the error message. So I choose the completed logic, this is failed.54:29And, I want to see the condition block, sorry, I want to see the error message ok what happens if the organization network is created?54:44And then here we have another case and this is.55:04Again the same property. I want the Meraki succeeded equals true. And what happens, let me also change this too.55:11Success. What happens in that case, I want to create four ssids, so I want to have a loop and create four ssids. As you see, when I pick.55:26A box from a block from from the left hand side. You have these circles with the plus sign it shows where you can add that block. Once you put it on top of that, it goes stick. So it means that it can be.55:44A placed over there. So here I want the source array and the source array is the ssids that I want to create. Again, I can go to my workflow, create a new variable.56:02And in the RA ssids and let's say 123 and four.56:17It's a local scope, it's not an input, now I have my 4th variable. If I go to the for each I will select workflow local ssids.56:36And this loop will take place four times for the values 123 and four. What do we want to do in in that loop, we want to create.56:52Ssids, so Meraki update network wireless wireless SSID, and it's.57:09The top, so I want here one warning an input is required. Let's find which one. You see that I can provide all sorts of things band selection user directory.57:24Filtering GRE all sorts of things. I'm just I just need the mandatory ones. It's the SSID number.57:44And I will take it from, from the loop. So in the condition lock, I have the four each and I will take the source array the items. So my ssids will be 123, and four.57:53Save, and I have it here. It will take some time to update. And I think I'm done. I have my organization network created here. I have the condition.58:11Block to make sure that the network is created. I have the four loop, I have the four ID the the four ssids. I think I'm done. Let me see why this is not happy network ID.58:30Of course, we need the network ID, network ID, now I'm a bit.58:44Okay, let's use this one. And we are done. You see, now everything is blue. I'm ready. Can I run it? No, because it's not.59:02Enabled, why? Because it's not validated. So if I click validate, it will check if this block this set of blocks is ok. And now I can run the workflows that I've done. And what it asks is for a network name.59:17Let's say my new network and I also want, the organization number, the organization ID. Let me cancel it and try to get the.59:37That was something that I should have done before, to get the ID. So this is my workflow, I'm going again where I was.59:52Run. So my new network, the organization ID run, and here I see what happens.01:00:09During the execution, ok? So here we have the new network, but it failed in the condition block, ok? We have error code 400. For some reason it failed so it hasn't.01:00:25Created the ssids, but the organization network should be here. Let's refresh and check whether we have the network. We can then see why it didn't work.01:00:43So there you go, my networks masters and now I have my new network, ok? And if I go to the different blocks I can see here what try to do and what errors we have.01:01:02Unfortunately, this is failed action completed. This is the the live demo, the live demo experience. If I have.01:01:21If if I go to the previous one that I created yesterday, we will see that it should work there you go. If I view it and I run it, it's basically the same.01:01:37Network name second network run and green. When you see blue it means it's executing when you see green it means that it finished successfully.01:01:59When you see red as we saw before, it means failure. This is all green.01:02:17If I refresh, I will see 2nd network and if I go to 2nd network, I will also see the ssids that I had, ok? Now.01:02:23I want wireless and I want the ssids and here we'll see my SSID 01234I asked for four for five. So this is how we create.01:02:45Workflows. You saw successful execution failed execution. This is the one that we used at the beginning so the parallel block for Meraki and catalyst center. The Meraki deployment had a workflow deployed.01:03:02Meraki wireless network service, the catalyst center, a similar one for catalyst center. And this is how the Meraki looks like, and this is how.01:03:22The catalyst center looks like more complicated but still you have both workflows executed together in parallel. Now, at the end of both we have an AI block that analyzes.01:03:34The results from Meraki or from Catalyst Center.01:03:54What happens here is you we use an agent in order to transform the information we get from the the workflows and present it in a nice way and this is basically what happens. It's like you have.01:03:58An age an agent and you provide the content, you provide the system prompt and what you get is a report this is for what you get is a report.01:04:18But the report is formatted in a very nice way rather than having JSON formats for the results. Other use cases for catalyst center now, we can have simple.01:04:32Workflows for getting the hierarchy of the device inventory. In this example we have the workspace from another colleague Keith Baldwin. So here he has created.01:04:49He has created the works workflows and if we see, why it doesn't work, let's play the hierarchy is one of of the.01:05:08Workflows. The target here is catalyst center, very simple workflow, get site output, and here you go, you have the hierarchy in in Json format. You can use it of course in another.01:05:24The way or you can even transform the output in various types. A second workflow device inventory. Again, the target is catalyst center. If we run it, we see the the blocks. Now we have extract.01:05:44Device list. This is a transformation from Jason, we modify and we change the output to.01:06:04To a list. So what you get in an output is a list of data and not a JSON format, and you can do whatever you want after that, you can save it, you can email it you can use it in other workflows and and so on.01:06:13Simple workflows those are if we go to more advanced, we can build hierarchy, network settings, we can provide network settings. We can do device discovery and even port configuration, and here quickly we see.01:06:33And how we don't have.01:06:52Ontario again from Keith, the the demo, we ran the built hierarchy workflow, the target catalyst center. We provide some variables and Ontario or swap.01:06:55The the address and if we run it we will see that once it's it's done, we have the the area and the floor in catalyst center and this is a good example to see how this this is used because.01:07:16It's not only blocks that creates something but also check if, e.g., the area exists or if the floor exists or if the.01:07:36The the names exist and if they exist you get a a notification that I cannot create it. It's already there, ok? And if we take it a bit further because I see that we are.01:07:48Running probably out of time. We can assign settings, we have another workflow. Again, catalyst center is the target. We want to assign the settings, syslog SNMP servers triple aaa, and so on. We run it.01:08:07And if we go to catalyst center of course we will see that it's it's there the settings are there. Yeah, for Ontario Orsaua and the home floor one.01:08:23Entries and if we take it even further, we can discover devices so we can create a discovery and we can discover the device and we can assign it.01:08:39And different blocks. All these actually are in or should be in the exchange so you can find the workflows in there. If we go to the catalyst center, we will see that there is a new discovery.01:08:55This didn't happen in catalyst center, this is what happened from the Cisco workflows and of course we can see the device and it's discovered and assigned to a site and so on. And we can take it even further and create.01:09:13Port configurations and so on or use brownfield learn workflows, templates github integration and so on. There are many many many things that we can do.01:09:33For catalyst center and there are a lot in exchange, more are coming and of course it's the list is endless what we can do if we want.01:09:45Now I wanna show you one last thing as a live demo, how about creating workflows from AI assistant? 1st of all, let me go back to.01:10:01The demo and let me go to the AAA assistant in Meraki, same is in catalyst center specific version 23711 or three.x. Now here I can write generate.01:10:18Oh, what I want to do eh, then create or NO 1st run a workflow to create a network and SSID.01:10:36Now what should happen is a system should find my workflows and prompt me which one to use, ok? So it's searching. Maybe I should write more, but there you go. There are four.01:10:56Which one you want to use or whatever else you want to use? I want to use the one that I had yesterday, so number one, I want to use the 1st.01:11:15Create a new network and configure ssids, where you go, this one, confirm yes, and this is a form that we saw earlier running it through the automation environment. So.01:11:33Let's say 3rd network.01:11:53Continue. Confirm yes, and if I check I will see the 3rd network plus the ssids created in in my Meraki dashboard.01:11:57Okay, so this is basically a simulation of our 1st, very 1st demo. I created the workflow and now I ran it through AI assistant, so the control the network and the ssids are created but not through a, not from AI assistant.01:12:14Through AA assistant from the workflow that I've done. Now, what about using the workflow, the, the, the AAA assistant in order to create.01:12:34A workflow. So, let me go back to the environment and ask AI assistant to generate a workflow.01:12:54That prompts from from an for an org ID and creates a combined network within that organization. Network name should be given by user. The network must have three ssids, the names of the ssids should be corporate tech ID and guest. So it will take.01:13:09A couple of minutes. This is the plan and would you like to proceed with generating? Yes, proceed. And the AI AI assistant we create.01:13:29The workflow for me, ok? It will, as I said, will take some time, but you will see that we will have a new workflow in workspace.01:13:48Okay, and, we'll come back in a second. So this is what we've done natural language workflow generation.01:14:04A plan step by step plan and the workflow in the workspace. It's done ok basically sorry this is this is the plan.01:14:20Yes, create the workflow, and again it will go after user confirmation, if I go to automation.01:14:41I will see it. Let's give it some time. Couple of questions, is adding workflows only for Meraki or Cisco workflows whatever you want to call it? It's not for meraki. It's for Catalyst Center it's for ice, it's for for anything.01:14:59You saw the targets many targets, so, I wouldn't say unlimited but lots of options there. Now the thing, how do I connect to on prem controllers or devices? I remind you if we have on prem controllers like we need a small.01:15:16PM.01:15:36Remote targets, we create the VM, we download it, install it, and then we talk the VM talks to catalyst center and also to the Meraki dashboard. Workflows count against Meraki API limits.01:15:37If you have Meraki, you know what it means? Yes, for now it does count, but this is something that is being looking looked after.01:15:57And how do I limit permissions on the workflow now to use the workflows, to run workflows, you need to have admin rights in Meraki and full admin rights in Meraki, but again, this is something that the business unit is looking.01:16:09After and hopefully soon we will have a role based access control.01:16:27For workflows. Okay, if we go back this is our new workflow. If I go to automation and workspace, our AAA assistant created.01:16:33This for us, ok? Import completed if I edit, if I edit view.01:16:52Validate it is validated. If I run it, it will do what I asked. The target, the variables, network name organization ID, and then it will create.01:17:074th network and the ID, I don't have again. So quickly just to see what happens around.01:17:24The ID 4th ok blue, green green.01:17:42Green green green, and if I refresh, I will see, all those networks, 3rd network, 4th, and in the 4th network I will see the ssids, if you remember I had asked for.01:18:00Specific names I should see those specific names there. I think it's clear that we will see those here and there you go.01:18:20Corporate tech IT and guests, ok? One last thing before we close just to tell you that once you have run a workflow.01:18:32E.g. the that one the last one you can see on the right hand side, you can see the results. So if I run it.01:18:47Run, once it's green, I can see the results of of that block on the right hand side, ok? So JSON output.01:19:03And here you go. Anything that has happened in that block, you can see it here. Okay, I think we covered a lot basics but quite a lot. We reached the.01:19:18End of of the presentation.01:19:38I hope it was interesting. This is apologies for this. This is the the wrong slide. If you want to find webinars and other resources, recordings and stuff cS.co/EMEA does eIS.does Q4. This is.01:19:41For all the technologies. Again, that's Q4 not Q3. For catalyst center, you follow the community page CSCO slash that's it Anya@Cisco.com is our email.01:20:01If you want to contact us, feel free to do it. One very last thing, the post webinar survey, please spend an hour.01:20:21Spend the minute to provide your feedback. We want to hear from you and try to improve. So, if we have any questions, I I see, I saw that Lawrenzo has answered a few. If we have any unanswered questions, we will.01:20:30Go through and we will contact you by email with the answer that you are looking for.01:20:49Before we go remember Cisco IQ, if not onboarded, try give us your email and we will support you if if needed. And with that, I want to thank you.01:20:59We reached the end of the expert insights webinar on Cisco workflows from Lorenzo Dasilva and myself. Thank you so much for joining and attending. Have a great rest of the day.01:21:12