Cisco Cloud Control Getting Started

Cisco Cloud Control is the unified operations platform that brings every Cisco domain into one consistent environment, enabling teams to proactively manage, govern, and operate across the full IT estate from a single experience. It features an AI Assistant for personalized recommendations and integrates with AI Canvas, a collaborative workspace where human operators and AI agents work together to resolve issues. The platform simplifies management by offering a single operational interface that complements existing Cisco product controllers, reducing complexity and improving efficiency for IT operations. It enables seamless cross-domain workflows and consistent user experience without replacing individual product dashboards.

Cisco Cloud Control brings together inventory, topology, actions, identity, and workflows into a unified operating experience. These capabilities support an AgenticOps model in which governed AI agents help operators correlate information across domains, investigate, and take action on issues that need attention.

Cisco Cloud Control is currently in Controlled Availability for customers and partners managing US-based infrastructure. Support for additional countries and regions will be added in future milestones.

To set up Cisco Cloud Control for use, complete these tasks:

Ensure that these prerequisites are in place before you onboard products with Cisco Cloud Control.

General

• For every product you want to manage within Cisco Cloud Control, configure at least one common admin user with the same email address. Ensure that this user has tenant admin privileges.

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For ThousandEyes, ensure the Super Admin user has Organization Admin level access.

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• Work with your Cisco account team to complete the additional enablement requirements for these products:

  • Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (integrated with Security Cloud Control)

  • Collaboration Control Hub

  • Intersight

Meraki

Configure Cisco Cloud Control access for Meraki SAML users

If you sign in to the Meraki Dashboard using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) single sign-on (SSO), complete these steps to enable access to Cisco Cloud Control using your existing SAML authentication.

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This procedure applies only to users who sign in to the Meraki Dashboard using SAML SSO. It doesn’t apply to users who sign in with a local Meraki username and password.

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1. Sign in to the Meraki Dashboard using your existing SAML login.
   At the top of the Meraki Dashboard, you will see this banner.

   

2. Select Verify email to confirm the email address you will use to access Cisco Cloud Control.

3. Enter the email address for the Cisco account you’ll use to sign in to Cisco Cloud Control.
   Make sure you can receive email at this address, as a verification code will be sent to it.
   The email address you verify should:

   • Be your primary business email address.

   • Be associated with your Cisco account and used to sign in to Cisco Cloud Control.

   • Match the email address you use with other Cisco products you want to manage through Cisco Cloud Control.

     

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     Your SAML login username may not be an email address. For example, some organizations use an employee ID or username to authenticate with their Identity Provider (IdP). During the verification step, always enter your Cisco-associated email address. For many organizations, this is also the email address used to sign in to the IdP.

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4. Complete email verification by entering the code sent to your email address.

Additional configuration for IdP-initiated SAML login

If your organization uses IdP-initiated SAML login (users start from an IdP-hosted dashboard with application tiles, including one for Meraki Dashboard), ensure your organization’s SAML login URL is configured. This configuration enables users to initiate SAML authentication directly from the Meraki Dashboard by redirecting them to your organization’s IdP.

1. In Meraki Dashboard’s left navigation, select Organization > Settings.

2. In the Authentication section, configure these settings:

   1. SAML SSO: Enabled

   2. SSO Login URL: Your organization’s unique SSO login URL
      You can locate this URL in your IdP settings. If you do not have administrative access, contact your IdP administrator to request it.

Intersight

Before you begin, get acceptance as a Cisco Cloud Control Controlled Availability customer. Cisco will then enable your US-East SaaS Intersight account.

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Complete this procedure for each Intersight tenant.

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1. Log in to your Intersight UI:

   1. Select Help > Cisco Cloud Control Controlled Availability.

   2. Move your account to Cisco Unified Identity.

   3. After this one-time move, sign in to Intersight again at https://intersight.com/cui.

      Your CUI-enabled account is now available through this new Intersight sign-in flow.

   4. If your account uses SAML SSO, configure your Identity Provider (IdP) in Cisco Unified Identity (select Settings > Authentication > Cisco Unified Identity).

      This step enables SSO users to access your CUI-enabled Intersight account and Cisco Cloud Control.

2. Sign in to Cisco Cloud Control at https://cloud.cisco.com.

3. Complete the onboarding steps described in this document.

4. To configure user access in Cisco Cloud Control, complete tenant linking and assign the required access to the linked Intersight tenant.

For additional details, refer to the Cisco Intersight with Cisco Cloud Control Onboarding Guide.

Before you complete these steps, ensure that at least one common admin user with the same email address is configured across all products. This user can log in to Cisco Cloud Control and complete day 0 tenant linking and onboarding.

After onboarding, only users with admin privileges for a product (such as Meraki) can access the Tenants page in the Admin Console to configure a Cisco Cloud Control tenant linked to that product.

Cisco Cloud Control collects data from multiple products to provide these capabilities:

This section provides information about reliability in Cisco Cloud Control, along with its disaster recovery objectives.

What is the uptime guarantee as a percent of total available service time?
99.9%

What is the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) in hours?
36 hours

What is the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in hours?
24 hours

Can your service meet its SLA if the primary hosting region is completely down?
Yes, if multiple regions are available within the customer’s country. This currently includes the US, EU, Australia, Japan, and India.

AI Assistant is the natural language entry point in Cisco Cloud Control. Use AI Assistant to ask questions, get context, and start investigations from the Home page.

The Assistant tab lets you create a new conversation thread and view or manage your conversation history.

Use AI Canvas to investigate issues in more depth and collaborate with others in a shared workspace. AI Canvas is designed for longer investigations that need more context, a visual workspace, and a way for teams and AI agents to continue working over time.

AI Canvas is built for collaboration. You can share a canvas, invite collaborators, and continue working in the same shared space. If you open AI Canvas from an existing conversation or from an action, the related context is preserved so you can continue the investigation without starting over.

Start using AI Canvas

You can access AI Canvas in several ways:

• On the Cisco Cloud Control Home page, click the Canvas tab.

• In the Assistant tab, create a canvas for an existing conversation.

• In the Actions tab, click Collaborate in Canvas to continue working on an issue in a shared workspace.

• Outside the Cisco Cloud Control Home page, click Canvas to open the Canvas home page.

To start working in AI Canvas:

1. From the AI Canvas home page, select a prompt category, create a workspace from a board library, or click Create canvas.

2. Select the conversation mode.

   • Default answers right away.

   • Reasoning is intended for more complex queries.

3. Enter your question in the prompt field, or type / in the chat input to open the prompt library. You can also upload files to a knowledge base. Knowledge base content is shared with users who have access to the same environment and is not limited to a single user.

4. Attach an image to provide additional context with your prompt.

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If a canvas is already associated with the conversation or action, Cisco Cloud Control continues using that canvas instead of creating a new one.

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For more information about AI Canvas and writing effective prompts, refer to Cisco Cloud Control AI Canvas.

Integrate Splunk

To connect Splunk Cloud Platform with AI Canvas, complete the steps described in Integrating Splunk Cloud Platform with AI Canvas.

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Although Splunk has been integrated with Cisco Cloud Control, only Splunk Cloud Platform data is currently shared with and available in AI Canvas.

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Use the Actions tab to review issues that need attention across your Cisco Cloud Control environment. Actions help you focus on prioritized operational tasks from one place instead of reviewing alerts across individual products. In some cases, related notifications are grouped into a single action so you can review and investigate the issue more efficiently.

You can review the action summary to understand what happened, see the related alerts that led to the incident, identify what is affected, and determine the recommended next steps. You can also review the related alerts and when they occurred, along with the activity timeline that shows how the action was handled, such as assignment and resolution.

Use notifications to stay informed about important activity across Cisco Cloud Control. Similar notifications (alerts, recommendations, and activities) are grouped together to make them easier to review. You can open a notification for more details, snooze it, or clear it. Some notifications can lead directly to an item in the Actions tab for further review.

Notifications can include the following types of information:

Review notifications

1. Click to open the Notifications panel.

2. Review the list of notifications. Similar alerts are grouped together when they share the same severity and product and occur close together in time.

3. Click a notification to view more details.

   

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   Only notifications that are associated with an action open the related item in the Actions tab. Some notifications are informational only and do not open an action detail view.

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4. To temporarily remove a notification from view, snooze it for the required time period.

5. To remove a notification from your active feed, clear it.

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All notification actions are recorded in the audit log with the user, tenant, timestamp, and action details. Clearing a notification only removes it from the active feed. If the notification requires action, you must resolve the item in the Actions tab.

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Use Cisco Cloud Control’s Help menu to access product support and documentation or submit product enhancement suggestions.

To open this menu, select in the top navigation bar.

The Help menu provides these options: