Overview

Cisco Business Dashboard Inspector (Beta)

Cisco Business Dashboard (CBD) is a self-hosted virtual appliance that MSPs use to manage Cisco 100 to 500 Series routers, switches, and wireless access points. The Cisco Business Dashboard Inspector (Beta) connects to one Dashboard instance over its REST API, discovers every network (site) it manages, and reports device inventory, firmware currency, end-of-life (EOX) notices, warranty and support coverage, and site and device availability back into Liongard — so firmware drift, devices that drop off a network, and hardware nearing end of support show up without logging in to the Dashboard.

What you can monitor

The Cisco Business Dashboard Inspector collects Dashboard-level and per-site data, including:

• Organizations, networks (sites), and device groups
• Each network's online state and unacknowledged alert and warning counts
• Device inventory per site: hostname, type, series, model, serial number, IP and MAC address, and device group
• Current and latest available firmware per device
• EOX announcement and last-date-of-support dates, warranty and coverage end dates, and maintenance status
• Online, offline, and blocked devices

How it works

A parent launchpoint connects to your Dashboard with an Access Key and reads its organizations, networks, and device groups. Liongard creates a child launchpoint for every network the key can see, named Cisco Business Dashboard - [Network Name]. Children inherit the parent's connection settings and Access Key — no per-site credential is entered by hand.

Benefits

• See which devices on each site are behind the latest firmware, and catch unplanned upgrades or rollbacks.
• Build replacement and renewal lists from hardware with an EOX notice or no active coverage.
• Know when a site, or a device on it, drops off.
• Catch a device that appears on, or disappears from, a managed network.
• Confirm every Dashboard network has a matching child, including newly added sites.
• Surface sites with Dashboard alerts nobody has acknowledged.

Inspector Setup Preparation

Step 1: Confirm the Agent Can Reach the Dashboard

1. From the Agent host, open https://{address}:{port}/api/api-info. This page doesn't require sign-in.
2. Confirm it lists v2 as a supported API version. If the page doesn't load from the Agent host, the inspector can't reach the Dashboard either.

Step 2: Generate an Access Key in Cisco Business Dashboard

1. Sign in to the Dashboard as a user who can see every organization you want inventoried. A key inherits the role and organizations of the user who creates it, and networks outside those organizations aren't discovered.
2. Select your username at the bottom of the left navigation to open your user profile.
3. Select Generate Access Key.
4. Copy the Access Key ID and Access Key Secret right away — the secret is shown only once.

Inspector Setup:

Step 3: Configure the Cisco Business Dashboard Inspector in Liongard

1. Log in to the Liongard platform.
2. In Liongard, navigate to Admin > Inspectors > Inspector Types > Navigate to the Cisco Business Dashboard Inspector > Select Add System.

Since a single Cisco Business Dashboard manages many networks, you'll set up a single "Parent" Inspector that will then auto-discover a "Child" Inspector for each network (site).

Fill in the following information:

• Type of Inspector: Parent
• Environment: Select your MSP's Environment
• Friendly Name: Suggested Naming: [MSP Name] Cisco Business Dashboard Parent
• Agent: Select an Agent that can reach the Dashboard (see Prerequisites)
• Inspector Version: Latest
• Dashboard Address: The Dashboard's hostname or IP address, without https:// or a path (for example, cbd.example.com or 10.1.2.3). A port written into the address (cbd.example.com:8443) overrides the Port field.
• Port: Optional. Leave blank for 443.
• Access Key ID: The Access Key ID from Step 2
• Access Key Secret: The Access Key Secret from Step 2
• Verify TLS Certificate: Leave as true unless the Dashboard uses a self-signed certificate
• Network ID and Network Name: Leave blank on the parent. Discovery fills these in on each child.
• Scheduling: The Inspector will default to run once a day at the time it's set up. Here you can adjust the schedule
• Select Save. The Inspector will now be triggered to run within the minute.

Step 4: Child Inspector Setup

After the first run of the Parent Inspector, every network the Access Key can see — including networks that are offline or have no devices yet — will be auto-discovered and surfaced in the Discovered Systems tab on the Inspectors > Cisco Business Dashboard Inspector page. Liongard suggests an Environment for each child based on the network name.

• Activate or Archive your Discovered Systems by ensuring they're mapped to the correct Environment > Check the checkbox to the left of Inspector(s) > Select the Actions drop-down menu > Activate Launchpoints (or Archive Launchpoints).
• Click Save.

All 9 alert rules ship disabled. Enable the ones you want once your children are running.

Troubleshooting

• The run fails with "the Access Key was rejected": Confirm the Access Key ID and Secret were copied correctly (generate a new key if in doubt), that the key hasn't expired, been disabled, or been deleted, that the Agent host's clock is correct (NTP), and that the user who created the key still exists with the needed role and organizations.
• The run fails with "missing required credential(s)": Fill in the fields named in the message on the parent. Children inherit them.
• The run fails with "Unable to reach": Check the Dashboard Address and Port, that the Agent can reach the Dashboard (open /api/api-info from the Agent host), firewall rules, and the Dashboard's Web Server access control. An On-Demand Agent can't reach a Dashboard on a private network.
• The run fails with a certificate error: Install a trusted certificate on the Dashboard, or set Verify TLS Certificate to false for a self-signed certificate.
• The parent fails with "status code 404": Something answered at that address, but it isn't the Cisco Business Dashboard API. Enter only the host or IP (and port), with no path.
• The run fails with "status code 5xx": The Dashboard returned a server error after three retries. Confirm the Dashboard is healthy and not overloaded, then run the inspector again.
• A child fails with "Network … was not found": If the network was deleted in the Dashboard, remove that child launchpoint. If it still exists, check the parent's Dashboard Address and any proxy between the Agent and the Dashboard.
• The launchpoint won't save and a "403 Forbidden" page appears: Remove https:// from an IP-address Dashboard Address and save again.
• Some networks are missing: The Access Key only sees the organizations of the user who created it. Generate the key as a user with access to every organization.

Expected Behavior

• Blank EOX, warranty, or coverage fields: These fill in only when Cisco has issued an EOX bulletin or coverage data exists. Blank is normal for a current, healthy device. Devices with a blank latest firmware version aren't counted as needing an update.
• A network shows offline shortly after it's added: The Dashboard takes a few minutes to reflect connectivity changes.
• Network locations match a cloud data center: On a Dashboard hosted in AWS or Azure, a network's address can reflect the cloud host's location rather than the customer site.
• Devices Across Networks on the parent doesn't match the sum of the children's Total Devices: The parent uses the Dashboard's per-network device count, and parent and children run at different times.
• A network with no devices shows an empty Devices list and zero counts: This is expected.

Inspector FAQs