Cisco Smart Account? Contract ID? What? – Part 2 – AVANTEC Tec-Bite

About the job

Welcome back to my little blog series about the various Cisco portals. Here I show the practical websites of Cisco and also how you can access and use them. In my last blog post, I introduced a few Cisco portals and also how to create an account and assign permissions. Last time, we stopped at the portal software.cisco.com. There I showed the link to the software download portal. Now to further useful links: My Notifications On the left side you will find the link to the notification portal. The notification portal can also be accessed directly via the link https://cway.cisco.com/mynotifications. On the first visit, the page will still be quite empty. Using the green button "Create Subscription" you can create personal notifications for the following topics: Cisco Security Advisories Field Notices End of Sale / Support Announcements Software Updates Updates for Known Bugs The individual topics can always be customised to the products you use yourself. After clicking the green button "Create Subscription", a form appears where you can configure the notification. In this form, you can now create the desired notification or subscription. First, you can select whether you want to receive it by email or as an RSS feed. You can also specify the frequency, title and recipient address (email only). Then which types of information you want to receive. These are divided into two subcategories and not all five can be selected together. For example, if you want to be kept up to date on "AsyncOS Updates" and known bugs for the Cisco Email Security Appliances, these can be selected together. Further, under "Products" you can mark Email Security. Notifications can also be created for individual bugs. The easiest way is directly via the Bug Search Tool, which I will show in the next section. Then the initially empty page might soon look like this: Here you can administer the created notifications and delete them if no longer needed. Hopefully, you will never have to use the next portal Bug Search Tool Portal This is also on the Software and Downloads page and opens with one click. As the name suggests, it is possible here to search for known bugs, products, versions or specific keywords. I searched here for "Smart Licensing" for all ESA appliances. You could also search here for a specific AsyncOS version that it affects or fixes. If known bugs are present, they are displayed below. When you move the mouse over the title, the overview appears on the right and you can immediately save this bug and set up a notification. Clicking on a bug opens it fully in a new tab. A little tip from me: I would not always search for the full version number, e.g. 14.2.0-620, but leave it a bit open, as not all bugs are marked for every exact version. Now to the next very important portal: Support Case Manager Here the name already tells us everything. Here we can manage open and closed support cases as well as open new ones. Opening a case This can be done using the "Open New Case" button and various options are immediately displayed. For inquiries, problems or support, the first option "Products & Services" can be chosen. If there is an inquiry or problem with licences: the "Software Licensing" option. If you choose the wrong option at the beginning, it is no problem and you will be forwarded to the correct team by support; however, it takes a little more time. In the first part, the request type can already be selected and it is important, for example, to be forwarded directly to the RMA team, as you do not want to lose valuable time. If you still have a hardware appliance, you can search here immediately with the serial number. IMPORTANT: Do not enter the complete serial number in the field, only the second part after the hyphen! With the virtual serial number (starting with ESA with VLNESA) this can also work, but it is not always findable. If you want to open a case for a virtual appliance, I recommend doing this with the second form. By selecting "Find Product by Service Agreement" another form appears where the desired contract can be searched. Further, all linked contracts are already displayed below. Tip: If you cannot find the desired contract, you can search for it with the Contract ID in the "Service Contract" field and if it is not yet linked to your own Cisco account, you can do this immediately 🙂 Once the contract is selected, you can proceed to the next step with the "Next" button. Here you can now submit the request and it is always helpful to provide the support with as much information as possible in the initial text. This saves you and the support valuable time. After the text, the area of the request can be specified as well as the contact details and further CCs. At the bottom, you can also specify how and when you prefer to be contacted. You can then create the new case with "Submit". Back in the overview, you can now monitor and filter the cases. If you need to add a file or a comment, you can simply click on the case number and continue editing from there. Communication can also take place via email; it is important to have the case number in the subject and always keep attach@cisco.com in CC. For the last part, I have saved something very exciting, namely the licence portals (yup, plural). But that will be in the next blog post. Let me know if you have specific questions about this – or otherwise – which portals you have already used or if I have missed an important one. Further links www.avantec.ch/loesungen/cisco-security www.tec-bite.ch/cisco-smart-account-contract-id-was-part-1 www.tec-bite.ch/angriffe-von-einzeltaetern-sind-klar-die-minderheit The article Cisco Smart Account? Contract ID? What? – Part 2 first appeared on Tec-Bite.