Enabling location services
The first step to getting your Cisco Meraki network feeding data to Cloud4Wi is to enable the location services on the Meraki dashboard. With this step, your Cisco Meraki network will start sending presence and location data to Cloud4Wi, and the Overview, Trends, Peak and Virtual Zone dashboard will start working automatically.
1. Accessing the web interface
Login to the Meraki Dashboard with your credentials and select your organization and the network where you want to enable the service on.
2. Enabling the Meraki CMX and the communication with APIs
Go to the Network-wide > Configure page form the left sidebar.
Scroll down until you find the Location and scanning section and set Scanning API value to "Scanning API enabled". if you don't see this section, contact the network administrator as you might not have the permission to change these settings
Copy the Validator string and send it to the Cloud4Wi support team opening a Ticket. Cloud4Wi will provide you the data to be entered into the interface:
- Post URL
- Secret
Once received the data, click "Add a Post URL" and enter the two values above:
Click the "Validate" button. If you receive a confirmation message, everything has been configured correctly. If you don't receive the success message, please check if the data is correctly entered.
Alternatively, you can open a ticket in our Support Center.
Enabling Heatmap and Polygon Zones
To get your Heatmap dashboard working and to start using the Polygon Zones, you need to take a further step. In order for these features to work, you need to sync the floor plans you have configured in your Meraki dashboard with the floor plans in your Cloud4Wi account.
1. Configuration on Meraki
The initial step is to upload a floor plan (.png or .jpeg files only) onto the Meraki dashboard and then place APs on this floor plan. You need to make sure that all the APs have been placed on the floor plan and there are no APs remaining under unplaced option. See below sample screenshot.
Also, take note of the Network name as this will be needed when configuring on Cloud4Wi. Visit Meraki support for more information in regards to adding floorplan (https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Using_a_Floor_Plan_or_Custom_Map_in_Dashboard).
2. Configuration on Cloud4Wi
The first step is to upload the same floorplan used on Meraki dashboard under the location where Heatmaps data is to be captured. The important field when creating a new floorplan is “Floor hardware manufacture ID”: this field should be the same as the floor plan name (it’s case sensitive) used on Meraki dashboard.
Please read the following article about how to Add and Manage floorplan (https://cloud4wi.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/208154933-Adding-and-managing-floors) on Cloud4Wi.
Once the configuration upload has been completed, the access point will be able to capture location data and feed it to the Cloud4Wi service. At this point, your Heatmap dashboard will start showing the data (it may take a few hours before you see data showing on the map).
You can also start using the Polygon Zones by drawing polygons on the floor plans and analyzing the zone traffic on the related Zone Traffic dashboard.