As a partner, we support a number of end customers. Not all the technical people involved in troubleshooting have Cisco.com accounts or contract association (more like few if any!). This is especially true in a complex system where Cisco software and hardware are involved. However, they are the ones with the logs that need to be uploaded to TAC via the SCM (Service Case Manager).
Cisco allowed anonymous uploads to cases via web up to May 2017. Then restricted. Cisco's answer was:
Customer File Uploads to Cisco Technical Assistance Center
However, all methods have requirements that are sometimes hard to overcome and require firewall plumbing to get outbound ports open, etc. At secure locations this is challenging. Only FTPS can be used anonymously, all others need a Cisco.com account. Email to case does not require an account, but for large log files this is not an option. Also, security policies generally restrict emailing without scrubbing. Even if a user is willing to register on Cisco.com and association to the correct contract can be facilitated, this delays upload and slows time to solution.
To me a simple file upload method that does not require prior account registration is needed to support end customers.
My recommendation is that Cisco develop some kind of one time upload capability:
- Interact with TAC on case via any method: Phone, email, WebEx, etc.
- TAC creates and email (or chats on WebEx) a URL good for uploading to a particular case.
- End customer use the URL to upload files to case.
- URL could have expiration at close of case, in a period of time (Ex: 24 hours), or after use.
This type of solution would allow security and easy upload of large files to TAC by anyone with web access.
Using a temp user, security bypass, tokens, or some other GUID method, this could easily use the same up-loader page that exists in SCM.
I hope the above suggestion will help the community and Cisco to better support partners and end customers.
Thank you,
Spencer Morley
