Smartnet Portal: how are new contracts added

[rofeld]

Hi

How are new contracts added to the smartnet portal? I checked that the CCO user have access to the new contracts. I checked the contract on CCW-R. Everything fine. But the contracts does not show up in the portal. 

How are changes/modifications on contracts updated in the portal? Is these a periodic update mechanism which runs automatically in the background? Can it be forced manually?

kind regards

[rofeld]

To be more precise.

The devices with serial number xx got a new contract number. First they had a Partner shared support contract. Now we changed parner and have a smartnet total care contract. But the devices still show the old contracts. 

We deleted the inventory and uploaded the devices once againg from the collector. But the devices still show the old contract data. 

Does anyone have an idea. Where and how does SNT portal get the information from. Does it pull new contracts information on a regular basis?

[Courtney.Wasson]

Hello -  Your Inventory is a set of devices that are uploaded into the Smart Net Total Care system through one or all of the supported methods. Which one of the below methods are you currently using as this can chance the answer. 

• The Cisco Common Service Platform Collector (CSPC)
• A third-party collector
• A comma-separated value (CSV) file import

The Uploads dashlet displays a record of the last collections that were made for an entitled company through one of 3 approved methods. You can use this dashlet in order to monitor the frequency at which you refresh your network data in the portal. As a leading practice, customers set their collections to upload once a week or month. Cisco allows a maximum of 5 uploads a day per customer inventory from all methods. Below is the proper reference link.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/services/sntc/portal_user_guide.html

[afitgnet01]

Hi Courtney, thanks for the information.

The customer uses the cisco collector to upload the inventory once a week.

The thing we can't explain is, that for some weeks many components show up in the portal saying they are not covered by a contract. Even deleting and re-uploading the inventory didn't help. We realized that the portal did not show the correct coverage for items which have a different product ID in the Portal than in Cisco CCW-R. I opened several tickets asking when the portal is capable of assigning the correct contract. Does it just check the serial number or also the Product ID. I nowhere found an answer to that.

Interestingly after 5-8 weeks later, for some reason the products show up with the correct contract. We have no clue why it works now.

kind regards

[Courtney.Wasson]

Hello! I am glad it fixed itself although it makes you question the validity of any data provided. Most likely Cisco and/or your partner made a contract update that made the pull possible.

In regards to your question on where the info is pulled from, the collector gathers different pieces of information based on the device type. A serial number and PID are required to enable the software to uniquely identify a device. Using a Cisco IP phone as an example, the MAC address is obtained from the Unified Communications Manager registered to the device. The MAC addresses is then used to identify the phone within the Cisco database. 

I always recommend that you ensure your PID and Serial #’s are accurate for many reasons, portal accuracy is one of them. If you have this issue again, I would reach out to your partner and have your PID and/or serial # updated properly or if easier, open a Cisco case. This will assist in ensuring you have proper data when you review your collector pulls.

Hope this helps a bit!

Cheers!