TC7.3.0 websnapshots broken even further (by design)

[Wayne DeNardi]

Just a heads-up warning to anyone considering upgrading to TC7.3.0 - the websnapshots now include a "privacy feature" where the snapshot of the camera(s) no longer displays on the web interface screen until you specifially click to activate the video source (see attached image).  The websnapshot only shows around 5 seconds once clicked before requiring another activation.  A large message also appears on the display of the endpoint stating that the video is being monitored by an administrator.

This warning message shrinks after a short period of time to just an icon, but the icon stays on the screen for approximately 10 minutes (even after disconnecting any browser session to the endpoint).

This is in addition to the previous issue where websnpshots were disabled while the unit was in standby (no-websnapshots-when-system-standby-tc71x).

Update: TC7.3.3 returned some of the functionality, and the removal of the large message, but you need to obtain a "Remote Monitoring" option key for each endpoint.  However, this has introduced a range of other bugs which Cisco have not fully addressed yet.

[Patrick Sparkman]

Haha, I saw that in the release notes.  I was wondering how long it would take for you to comment on it, knowing you mentioned it in the past about the previous TC7.1 change.

Anyway, I can understand and accept the change being around privacy, but for someone that uses the snapshots to sometimes check and monitor a room on occasion, it's a but frustrating to have to click the thumbnail every couple of seconds so it would appear.  The message on the screen is a bit to be desired, kind of intrusive if you ask me, as the icons are already a big enough side, adding more and more doesn't look good.

[Jens Didriksen]

We rely heavily on snapshots to monitor lecture deliveries, so having this message pop up on the screens will be a serious distraction to both lecturers and students. And it ain't small screens we are talking about either.... :(

So we won't be upgrading to TC7.3 any time soon, which is a real shame as we were looking forwards to getting dual-stack registrations back, but this snapshot warning issue is too big of a problem to ignore.

/jens

[Chris Swinney]

Exactly the same as Jens.

I wonder, are these customer related ideas or simply Cisco "blue sky" thinking? Either way, the needs of the administrators/organisation to maintain an ability to monitor without distracting a lecture should mean that a setting should be provided to enable or disable this "feature".

Surely, it should be up to the Organisation to determine what privacy settings they want - and not Cisco?

Cheers

Chris

[Jens Didriksen]

"Surely, it should be up to the Organisation to determine what privacy settings they want - and not Cisco?"

Indeed - I would be more than happy to accept a compromise where this "feature" was enabled by default, but could be turned off through the "new" Remote Support User account - even as painful it would be having to generate tokens and obtain passwords from TAC for every single system we would want this turned off on. :(

It would at least be a helluva lot better than what we have now.

/jens

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[Martin Koch]

I mean ion the other hand they broadcast data via proximity, ...

The question for me would be how much should Cisco limit features (like also remove the root account, ...)

Or should these things be optional. I mean it can completely make sense in

one deployment, but be completely off in the other.

[Wayne DeNardi]

I've sent a link to this thread to my local Cisco people and to the TAC for inclusion in the SR I have open (631997469).

Hopefully our feedback will find its way to the correct people in the BU and they'll make some changes for the better.

The way it is now is stopping us from upgrading to TC7.3 which addresses some of other bugs, but the user impact of those other bugs is minor compared to this one.

Wayne

[Jens Didriksen]

"I've sent a link to this thread to my local Cisco people..."

As have I, and I suggest anyone reading this thread, who will be, or are, affected by this "feature" do the same.

/jens

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[Wayne DeNardi]

Thanks Jens.

Hopefully the others will do the same as some of "your people" and "my people" are likely to be the same guys (ML and TW).

Wayne

[Chris Swinney]

Snap, although I rarely seem to get a response with such requests.

[juriss]

We manage 300+ endpoints that run TC software and we use web snapshots for several reasons..  we are happy with the way the snapshots work in TC7.2.1

Unfortunately we will likely be forced to upgrade to TC7.3 in response to the Poodle and or NTPd vulnerabilities. (Security and privacy will always win out over convenience and operational issues)

I know that we will need to expend lots of time and effort that we do not have to notify and explain the warning message to all of our users.

Will camera support be removed to insure visual privacy?

[Jens Didriksen]

Unfortunately we will likely be forced to upgrade to TC7.3 in response to the Poodle and or NTPd vulnerabilities.

NTPd vulnerabilities has not been fixed in TC7.3 though; see https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCus27007

/jens

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[juriss]

Jens - Thanks... I should have been more clear

We are aware that Poodle was fixed in TC7.3 and that no fixed software exists for ntpd yet... It may be TC7.31. or TC7,4 or TC8, etc

Whatever release has the ntpd fix in it, we will likely be forced by our security folks to role it out to all TC systems.

As an added bonus, since we are at TMS 13.2...  we have to manually upgrade each end point via the web interface and I hope we do not have to do it twice, once for Poodle and once for ntpd.

We are working a SQL database issue that is preventing an successful upgrade to 14.5    (Once we are TMS 14.5, these upgrades would go faster and be less painful)

So we have to do two manual software upgrades on 300+ systems and end up on a software that version where we do not like the web snapshot behavior.

And... since we are not a CUCM shop yet, (VCS Only) there is little if any feature enhancements for us in these recent and upcoming releases

All pain and no pleasure

[Jens Didriksen]

Heard from our partner last night that this issue is popping up all over the place and that "a number of universities are not happy with the change" - they'll be contacting Cisco and explain to them that "the whole of the Queensland tertiary sector is not welcoming the update"...

Haven't seen such an epic #fail since TMS 9..... :p

/jens

[Tom Kalikajaros]

TC 7.3.2 landed but nothing in release notes about change or improvements to Web snapshots.

Jens, did you get any feedback/followup from Cisco?