Our first video challenge: Share your top Meraki tip — and win big!

[CarolineS]

It has been a little while since we ran a Community Challenge — but I think this one will be the best yet! It certainly has the best prizes.

This time around, we’re trying something a little different — VIDEOS! We want to learn how YOU use Meraki.

This Month’s Challenge

Submit a short video explaining how you use Meraki to save you time. What’s a tip or trick you would pass along to a friend?

UPDATE: Congratulations to @BrothersTM for winning our GRAND PRIZE — a Meraki MV — for his Switch Port Tagging video!

Here’s our own response to this challenge for inspiration, produced by Technical Evangelist @AdamB:

How to enter

Submit your 30 second to 2 minute-long video in a comment on this blog post before 1 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday, July 9.

Making a video is easy! You can use a screencasting utility such as screencastify or record yourself with your smartphone.

Once you have the video file, you can upload it directly via the comment editor or embed a video posted on YouTube or another video site, as shown below: Step 1. Select "Video" from the editor

Step 2. Upload your video directly or embed one from YouTube

If you upload your video directly, please use MP4 or WMV format.* 

You are welcome to submit multiple videos! Please submit each in a separate comment on this blog post.

What can I win?

Since it’s a lot of work to create a video, EVERYONE** who enters the contest will receive a pair of our awesome argyle socks!

A team here at Meraki will narrow the submissions to the top 3 (based on accuracy, creativity, and production quality), who will win argyle socks PLUS a Meraki polo shirt and hat.

You, the community, will then vote on these top 3 submissions, determining the winner of… drum roll…

… a Meraki MV in the model of your choosing (21, 12, 71)!

So, in summary…

1. Submit a video in a comment on this blog post by 1 p.m. Pacific Time on July 9, 2018 → Win Meraki argyle socks
2. Meraki will narrow it down to the top 3 → Win Meraki argyle socks AND a Meraki polo AND a Meraki hat
3. Community will vote for the grand prize winner → Win Meraki argyle socks AND a Meraki polo AND a Meraki hat AND a Meraki MV, in the model of your choosing, with a 3-year license

Start your cameras (or screen-capture apps!)

* All accepted video formats: H.264, MPEG-4 (MP4), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.261, H.263, Motion-JPEG, VP-6, WMV-8, WMV-9, or VC-1. Note that .MOV videos are not supported, but can be converted to a supported format via an online MOV converter.

** EVERYONE = community members who meet the eligibility criteria and submit video(s) that adhere to the contest rules

The fine print

• Entries must be submitted by 1 p.m. Pacific Time on July 9, 2018 as a comment on this blog post
• Entries must be in a video format, between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long, and answer the question “How do you use Meraki to save you time?”
• Multiple entries are allowed. Please submit each video as a separate comment. Each participant receive one pair of socks regardless of the number of entries. 
• Prizes are subject to availability.
• Full terms, conditions, and eligibility information 

[SLR]

Awesome! This is one of my favorite features as well. Saves us a lot of time too! Great video!

[BrothersTM]

Switch port tagging in 2 minutes flat.  Huge time saver for me.  It's a bit rushed, but maybe you get the idea.  I tag all of my ports initially with default tags of "empty", "odd", and "even".  I also further disable all of the ports.  I then clone this config to all of the other switches of the same model...48 port to 48 port and 24 port to 24 port.  Then once I know what will be plugged where, I add more tags such as "data", "wifi", "cam", "sfp", "voip", etc.  Also, as I add those tags I remove the empty tag and enable the port.  Once all ports in the entire network have been tagged.  Then using the switch ports page, I search for a single tag...select all...and edit a single time for all of those ports whether it's 10 or 10,000.  I repeat for the remaining tags.

[CarolineS]

@BrothersTM - thanks for submitting the first entry! Hooray!

[CarolineS]

BTW, ya'll - feel free to give kudos to entries as they come in. We'll be doing a separate voting round for the grand prize, so these initial kudos are just to show support (and they may influence the Meraki panel of judges that will be narrowing down to the top three participants 😉). Kudos away!

[PhilipDAth]

Today I am sick in bed with a viral lung infection.  Microsoft released a security update for the Windows 10 RDP client, which broke an application one of my clients uses. So I just needed to get it fixed as fast as I could so I could go back to bed.  The client has a distributed work force across the country with no central office, and contacting each of the individual people and arrange a time to fix their machines and then doing the fix would have taken a huge amount of time.  Systems Manager to the rescue!

[Sfrondoni]

@BrothersTM Love your video. Hope you win the contest! 

[Adam]

What do you guys use to record the videos?

[PhilipDAth]

I used a Chrome plugin called Screencastify.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/screencastify-screen-vide/mmeijimgabbpbgpdklnllpncmdofkcpn

[PhilipDAth]

ps. I was actually thinking about just using a mobile phone to do the video as well.

[BrothersTM]

I also use Screencastify.  Simple and does the job...for free.

[AStoddard]

Went for more on the humor side, I suppose if I had time I could find a screen capture software to also show what I reference in the video. Maybe I'll go back.

[CarolineS]

Nice, @AStoddard! You can always submit another entry if you decide to screencast - multiple entries are allowed 🙂

[PhilipDAth]

I thought @BrothersTM did such a good job describing switch port tagging thjat I decided to do a follow up on switch ports and using the search "language" for finding things. 

I work on lots of different customer networks, and while tags are great, I can't possibly remember the tags being used by all the different people who ask me to look at their network.  Hence the need for good searching.

[PhilipDAth]

A day in my life trouble shooting with Meraki. I'm based in New Zealand.  A new customer in the USA asks for help with one of their sites in India.  The short story - Uplink monitoring, SDN policy and packet capture to the rescue.

[mando]

Wow, these are all great!  This is a good topic..real world Meraki efficiency tips.  I just came here to learn some...keep them coming. 

[Adam]

Clearly I had to put on my Meraki socks to make this. 

[GaryShainberg]

Hi there all,

I have two video tips I will be uploading, I hope they help someone:

Tip 1:

[GaryShainberg]

And this is the second of my thoughts / tips, this time with a Cellular device on MX's

I hope this helps someone

[CHN]

This video is currently being processed. Please try again in a few minutes.

[SergeRobert1]

Hello

This is a short video about the baseline of the Dashboard. The status about the devices are easily found. Daily, This informations are the datas of reality.

[PhilipDAth]

@CHN I think you might need to convert your video to MP4 and upload it again. 

[geoffbernard]

Hi guys. Sorry I'm late for this contest. Been on a well-deserved vacation.

Physically locating access points on a map are very helpful for me. I upload floor plans to the portal to locate the actual WAPs. This is is very helpful when working remote. I hope you guys this tip helpful as well!

[geoffbernard]

Security - security - security.

My top 4 tips to secure a Meraki network by leveraging the full-stack!

[geoffbernard]

I still say the killer (& time-saving) feature of Meraki is the site to site VPN. My somewhat humerus take on non-Meraki vs Meraki site to site VPN setup. 

Please be kind - this was literally the first video I ever edited!

[andy1]

Meraki and Alexa. Many people say that this is all gimmick, but it certainly helped my customer to achieve what he wanted. Gimmick? I think not 😉 https://youtu.be/D5A-HEHZwWo

[geoffbernard]

@andy1 Now that is really cool. Are you planning/willing to share the code you used?

[marcobreto]

Hello there! Here's my tip! 🙂

https://youtu.be/U5UK6VJlPuA

[CarolineS]

Thanks to everyone who entered! Submissions are now closed. Stay tuned for the announcement of the top 3 entries on Wednesday (July 11). The community will then vote on those three entries to determine the grand prize winner.

[CarolineS]

And, we have a winner!! Congratulations to @BrothersTM for receiving the most votes for his video tip, Switch Port Tagging