Please incorporate end-of-sale and end-of-support dates into the dashboard

[JoelG]

Please add end-of-sale and end-of-support dates into the device hardware inventory columns and additionally provide configurable per-network alert settings to be alerted a configurable number of days (at least 730) in advance of the same dates so we can budget for replacements the year prior to end-of-support

[BlakeRichardson]

How do you budget for other equipment that is not Meraki and doesn't have a dashboard?

You should be replacing equipment based on a lifecycle that you determine i.e. 3-7 years. 

[JoelG]

Thankfully, all the hardware I'm responsible for is Meraki hardware... I'm just looking for the dashboard to make all our admin lives a little easier than it currently is. 😀

We do our budgets in the 3rd quarter each year to replace anything reaching end-of-support the following year.

[PhilipDAth]

I can tell you are thinking like a medium to large size entity with formal systems in place.  🙂

There are also many customers with 20 or fewer employees who have no such systems.  Frequently they have no IT people at all, and a single business owner who looks after everything.

I have know some large enterprises with many business units (often orchestrated trough holding companies), and although their finance departments have inventory tracking and appreciation schedules, there is such a large disconnect between where they are and the people operating the equipment (potentially in complete differently legal entities but in the same purchasing group), and the authority chain required to authorise equipment replacement that it simply can't happen.

At least this way the operations team could easily click on a column to sort inventory, and try and push for replacement through their channels.

[JoelG]

Well-said.  Thanks for your input.  Your 3rd paragraph describes our situation well.  We deal with a significant number of 3rd-party budget approvers for networks we manage on their behalf.

Does anyone enjoy manually cross-referencing https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Other_Topics/Meraki_End-of-Life_(EOL)_Produc... against their in-use inventory? 😉

[rhbirkelund]

I have a python script that builds a list of devices from the Inventory, based on what has an EoL announcement, and those so for all organizations I have access to.

[PhilipDAth]

You know what people are going to ask for now, right?  🙂

[rhbirkelund]

😉

There's some company specifics in it, but it's primarily based off of https://github.com/Francisco-1088/merakiLifecycleReport which unfortunately isn't being maintained anymore.

It lacks some support for newer models, as well as the very annoying inconsistent way that Meraki keeps posting EoL products.

Let me see if I can make mine publicly available...

[jimmyt234]

Interested in this if you do make it public 👀

[alemabrahao]

For Cisco equipment such as Catalyst, Access Points, etc. You have the option of collecting information via Cisco Collector using the Smart Net Total Care website.

[PhilipDAth]

I think this would be a brilliant idea!

[PhilipDAth]

I guess we should mention the option that appears in the bottom right hand corner of the dashboard.

[JoelG]

I've done so many times myself and came here with hopes other admins would agree and help me to surface the request to the powers that be. 😀