Cloning switch profiles into multiple templates/Orgs

[HarounSlimani]

Hi community,

We claimed a bunch of new MS130 switches in our Org and I'm looking for a way to automate copying/cloning our existing switch profiles for the new model, it's very painful to create this manually using the dashboard but I suspect it's the only way to do it !!

thanks for any help on that 🙂 

[Alisdair85]

Sadly not, and I agree it is painful! Your suspicions are correct, I have been asking for this API operation since earlier 2021 as part of a Cisco Meraki funded development project, frustratingly you can do absolutely everything programmatically via the API "after" you have created the initial profile, so all port level config, we just need the supported operation to complete the initial profile creation in below screen grab, as when there are tens of configuration templates, with several profiles each, it means ALOT of repetitive, mundane, manual Dashboard UI work, which can go quite wrong (as I've found quite a few times since 2021 - due to fat fingers and flaky eyesight mostly!) 

The only way to programmatically take an approach to this is to use the API to clone a gold star configuration template you have which will (in the background on the private API not public one!) duplicate and create the profiles for you, I've completed this on a number of large retail projects. 

Tagging @Oren and @John_on_API for awareness to see if there are any updates on this one or thought leadership.

[John_on_API]

I would leverage port profiles instead of switch profiles. Several API operations are available in Early Access: https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/search/?q=port%20profile

[Alisdair85]

Thanks John, sadly Port Profiles that are now part of SmartPorts is not an option or solution for many customers, also it's another one of those, where a new feature is developed and released and is not supportive of those customers invested and utilising Configuration Templates, of which there are so many.

It would be best to add the API support/operation for creating 'Switch templates' and not leave it incomplete as its been for many years since the launch of Dashboard API v1 when Configuration Template support got added to the platform API - it has been a source of frustration for a long time, more from a data backup/disaster recovery perspective and not being able to give customers the absolute best and rapid RTO, today its a boring, manual, mundane and error prone repetitive NOC Runbook task rather than an automated task ☹️ - thankfully though we do provide some NOC UI modal prompts to speed it up and remove some elements of manual risk, as we can detect what the different Switch template names were and MS model from the API.

Feature request kindly made on my behalf by Mark Anderson in March 2022, called "Creating via the API Switch Profiles in Configuration Templates" - feature had a different name at the time from 'Switch Templates' as they are known today due to the pending Port Profiles feature release (if my old head recalls correctly!)