Bulk Network Creation

[BryceC]

Greetings all!

We are working with a customer, and taking care of their Meraki Dashboard responsibilities for all of their locations (500+).  To speed up the configuration/staging process, we claimed all of the AP serial numbers into a "Test" network.  That way, the APs could be staged in bulk, not just per site.  As the weeks have progressed, I have been manually creating networks and moving the proper APs into the specific networks that they will be assigned to.  I was looking into the bulk network creation tool and think this would be phenomenal for me to use.  However, it gives me an error when trying to create the networks that I can't use the APs because they existing in another network already.  And, since the serial number is a required field to use the bulk network creation tool, I can't solely perform an upload for just the networks; where I could then just move the APs from network to network. 

Has anyone ran into this before, or know how I can work around this so I can use the upload tool?

[HodyCrouch]

I love the bulk network creation tool.  After a bit of training for the project manager, he was able to create spreadsheets that I could (almost) drop in.

I assume you have a good reason for staging the APs.  In some large deployments, I haven't even taken the APs out of the box before they got to the final site location.  The warehouse learned how to scan the AP serial numbers from the side of the box and send them over.  The only extra work was taking a sharpie and writing a big #1, #2, etc. on the box and noting that value with the serial number.  At installation time, they noted which AP was placed in each location.

If you don't stage the APs, the bulk creation tool works great.

For your issue, have you tried removing the APs from your test network and then unclaiming the APs in dashboard?  Make sure you wait a little while, as you won't be able to immediately reclaim (through the bulk creation tool).  I've never seen an exact time, but in my experience, it's longer than a cup of coffee, but shorter than lunch 🙂

[MRCUR]

You'll need to remove the AP's from the staging network. You don't need to unclaim them, but they can't be in a network. 

Also, the network you want to put them into can't yet exist. If you already have the networks created, you can use the import tool to put the AP's into a temp network and then move the AP's into the correct network.