This thread reminds me of a part of the definition of engineering: it's a matter of trade-offs. As I understand it, the Meraki philosophy was something like: hide the grubby details expose fewer nerd-knobs, and (generally) make an easy-to-deploy / solid product for the everyman/woman The trade-off of that approach is what you're describing. Plus, because the UI is all web/cloud/browser oriented, everything that involves exposing a feature in the UI means non-trivial amounts of coding and UI/UX validation / regression testing effort. Unfortunately, that means that, assuming the API is exposing a given feature, the fastest way to turn the nerd-knobs is via one-liner CURL commands against an API element. OMG-we're back to Linux again and hundreds of commands you have to research through MAN pages to find the ones you need, because you only use a few of them and only a few times a year, etc. It would be interesting to see if Meraki would consider a feature that the Asus and Netgear-level SOHO device UIs have had for years: 'Advanced Mode'. This means they go ahead and build a UI for every possible feature in the product and hide it behind 'Advanced', maybe even with a click-thru warning 'this may break your network... you may get fired... your network may accidentally launch missiles if you mess this up...', etc. Then, if an admin, MSP, or even customer needs a nerd-knob, it's already there, no (or hopefully fewer) TAC calls, and all is right with the world. Now we can just spend our time in the make a wish zone asking for features. ;0)
... View more
