Automated Summary Reports – Building the Dashboard
Another powerful reporting tool available in the Dashboard is the ability to generate summary reports for either individual networks or groups of networks (or devices), up to and including the entire organization (as shown in Figure 2-11). Unlike other reporting methods, summary reports can be generated either on demand (from the Organization > Summary Report page) or on a defined schedule and emailed to a list of recipients (as configured on the same page).
Figure 2-11 An Example Summary Report from the Meraki HQ Organization
Summary reports show data over time for the selected device(s) or network(s) and timeframe. This includes, when available, more generic network details such as general usage over time, top SSIDs by usage, or unique client counts and average client usage. Summary reports also provide some more client-specific details such as top client devices by usage and top applications by usage.
Pro Tip
When setting different time periods, data will be smoothed at different rates. Therefore, select appropriate time period granularity for the intended use case.
When generating a summary report, you can filter the networks and devices included in the report based on a combination of an individual Dashboard network or organization, device tag, and SSID (or all SSIDs). The subsequent results are also filtered to display for only the chosen timeframe and to include only the fields selected when creating the report. This all can be configured for either manually generated summary reports or automatically generated summary reports.
Like email alerts, when creating an automated report, you can define the list of recipients uniquely per report, with the additional ability to define the report frequency uniquely for each destination. By doing so, the same report can be generated and sent to different destinations based on the need of each destination. For example, one destination may get a newly generated report each day, while another may get that same report but only once per week. Or, separate reports could be generated, with an automatic daily report going out each day and an automatic weekly report covering the preceding week going out at the end of each week.