VQ Conference Manager DMA - Device Templates and Template Modules

Device Templates in DMA is the function dedicated to device configuration management. That is, the automatic application of known, working, stable configurations to Cisco video collaboration devices. While DMA is intended to replace and, in many cases, replicate the functionality of TMS devices, we have made some enhancements regarding Templates.

Many of our customers have very large deployments of collaboration devices and, as a result, large collections of Templates. For example, one customer has well over one hundred unique Templates. And it’s easy to understand how this can happen. As an organisation grows over time, we see different groupings Templates: for example, VIP systems vs regular ones; public spaces vs private spaces; one region compared to another; one system type vs another.

And this presents a potential problem. For example, an organisation might want to change the standard network settings of all devices in a specific region and have 20 unique Templates containing those standard settings applied to the region's devices. This requires 20 separate edits, which is labour-intensive and error-prone.

The VQ approach to address this is modular. It allows grouping common settings across different devices and device types into modules. This allows, for example, all the network settings for a particular region in one module, all the security settings common to all devices globally in another module, all the VIP systems in a region in yet another module, and so on. We can then have model-specific modules, e.g., Desk Pro, Room Kit, and Webex Boards.

From this, Device Templates are built of collections of these modules at run time. So, in the original customer example, having 100 Device Templates is more easily managed. All Templates contain the same common settings Template modules, and by simply making a change in one module, that change is reflected across all the Device Templates that reference it.

In this way, if a change to the network settings for one region is needed, that change is made once to be reflected across all in-scope devices.