Sites, closets, stacks and port evidence

Choose the right level of the record

A site gives location context. Its closets describe physical spaces and their surveys. Network equipment describes the managed device or stack, while the associated assets identify individual physical units. A port record describes a documented use or connection; an observation describes what a device reported. Start with the level relevant to the task rather than editing a convenient name elsewhere.

Before changing a closet, confirm the site, closet identifier, equipment name, management address and physical unit identifiers. Have the survey information or connection evidence available. Your account needs the applicable page and edit permissions, and department ownership can still make a visible record read-only. A working view does not establish that you may edit every device within it.

Give each site a type

Each top-level site has one site type, such as Elementary or Office. The type decides the group a site is listed under, how Analytics groups and filters sites, and whether outages at its sites are urgent. Child locations and storerooms have no site type.

An Administrator EX manages types in Settings › Locations › Site types. Each type has a name for one site and a group name for the heading its sites are listed under. Use Up and Down to set the order groups appear in. Renaming a type renames it everywhere it is shown; saved Analytics views keep following the same type after a rename.

Set a type's outage urgency to Normal or Priority. At a Priority type's sites, network outages are Critical and their alerts are marked URGENT. A Normal type's outages take the severity of the problem.

A type in use cannot simply be deleted. Choose the type its sites move to; the sites move and the type is deleted in one step. A new site saved without a type gets the type its name suggests; check it in the site's details.

To change several sites at once, select them in Settings › Locations and choose Set site type. The change is made in one step and recorded for each site that changed. If the selection includes a child location or a storeroom, nothing is changed.

Navigate from site context to the physical space

1. Open the relevant site and select Closets. Check the site context before choosing an Open closet link; similar closet identifiers can occur at different sites.
2. Review the closet identity and Recorded equipment summary. Read missing service counts as Not recorded, rather than as zero installed lines.
3. Use the Closet sections navigation to open Switches. Expand the relevant equipment with Show detail when you need its front panel or recorded detail.
4. From the site overview, use Inventory assets to reach the site's equipment register when you need the physical asset record rather than the closet survey.
5. If a closet photo is present, use Expand photo to examine it. Closing the photo returns you to the same location; a photograph is supporting context, not a current device reading.

Maintain a closet survey deliberately

Choose Edit closet and review Room and survey. The current fields include Status, Surveyed by, Survey date, Closet ID, Floor and Room / location. These describe the survey and physical space. Record who established the information and when. A later monitoring result does not automatically refresh the survey date or confirm every written note.

Lines patched in describes the service footprint counted at the switch. The screen explicitly distinguishes that from unpatched panel terminations. Keep unknown counts unknown until someone verifies them. The Recorded equipment summary separately presents switch units, recorded stacks, physical links, special ports and assigned UPS units; these are different measures and should not be added together as a device total.

Use Add network equipment only when the equipment is genuinely missing from the survey. Review Device / stack name, Management IP, Vendor, Model and Stack members before saving. Save changes, follow any presented confirmation, and reload the closet to verify the stored result. If another person changed the record, review the current version before reapplying your own correction. Do not repeatedly submit an old form over a conflict.

Read the model diagram as a model diagram

The physical panel is built from the identified chassis model and stack shape. A two-member model may draw many ports even when none has a documented connection. A count such as 0 of 96 recorded describes port records, not 96 successful network measurements. If the model cannot be identified, the panel may say there is no panel to draw.

Open More, then Model and diagram, to review the model used by the drawing. The review dialog can distinguish a physical stack member when more than one is present. Confirm the actual chassis identity before correcting the model; a port layout that looks familiar is not sufficient evidence. Records against reserved ports, ports the chassis does not have, or entries without port numbers are called out separately so they can be investigated rather than silently fitted into the drawing.

Inspect one port or compare several

1. Select a port on the panel. Its information stays in the Port information area after the pointer leaves the tile.
2. Use Control with another port selection to compare multiple ports. Each selected port has its own detail card and Clear control.
3. Use Front or Rear where the model provides those faces. Changing the face does not itself perform another device read or erase the selected port's details.
4. For keyboard use, focus a port and press Enter to select it. Press F2 to move focus to Selected port information.
5. Check the member identifier as well as the port name on a stack. Identically named stack ports on different members are different ports.

Separate records, readings and missing information

Descriptions, status, media, VLANs, PoE, optics, traffic and neighbours can come from different observations. A recent status sample does not make an older optical reading or neighbour observation current. Use each field's available evidence and time, and preserve unknown source information as unknown. Legacy data that cannot be attributed coherently must not be presented as one freshly verified snapshot.

An endpoint list is also evidence, not a complete physical inventory. A port with nothing listed may simply have no learned or retained endpoint information. Likewise, an optic observed by the chassis can exist without an asset record. Establish its identity before linking it to an existing physical asset.

Scroll the table sideways to read all columns.

Keep stack membership and history attached to the right unit

A stack position is not a permanent physical identity. Compare the member's asset or serial information when investigating a replacement. The port workspace clears selection when a member identity changes so that a previous member's selected detail is not carried onto the replacement. Ordinary survey edits that leave the identity unchanged can preserve selection.

Stack history uses membership periods to associate a unit's events with the stack. An event from before a member joined or after it left should not be treated as evidence about the current stack. When explaining a problem, record the site, closet, device, member identity, port and observation time together. This gives another operator enough context to distinguish a device replacement from a changed connection.

Handle failed loads and save conflicts

A failed stored-port request should report that the reading could not be loaded. It should not remain indefinitely labeled as a read in progress, and it is not evidence that the device is offline. Keep recorded details available while investigating the reading failure. Confirm the address and selected member before retrying.

If the closet model cannot hold recon fields or the structured network field is missing, resolve that setup issue with an administrator before expecting a survey to persist correctly. After a successful save, revisit the same closet and equipment to confirm it. These steps verify the record you changed; they do not claim a fresh network test or automatically reconcile every observation with the survey.