Dashboard Branding for MSPs

Configuring a Branding Policy

In order to apply custom branding to Dashboard, a policy (or multiple policies) must be created that override the default settings. These policies can then be applied to different administrators or groups of administrators.

1. Navigate to Organization > Branding.
   Note: If this option does not exist and this organization is part of a Managed Service Provider, please contact Cisco Meraki Support.
2. Create a new policy by clicking Add policy.
3. Click on the new policy (which should be highlighted in yellow).
4. Enter a Name for the policy.
5. Select which users this policy Applies to.
   All admins - Applied to all admin users in this Organization.
   All admins of networks tagged - Applied to all admin users in networks with the selected tag.
   All admins of networks - Applied to all admin users in the selected networks.
   All network admins - Applied to all network-level admin users in the Organization. Organization admins are not included unless explicitly granted network-level permissions.
   All organization admins - Applied to all organization-level admin users in the Organization.
   Specific admins - Applied to the admin users selected.
    
6. Select the desired behavior for each option under Help. To see each of these options in action, explore the Help tab along the left side of the page in Dashboard. Where applicable, behavioral options may include:
   Default or inherit - Use the default setting, unless the setting was previously overridden by another matched policy, in which case that setting will be used.
   Hide - Do not display this page or option.
   Replace - Replace this content with new information. Only available for certain options. When selected, an Edit option will appear in which custom text or HTML can be entered.
   Show - Display this page or option. Used to override a policy matched earlier that used either Hide or Replace.
    
7. If desired, change the Dashboard logo (which appears in the upper left corner of Dashboard) by clicking Change.
   1. Keep in mind the following restrictions:
      • The uploaded image will be resized to a max width of 160px and max height of 40px. When resizing, the image's aspect ratio will be maintained.
      • Recommended image formats are PNG, JPEG, GIF, or PDF.
      • File size should not be greater than 5MB.
      • Total resolution should not be greater than 65,448,100 pixels (8090 x 8090).
   2. Click Upload file and browse for the image to use.
   3. Once uploaded, click on the image to highlight and then click Choose.
8. When finished with the policy, click Update.
9. Then click Save to save any changes to the policies.

To create additional policies for different user groups or behaviors, repeat these steps as needed.

How Branding Policies are Applied

Policies are applied from the top down, with policies lower on the list taking priority. If multiple policies match for a given user, then they will be applied in sequence, with lower policies potentially overriding earlier ones.

If a field is set to "Default or inherit", the policy will not modify that page/content's behavior. If it was the first policy to be matched, then the default behavior will be used. If a higher policy modified the behavior, such as hiding a subtab, then that behavior will be inherited.

Example Policies

In this example, an MSP provides 3 levels of access to administrators of an organization. Customers are always made admins at the network level, with either read-only (RO) or read-write/full (RW) access. MSP admins are granted organization-level permissions. Because of this, 3 branding policies have been created.

1. RO Customer Admins - Applied to all network administrators. Hides the entire 'Help' tab and applies a custom Dashboard logo.
   Who it matches: All customer admins. Since all customer admins are granted permissions at the network level.
   
    
2. RW Customer Admins - Applied to only specific administrators. Shows the 'Help' tab, but hides the 'Cases' subtab, and provides custom content for contacting support.
   Who it matches: Only certain customer admins that have been explicitly added.
   
    
3. MSP Admins - Applied to only organization administrators. Assumes defaults and overrides nothing. Created as a placeholder.
   Who it matches: All organization-level admins. These would be employees of the MSP.
   

In the image below, notice the settings for each policy, and what the actual behavior would be for a user in that group (shown in red).

If evaluating the 'Help' tab option, each administrator type would be processed as follows:

• RO network admin
  Show/Default/Inherit

• Policy	Applied?	Policy Action	Behavior
  RO Customer Admins	Yes	Hide	Hide
  RW Customer Admins	No
  Hide
  MSP Admins	No
  Hide

• RW network admin (assuming they are selected)
  Default/Inherit

• Policy	Applied?	Policy Action	Behavior
  RO Customer Admins	Yes	Hide	Hide
  RW Customer Admins	Yes	Show	Show
  MSP Admins	No
  Show

• Organization admin
  Hide/Show

  Policy	Applied?	Policy Action	Behavior
  RO Customer Admins	No
  Show (Default)
  RW Customer Admins	No
  Show (Default)
  MSP Admins	Yes	Default/Inherit	Show (Default)

Best Practices

Since Dashboard branding is enabled and configured on a per-organization basis, newly created organizations will require branding policies to be re-enabled and re-configured. In order to avoid needless repeating this process, new organizations should be created using the clone org tool. Cloned organizations will retain the branding settings configured on the source organization.