Improving VLAN Visibility with PBA (Policy Based Automation) in cnMaestro

Is there an easy way in cnMaestro to check if a device on a port is assigned to a specific VLAN via PBA? In the screenshot I’ve shared, the device is placed in the VLAN, but there’s no straightforward way to confirm this. The “*” behind might hint at it, but it’s not very clear because hybrid will also show *

It would be helpful if the interface explicitly indicated this with something like “overwritten by PBA” or “set by PBA.” Alternatively, using two asterisks and providing a legend to signify that it was configured via PBA could work as well. Additionally, knowing which specific PBA (e.g., the PBA name) applied the setting would be extremely useful for troubleshooting and understanding the current configuration.

Hi Andy_Stevens,

Currently the * is displayed to indicate the configuration in the PBA action. For example, if a PBA action is to set a port to hybrid, therefore when PBA is applied to the port, the * will be shown next to the “Hybrid”, although the port was already statically configured as hybrid. Same behavior for VLAN configuration.

In the future we can improve the display by showing the * only for the configuration that is indeed modified and added by the PBA action. For the example above, the * will not be shown next to the “Hybrid” mode because port is already a hybrid prior to the PBA application. Let us know if you have any concern with this solution.

Thanks

Thanks for your reply TamN.

Right, I understand your explanation that the asterisk (*) is displayed when a port is manually set to access/hybrid/trunk anyway, so there is no clear indicator. However, not showing the * when it was set prior manually doesn’t really help ← if I understand your question correctly.

Scenario:
When troubleshooting port settings, for many IT admins, it’s very useful to know if PBA (Policy-Based Automation) made any changes to the port. If so, this should be indicated clearly, perhaps with two asterisks (**) or a small “PBA” label next to it VLANs field, without losing the current identicators of settings it manually to access/hybrid. A more granular approach could allow selecting the PBA label to navigate directly to the policy that applied it.

This way, we can immediately tell if the configuration was set manually prior to PBA or modified by it.

The goal should be to make it easy to identify whether a setting is manual, default, or PBA overwritten. Providing this clarity directly in cnMaestro, without requiring us to log into the switch and run additional commands. This would be very helpful, especially when managing multiple PBA policies across switches. I hope this helps to evaluate the concern / possible improvement of cnMaestro.

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