DNAC-Proximity-App

Proximity App leveraging Cisco DNA Center APIs

As companies work to ensure the safety of their workforce returning to the physical office, leveraging current network infrastructure and APIs to aid with contact tracing will be paramount.

We will leverage the new Cisco DNA Center Proximity API and Notification APIs with ChatOps to allow teams within a company to trace a pandemic positive employee, generate contact tracing report and respond quickly to keep their employees safe.

Application Architecture overview

Below is the overall architecture we will be putting together.

Requirements

1. Have access to an instance of Amazon Web Services.
2. A Webex Account
3. Access to Cisco DNA Center with Release 2.1.2.x or above

Getting Started

Step 1: Setup AWS - API Gateway

Before we start constructing our application we need to make sure we have all the dependencies configured and setup.
Let's start by setting up our API gateway in AWS. We will leverage it as a receiver for all the Webhooks leveraged in this app.

⚠️ This portion of the application can also be implemented using Flask

Setup three different API Endpoint:

1. Receive Webex messages webhook
2. Receive Webex Adaptive Cards attachment webhook
3. Receive DNA Center Proximity Event webhook

Setup API Gateway

Deploy API to Stage:

Upon successfully creating your instance of Proximity API Gateway from template you will see three endpoints created:

1. {{AWS-URI}}/bot - This endpoint will be used as the targetURL for messages webhook in Webex
2. {{AWS-URI}}/form - This endpoint will be used as the targetURL for attachment webhook in Webex
3. {{AWS-URI}}/dnac - This endpoint will be leveraged to receive Cisco DNA Center proximity events

⚠️ We will use the above endpoints in our subsequent steps.

Step 2: Setup AWS - Lambda

Now that we've setup all the endpoints. Each endpoint will receive a webhook event and pass the data to a Lambda function to process it.

ℹ️ What is Lambda?

let's build out our lambda functions and attach each to our API Gateway

ℹ️ How to deploy a Lambda function

1. Bot Messages event Webhook handler:

Have a peek at the lambda/bot-msgs code folder, this is your first lambda function. Create it.

This Lambda function:

• Will capture the payload sent to {{AWS-URI}}/bot endpoint via Webex Messages Webhook.
• Parse the JSON payload in bot_msg_handler() python function.
• Response to user with Adaptive Card UI found in card.json to capture user input

Once deployed, link /bot POST Method to Lambda function bot-msgs in API Gateway

2. Adaptive Cards AttachmentActions event Webhook handler:

The second webhook we need to handle is when user "Submits" the Form posted by our bot.
This data needs to be passed to another Lambda function and parsed. have a peek at /lambda/form-submit code folder. Create it similarly to the step above.

This Lambda function:

• Will capture the response from the Adaptive Cards form sent to {{AWS-URI}}/form endpoint via Webex AttachmentActions Webhook.
• Parse the JSON payload in post_response(form_data) python function
• Initiates an API Call to Cisco DNA Center and passes user entered values to /client-proximity in client_proximity(client_username, days, resolution)

Once deployed, link /form POST Method to Lambda function form-submit in API Gateway

3. Cisco DNA Center NETWORK-CLIENTS-3-506 event Webhook handler:

The final webhook we need to handle is the data coming back from Cisco DNA Center based on the parameter we passed.
This data will be passed to the same Lambda function as our form submission function. simply point API gateway resource
/dnac to the Lambda function form-submit

⚠️ If you chose to render the Client Proximity Data from DNAC in a nicely formatted PDF file. use the provided code in /Lambda/proximity-report

Step 3: Setup Webex and Cisco DNA Center Event Webhooks

Now that your infrastructure is in place. You will need to make sure you API Gateway is deployed to stage (see Step 1) and capture the URL to each endpoint.

1. Webex Messaging and Attachment Actions Webhook Registration:

Create two different webhooks under your bot's Bearer Token

• Make a POST request to /v1/webhooks

⚠️ When creating your Webex Event Webhook make sure you are not using your personal API Token rather your bot's

• For Messaging events your payload should look something like this, targetUrl here should be pointing to API Gateway endpoint created on Step 1:

{
  "name": "My Messaging Webhook",
  "targetUrl": "https://{{API GATEWAY URL}}/bot",
  "resource": "messages",
  "event": "created"
}

• For Attachment Actions Event Webhook your body payload should look similar to this:

{
  "name": "My Messaging Webhook",
  "targetUrl": "https://{{API GATEWAY URL}}/form",
  "resource": "attachmentActions",
  "event": "created"
}

2. Cisco DNAC Center Event Webhook Registration:

• Create an Event Destination - This tells DNAC where to ship off the network events to, in this case to our final API gateway endpoint /dnac

• Create a subscription to the network event id NETWORK-CLIENTS-3-506 which is the Client Proximity Webhook and assign the newly created destination

SUCCESS

You have successfully built an entire application around Cisco DNA Center's Client Proximity API. The one thing to note here is that this API endpoint is not only pandemic related but you can easily use it to cater for your VIP clients on your network and assure an always on connection for their devices. The combination of ChatOps and Network Programmability can be super useful and powerful!