All,
I too have been trying to use this product since it came out with no success, always getting the "UserID is not valid". I have multiple smartnet contracts associated to my CCO id. after a google search today for "Cisco Smart Advisor", I came across a Cisco SmartAdvisor (CSA) user guide, marked as "Cisco Confidential" so I am assuming it is an internal document.
It says the Primary Audience is
- The primary users are Cisco partner sales engineers, who are frequently, but not always, Cisco certified and focused on product sales, though increasingly partners also sell Cisco or their own professional services.
- A secondary user base consists of Cisco Systems Engineers (SEs), from both the product sales side and the services sales side.
- Cisco Advanced Services engineers (NCEs) also use Cisco Smart Advisor tools occasionally for more basic network inventory tasks.
So, in my opinion, it seems that the Solarwinds product is marketed at people that have NCM or those they want to sell it too, but the lynchpin is the Cisco SmartAdvisor service which seems more geared to sales engineers to audit your environment to sell you new equipment. As such, in my quest to get Smart Advisor tool access, I was redirected to www.cisco.com/go/pss to associate my CCO ID with a Cisco Partner.
It seems to me there is a disconnect in intended audience.
I think it is a great idea, but so far seems the execution is just leaving many people frustrated.