Right Now with Density Rules

The Right Now App enables you to get real time visibility into people count at your locations

Right Now provides a real time count of the number of people within a physical space & how it compares with the historical average.

Use Cases & Value

Measure and monitor the count of people within your buildings

Active count of visitors

Count of devices/people who were spotted in the location during the last 10 minutes

Total count of visitors 

Count of visitors that were present during the past ‘X’ hours (X being the threshold defined across individual verticals). For example – this could be 3 hours for Retail and 8 Hours for Workspaces.

Density Trigger

It also allows users to set limits beyond which a trigger is activated. A feature that is becoming increasingly important in the post Covid world.

Associated device count

‘Right Now’ app currently counts only associated devices. Associated Devices: No. of devices associating with network.

Probing & Camera based counts (Coming Soon)

Associated Probing & Camera based counts are coming soon.
Associated + Probing: The above + devices not associated but from whom the network is receiving probing signals (this option is currently being developed)
Cameras: Entrance based cameras + proprietary trip wire computation to distinguish. (This option is currently being trialed)

Please complete the following pre-requisite for access to Right Now

Step 1: Complete Cisco Spaces Onboarding Process

Have an account provisioned on the Cisco Spaces platform. If you don’t have an active account, please email spaces.cisco.com
Create user account – Accept invitation from Cisco Spaces & setup password
Onboard wireless network – Connect your network to Cisco Spaces by using our DIY setup guide – https://spaces.cisco.com/setupguide
Setup your Location Hierarchy using the best practices guide https://spaces.cisco.com/setupguide/location_hierarchy.html

P.S. : The above process needs to be done only once. It is not repeated for every app. Please ignore if already completed.

Please take a moment to check if you’re able to successfully setup the app. Click on ‘yes’ to indicate it’s working. And on ‘Not yet’ if you need any assistance.

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Learn how we filter data to reduce noise & how you can increase the accuracy of your counts

Current Methodology

Count of associated devices is used as a proxy for people count.
User-id if available is used for deduplication.
Static devices will be filtered using manufacturers name and/or SSID
Count of probing devices is being incorporated but is likely to be less accurate than the count of associated devices.
Camera based option with a higher accuracy level is also available.

Implications for verticals

Count closer to actual numbers in verticals like Workspaces, Education and Hotels where most of the devices associate.
Count significantly lower in verticals like Retail, Airports, Hospitals etc with a significant % of guests who may or may not associate.
We are attempting to narrow this gap by incorporating probing devices. This could narrow the gap between estimate and actual count.
While probing can increase the % of devices counted it is not a very accurate measure and has the added risk of counting transients and the inability to deduplicate multiple devices owned by a single individual

Prerequisites for accuracy of counts

Mandating all devices to be associated. And providing information on list of SSID’s and who can access them
Distinct SSID for static device. Alternatively tagging all static devices
Clear user-id to ensure deduplication. Includes standard user-id for employees, students etc and some form of identity for guest users
Share actual numbers wherever available for Cisco Spaces to use as test sets in our internal algorithms.
Clearly defined Location Hierarchy to ensure correct attribution of people counts to spaces. Clearly defined sub-locations if data is needed at that level
Time zones to be clearly defined across individual locations. Format being US/New York.
Area in sq. ft at the location and sub-location level for density computations
Clearly defined limit beyond which alert is triggered.