Building onboarding checklist

This is the portal side of onboarding a building. It ends when a technician can be dispatched into the building with a job sheet; the fibre, the racking and the first patch happen on site and are recorded as they happen.

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0. Access

• Every operator who onboards buildings needs an admin login in the operator portal. Check Administration → Users and that the person has signed in once.
• Technicians get their own technician sign-in from Installs & Dispatch → Technicians → Set up sign-in (see CPE provisioning).

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1. The building record

Site Manager → New site → Building. Fill in what the platform derives names and identifiers from: Check the Units tab afterwards: the register must show the real unit numbers (per-floor layout when floors differ — use Change layout → Per level).

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2. Rooms

Documentation → Rooms. One MER exists by default; add a SER per secondary telecom room (one per floor in a riser building). Put the room’s real designation and backboard into the note (for example Communications Room B105, backboard TBB-M). Rooms become NetBox locations; the ROOM segment of every unit identifier resolves through the switch that stands in the room.

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3. Switch

Equipment → Stock → Assign to building (room: MER). The assign mints the canonical name (…|MER|SW01), takes the next free OAM address and mirrors the device into NetBox. Then on the switch:

• Credential set — pick the shared set for the vendor; never type a login into the switch row.
• Switch label SW01 (SW02 …) — the short name the panels, job sheets and the port map use.
• Room — make sure the switch stands in the MER (or the SER it is in).

Golden configuration — this is what the field engineer loads on the switch, at the bench or on site:

1. Equipment → switch → Golden config. Pick the target iBOS line that matches show version on the unit (7.7 default; 7.5 only as a bridge for older firmware — it has no per-port MAC limit, so the switch is upgraded to 7.7 and the default configuration rolled out again afterwards).
2. Download. The file contains the switch login (username and secret from the credential set) — handle it like a password, do not post it in chat.
3. On the switch: enable → configure terminal → paste → end → write. Verify hostname, OAM address and default route against what the portal shows for the switch. If they differ, fix the record in the portal and download again — never edit the file.
4. Once the switch answers on the OAM network the portal picks it up (health, port map); a Golden config drift finding names anything that differs.

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4. Rack and placement

Documentation → Rack → New rack (default: MER Rack 1, 15U — the standard wall rack in the bill of materials; set the real height if the building differs). The rack stands in the MER room. Then Place device: The elevation is what the technician sees on the job sheet (Show rack view).

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5. Patch panel — when the splice plan is known

The panel is the splice panel of the riser, not a mirror of the switch: in a building with more units than switch ports it has 48, 96 or 144 ports (Estoya’s quote names a 144-fibre rack panel) and every unit is spliced onto a rear port once, while only the active units are patched to a switch port on the front. Its port count is a fact from the splice design — create the panel when that design exists (Documentation → Patch plan → New panel, name, port count, rack units), never as a guess. Seed panels (one 1:1 panel per switch) is only right where the panel really is a 1:1 breakout of the switch. The panel is mirrored into NetBox with front and rear ports; place it in the rack (step 4). Later — the patch plan itself. Rear port ↔ unit (the splice) and front port ↔ switch port (the patch) are recorded when they exist: in a first-line rollout the splicer and the patcher fill the sheet once; in a third-line building the technician’s Patched on the job sheet writes each unit’s patch as it is made. Do not pre-fill a plan you have not seen.

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6. Circuits

Circuits → New: the building’s uplink (carrier, hand-off interface, speed) and the connection to the NOC, both planned; set them live at turn-up. The health topology and the technician’s site card read them.

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7. Minting and provisioning — later

Minting a unit’s location needs its effective switch port. In a third-line building that port exists once the unit is patched, so Mint now runs per unit after the first visit (Units → Path to service → mint pending). A first-line rollout mints the whole register after the patch sheet is filled. Provisioning itself is automatic from the CPE’s first contact — see CPE provisioning.

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At a glance