Engage Password Overwrite Notification And Other Suggestions

I have been using Netgear AV switches for several years, and primarily use the web UIs.  When Engage came out, I started testing with it, and I found a couple features of this system that really led me to a lot of confusion.  I imagine the majority of Engage installs are for fixed installs with new out of the box switches, but I use these switches for teaching workshops so I'm reconfiguring them and changing the setup all the time.  This kind of configuration is not uncommon on show applications or in rental shops, and as you are pushing Engage these days for multi switches I am likely far from the only one doing a lot of configuration.

Anyway, If I'm understanding correctly, when you set up a switch out of the box (or grab an existing one off the shelf) and want it to work with engage, if you want Fixed IPs and don't want to mess with setting up a DHCP server, you do this first through the web interface, and then onboard the switch.   When you set it up through the web UI, you also enter a password.  In a rental shop application or my lab, I have IPs allocated to each switch and a standard password.

Then when you onboard the switch, you enter the password you created.  You are given the option to select the “Device Default” password or the “Controller Site” password; reading the fine print, it says that use these if it matches what you’ve already got.  

Then--and this is what confused the hell out of me--it seems that Engage OVERWRITES the existing switch password with the site password, >>>even if I do not have the "Use Controller Site Password" selected<<<.    (again, the fine print kind of explains this but I never even read that until recently because I never had that switch set.

And it does this with absolutely no notice that I saw.  If you used the same password in setup as you used for the site, you wouldn’t notice, but if you’re like me, and want to later access the switch by the web UI (either to check something or if you’ve disassembled the network and are using the switch in a different application), if you don’t that the password has been changed, you’ll be (like me) very confused.  I went through this like six times over the last year, and kept just giving up and factory resetting the switch and starting over and abandoning Engage and going back to the web UI.

Finally, I made three different passwords (Switch, Engage, and Site and figured out what was going on, and verified it through ProAV Design support.  All of this confusion could have been eliminated if you simply had a Popup when you go to onboard that says "The existing password will be overwritten with the Engage Site password."  This little pop up would have saved me many hours of confusion and frustration.

Another thing that’s confusing in Engage is the “Save” button. When you’re on the web UI, the “Save” obviously is going to write the config file of the switch, since there’s no place the web browser would store it.  When you’re new to Engage, it’s not really clear if this is going to save to the switches or to a local file.  Once you go through it and see the writing process it makes more sense, but just changing that button to “Save to Connected Hardware” would be a lot more clear for people starting out.

Finally, it would be really great if the columns would resize with the window size.  I've often been confused when running on my laptop because some button is off the side of the screen and not visible.  I have learned to look at the tiny scroll bars and move around on every screen, but it would be a lot easier (especially on smaller laptop screens) if the columns would resize automatically.  Also the scroll bars would be a lot easier to use if they were bigger.

Thanks, John