There’s a moment every December when the world feels like it’s running on pure magic. Networks hit peak demand. Sales teams sprint to close the quarter. Customer service teams solve urgent requests. Packages appear on doorsteps.
Every workplace—from retail to healthcare to manufacturing to offices—becomes a high-performance workshop. Not the storybook workshop we grew up imagining. A real one. Fast. Flexible. Distributed. Always on.
If Santa had to run it, even he’d trade the legacy sleigh for something smarter and more powerful. Because to future-proof workplaces in the modern enterprise, magic doesn’t scale, but AI does.
As I look across the Cisco portfolio, I’m struck by one simple truth: The biggest gifts a workplace can receive aren’t gadgets, they’re technologies that remove friction, unlock productivity, and help people do their best work.
AI isn’t a gift under a tree waiting to be unwrapped. It’s already here—not as hype or holiday sparkle, but as real operational horsepower. It’s the engine quietly powering the world’s most important workshops today—the ones you lead.
This season, I want to share some AI innovations that are already transforming how teams collaborate, connect, build, and maintain mission-critical environments that keep the world moving. Think of these human + AI teams not as mythical helpers, but as practical intelligence built to deliver reliability on a global scale. With a nod to “The 12 Days of Christmas,” here are 12 gifts of AI for your workshop—sent with true love from Cisco.
Let’s start with presents for the ground floor of operations: the heart of your network.
Intelligence for NetOps
Gift #1: AI-assisted troubleshooting
Every holiday workshop runs on one precious resource: knowing what’s happening right now. Cisco AI Assistant puts that visibility at your fingertips, giving you a live conversational window into your entire network—without hunting through dashboards or digging through menus.
Ask a simple question, like “How’s my organization doing?” “Any anomalies today?” or “Who are my top clients?” and Cisco AI Assistant assembles a full-picture response in seconds. In the Meraki dashboard, it brings together health summaries, client insights, policy changes, and performance trends in clear, human language and generates complementary data visualizations. It also adds deep, internet-aware intelligence to ThousandEyes Views Explanations, distilling complex synthetics data into plainspoken and trustworthy explanations that tell you instantly what’s happening and why.
Whether you’re opening the day’s operations, preparing for peak traffic, or keeping tabs on dozens of sites, Cisco AI Assistant turns complexity into clarity.
Gift #2: Automated, scalable operations
The holiday season brings a surge of changes: pop-up locations, seasonal staff, expanded hours, fluctuating loads. When your team is stretched thin, every configuration change becomes a chance for error. Cisco Workflows automates and executes multi-step tasks and enforces best practices with repeatable, scalable, AI-operated IT workflows. When a transportation hub needs to validate hundreds of access points before the morning traveler surge, Workflows with the Cisco AI Assistant automatically tests device health, verifies compliance, applies updates, and alerts the team—all while the coffee is still brewing.
Gift #3: Visual network planning
Every holiday workshop needs a single place where teams can cut through the chaos, see the full picture, and move with the kind of crisp clarity only AI-powered reasoning can deliver. Cisco AI Canvas does exactly that, pulling live telemetry from Meraki, ThousandEyes, Splunk, and beyond into one generative user interface (UI) workspace where everyone sees the same truth—at the same time.
When the season hits full tilt and you experience slow Wi-Fi, lagging checkouts, or a policy misfire, simply ask Cisco AI Canvas to investigate an issue or ticket. It connects the dots in seconds, pinpoints the real root cause, and drafts agentic resolution processes to validate and apply targeted fixes with full visibility and human oversight. With one click, you can bring in NetOps, SecOps, or anyone else needed, transforming your ticket into a fast, focused, shared resolution that keeps the workshop humming.
Gift #4: Adaptive, self-optimizing connectivity
The wireless network is your workshop’s heartbeat. Nothing strains it like dense crowds. With Cisco AI-Enhanced Radio Resource Management (RRM), you can continuously optimize wireless performance with AI-driven channel planning and frequency adjustments. For instance, during a massive on-campus event, as students move between auditoriums in waves, AI RRM detects the surge, adjusts power levels, reassigns channels, and balances clients automatically to minimize interference and maintain the smoothest experience possible.
Gift #5: Accelerated diagnosis with AI packet capture
Troubleshooting packet issues shouldn’t feel like digging through mountains of wrapping paper to find one missing label. AI packet capture enables you to capture, filter, and diagnose packet-level problems faster with AI-assisted analysis. At a healthcare clinic, for example, where Extended Maintenance Release (EMR) traffic starts timing out during check-ins, packet capture highlights the problematic flows and suggests likely causes—saving both time and patient frustration.
Gift #6: Smarter, more secure spaces
Modern workshops depend on physical spaces as much as on digital infrastructure. Meraki smart cameras bring built-in camera intelligence: detecting people and vehicles, tracking occupancy, analyzing motion patterns, and generating insights right at the edge, without extra servers. And with Meraki MV Sense, teams can extend that intelligence with custom computer-vision models tailored to their environment. In a busy fulfillment center, for example, MV Sense can flag unusual movement around high-value inventory during the night shift and alert security instantly, turning what could have been a major incident into a non-event.
AI-driven collaboration: boosting team performance
As we move upstairs from the ground floor, our gift-giving shifts to another critical operational factor: how people work together. No workshop—legendary or otherwise—runs well without a team that can see and hear each other and stay aligned. Here are a few AI innovations that enhance collaboration:
Gift #7: People-focused video experiences
Holiday operations stretch teams across rooms, sites, and continents, challenging collaboration. With Frames mode on Cisco devices, AI and smart camera techniques dynamically crop video feeds and maximize screen utilization to give everyone a better view during meetings. For instance, in a hybrid design review where half the team clusters around a single table, Frames makes each contributor equally visible no matter where they sit.
Gift #8: Environmental awareness
Workshops are dynamic environments where conditions like noise, occupancy, airflow, temperature, and utilization all fluctuate. Workspace insights (from Cisco Devices and Cisco Spaces) automatically monitors and optimizes these factors. For example, when a conference room gets too warm during a planning sprint, workspace insights alert facilities to adjust conditions and improve comfort without interrupting the meeting.
Gift #9: Distraction-free calls
When the workshop hits peak volume, communication becomes a lifeline. Noise is more than a nuisance—it derails productivity. With Webex noise removal, distracting sounds are eliminated so teams can focus. For instance, during a support call next to a busy warehouse, Webex noise removal wipes out forklift noise, chatter, and holiday chaos—leaving only the speaker’s voice.
Gift #10: Effortless meeting recall
Fast-moving seasons make tracking decisions difficult. AI-generated meeting notes (Webex Suite) automatically capture key points, assignments, and next steps from meetings. This ensures that as attendees leave a cross-functional call, they are not scrambling to remember details; instead, they are aligned.
Elevating the frontline: AI for customer experience
Finally, there’s the frontline experience, the part of the workshop where customers rely on you most.
Gift #11: Responsive, conversational support
Customers expect fast, intuitive help—even more so during the holidays. Webex AI Agent for the contact center delivers personalized, conversational experiences across channels, resolving inquiries and fulfilling intents efficiently. Instead of waiting on hold or shouting “customer representative” at an interactive voice response (IVR) bot, customers get quick, natural answers that resonate with holiday spirit in every interaction.
Gift #12: Seamless handoffs
When call volume surges, Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center becomes your workshop’s most reliable helper. It provides accurate, automated summaries from AI agents and IVR transfers so customers don’t have to repeat themselves. Even during the busiest season, this ensures a smooth, frustration-free customer experience.
AI—the engine behind every workshop
When an enterprise becomes a busy workshop, the line between chaos and calm comes from the intelligence behind your operations. Intentional AI that links every layer and space of your business enables information, context, and actions to all move as one.
Across networking, collaboration, security, operations, and customer experience, Cisco AI is already delivering that intelligence today:
- Proactively optimizing performance and offering the best view
- Simplifying complex operations
- Answering inquiries and fulfilling customer intent
- Protecting users and systems
- Empowering every team—from NetOps to customer support
As you plan for 2026, think of Cisco not just as a tech partner but as an architect of intelligent workplaces—built for agility, resilience, and whatever the future delivers. Because the real magic of the season isn’t the gift itself—it’s the system that makes delivery possible.
Let’s build that future together.