August 19, 2014August 5, 2017 by dmacias

Add Connection Profiles to Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client

I enjoy the new VPN client, it’s small and fast, however I hated that you can’t save profiles in the drop down list like you could in the traditional VPN client.

VPNNoProfile

This has been bothering for a long time and kept finding conflicting information on if this was possible or not. Finally got it to work.

VPNProfiles

This is for version 3.1x and Windows 7 let me know if this works for your version and OS.

Create a preferences.xml file in C:\ProgramData\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client\Profile\
Use this format

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<AnyConnectProfile xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/encoding/">
<ServerList>
     <HostEntry>
          <User>dclouduser</User>
          <SecondUser></SecondUser>
          <ClientCertificateThumbprint></ClientCertificateThumbprint>
          <ServerCertificateThumbprint></ServerCertificateThumbprint>
          <HostName>dCloud</HostName>
          <HostAddress>dcloud-rtp-anyconnect.cisco.com</HostAddress>
          <Domain></Domain>
          <Group>ssl_url</Group>
          <ProxyHost></ProxyHost>
          <ProxyPort></ProxyPort>
          <SDITokenType>none</SDITokenType>
          <ControllablePreferences>
          <LocalLanAccess>true</LocalLanAccess></ControllablePreferences>
     </HostEntry>

     <HostEntry>
          <User>dmacias</User>
          <SecondUser></SecondUser>
          <ClientCertificateThumbprint></ClientCertificateThumbprint>
          <ServerCertificateThumbprint></ServerCertificateThumbprint>
          <HostName>Speech-Soft</HostName>
          <HostAddress>vpn.dmacias.com</HostAddress>
          <Domain></Domain>
          <Group>ssl_url</Group>
          <ProxyHost></ProxyHost>
          <ProxyPort></ProxyPort>
          <SDITokenType>none</SDITokenType>
          <ControllablePreferences>
          <LocalLanAccess>true</LocalLanAccess></ControllablePreferences>
     </HostEntry>
</ServerList>

</AnyConnectProfile>

Save the file.
Restart the connectivity client.
Enjoy

~david

EDIT 01/18/2017: This also works with Cisco AnyConnect 4.x!

51 Comments

Greg May 13, 2015 at 7:18 pm

Thank you! This had been driving me crazy – I needed to replace my exisiting servers with a new one. I had been typing in the address manually every time. These instructions fixed my issue.
dmacias May 13, 2015 at 11:32 pm

Glad to hear it worked for you!
Dario June 12, 2015 at 7:58 am

Not working for me in a XP
dmacias June 12, 2015 at 1:13 pm

What happens when you try this on XP?
keeky June 30, 2015 at 4:02 am

add profile.xml same path also works, however, no idea why username can not be remembered。。。
dmacias June 30, 2015 at 7:33 am

The username should save also. Did you use the format above?
Siraz July 16, 2015 at 12:18 am

Thank you..
It has been driving me crazy for a long time to replace with a new connection.

Appreciate!
Dreal July 30, 2015 at 2:47 pm

I also noticed that there was persistent entry in anyconnect after using your workaround. The persistent entry was found one directory up in the global preferences xml. Thank you for this how-to!
dmacias July 30, 2015 at 4:29 pm

Glad to hear it worked for you, good tip on the persistent entry.
Torben August 21, 2015 at 4:14 pm

Same problem here. Username is taken from last connection and not from the xml file?
Diego September 17, 2015 at 9:55 am

It also working for me to load HostName and HostAddress, but not the user. It keeps getting the username from the tag in C:\Users\(user)\AppData\Local\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client\preferences.xml
Any idea why it works like that?
Thanks!
dmacias September 18, 2015 at 5:06 am

No, I’ve not had a chance to play with it to see if the username can be retrieved based on the drop down.
Kaash September 23, 2015 at 10:23 pm

Thanks a ton !!!!!!! :-) worked for me in Win 7
Jim December 4, 2015 at 6:28 pm

So did anyone get the username to be retrieved based on drop down? That seems to be cached and cannot get to work. Any help appreciated.
Igor February 22, 2016 at 2:33 pm

Having same issue with user. It keeps remembering user from different profile
RickM March 2, 2016 at 3:16 pm

I’m using MS Visual Studio Tools for Applications to edit the profile xml and it tells me that USER is an invalid child element for in namespace http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/encoding
dmacias March 2, 2016 at 4:27 pm

Rick,

User is not going to do anything for you. You’ll only be able to save the connection address.
RickM March 2, 2016 at 4:32 pm

The original posted answer showed:

dclouduser
ssl_url

I do get a drop down using:
dCloud
dcloud-rtp-anyconnect.cisco.com

I was hoping user and group would also come up when selecting hostname from the drop down.

That looks like what everyone was asking about.

Is there no way to get username and group from an xml?
dmacias March 3, 2016 at 8:37 am

Yeah seems like username and group don’t come from this file, which is a shame.
RickM March 3, 2016 at 10:23 am

So, did CISCO provide a way for use to have user and group or any other user attributes associated with a hostname?
Igor March 16, 2016 at 2:26 pm

Thanks a lot for the help! I was trying to find solution couple days already, and yours work!!! How did you find it yourself man? I do not see it in Cisco official f@king docs )
dmacias March 16, 2016 at 2:55 pm

I suspect I ran across it on the support forums, honestly it’s been forever. Certainly something Cisco should look into implementing as this seems to be my most popular post. Glad it helped you out.
JimC April 1, 2016 at 4:09 pm

Thanks for posting! Works with version 3.1.x and Windows 10. Like others, this has saved a lot of frustration in what seems like a simple thing of remembering connection info.
[Repost] Add Connection Profiles to Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client | Process Studio April 4, 2016 at 3:11 pm

[…] comments via the RSS Feed | Leave a comment | Trackback […]
JR July 28, 2016 at 12:50 pm

I know it is old but was also very helpful to me. Thanks for posting. (Windows10)
AndresC December 22, 2016 at 11:10 am

This does not work for me with version 4.2.01022 on Windows 7 Pro SP1.

The last session does not work for me by default. I also do not even have a profile directory. I created one and added the xml file, but that did not work unfortunately.
dmacias December 24, 2016 at 8:24 am

I’ll check out your version and see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the update.
tomfreakz January 12, 2017 at 2:46 am

Sorry, please delete my previous comments.

Hi, I’m using mac,
with Cisco AnyConnect 4.3.03086

To add new profile,
I just create new xml file under directory
/opt/cisco/anyconnect/profile/

I name it myprofile.xml

Then inside my xml file, you may type your connection name and ip address, inside this xml tag.

You may look on my codepen.
Looks like this blog comment doesn’t allow html/xml tag script

http://codepen.io/tomfreakz/pen/WRwOBE

It works on my mac.
What about you? :)
David January 14, 2017 at 11:01 am

Thank you so much. This saved me a lot of frustration.
dmacias January 18, 2017 at 9:46 am

AndresC, unfortunately I don’t have access to AnyConnect 4.x. Sorry.
dmacias January 18, 2017 at 9:48 am

Actually look at tomfreakz reply, his 4.x client works on Mac, so maybe it should work on Windows too.
Thomas January 26, 2017 at 4:54 am

@tomfreakz: Hey, just tried your solution for Mac but unfortunetaly this doesnt work for me. It simply does not appear in the VPN drop down menu. Any clue?
quantum February 5, 2017 at 1:45 pm

Thanks dmacias & tomfreakz, this site was extremely helpful.

I’ve confirmed tomfreakz’s solution works for Mac OS (Sierra) with Cisco AnyConnect client v4.2
Fer M April 6, 2017 at 8:46 am

It worked for me. Thank you sir!
Philip S May 19, 2017 at 8:33 am

Thank dmacias

I’m using it with AnyConnect 3.1 on a Windows 10 1703 Client and it works great for me

Philip
dmacias May 19, 2017 at 8:51 am

Excellent news man!
Cassandra August 4, 2017 at 5:36 pm

Hey sorry for the newbie question, I’m not a coder. Can you highlight the areas where I plug the two URLs for the two profiles? This seems simple enough if I know what to replace, but the one URL at the beginning is throwing me off. What goes there? (http://Schemas…) Thank you.
dmacias August 5, 2017 at 10:20 am

Cassandra,

Look at the following two lines inside of the XML block:

<HostName>Speech-Soft</HostName> <HostAddress>vpn.dmacias.com</HostAddress>

Let me know if this doens’t help.
dmacias August 5, 2017 at 11:19 am

I’ve looked but there isn’t.
Rick Melton August 5, 2017 at 12:16 pm

I have 2 URLs working, but each has a different group and username. Is there a way to get those to come up when I select that URL.
Rick Melton August 5, 2017 at 3:39 pm

Bummer!
Eugene September 15, 2017 at 8:15 am

Directory to place profiles.xml at Linux OS is the same as Mac’s: /opt/cisco/anyconnect/profile/
Chuck September 16, 2017 at 2:34 pm

Dmacias – great solution on Win 7. thanks so much. Let us know when you figure out how to bring in the username!
Akileo September 27, 2017 at 4:46 pm

The username may need to use %username% in order to bring the current username in use in Windows (or it may need to be added manually between the tags
Rick September 27, 2017 at 5:13 pm

I’ve tried both USER and USERNAME tags, neither worked. The AnyConnectProfile.xsd does not show a tag to specify a user. :(
dmacias October 10, 2017 at 10:00 am

Any chance it’s hidden?
lystra October 10, 2017 at 10:48 am

I don’t have the profile folder as describe in the cisco anyconnect folder, how do i create one?
rprado January 31, 2018 at 5:16 pm

I just want to thank you guys for the threads which helped me with anyconnect. A especial thanks to tomfreakz for sharing how to write a concise anyconnect xml profile.

Thank you.
Saharablue April 3, 2018 at 10:16 am

Brilliant thank you!!!!!
Anonymous April 25, 2019 at 9:41 am

This worked for me on Windows 10 and Cisco Client 4.2.

Thanks for posting this.