Automating Data Gathering Processes from CLI & API Sources as Part of an Itential Workflow

When network teams start automating their manual processes, most of the focus is put on successfully automating the specific network change itself. While this is important, one often overlooked aspect is the data gathering processes required to automate a network change. For example, data gathering can occur at multiple points of the automated process — at the beginning when requesting data such as an IP address from an IPAM, as part of a pre-check process to ensure that conditions are correct for a network change, or as part of a post-check process to verify that conditions are correct after a network change has been made.

Without automating the data gathering process within an automated process workflow, network teams find that even though they can automate network changes, they still spend a lot of time performing manual processes, gathering data from IPAMs, network controllers, and other IT systems. The Itential Automation Platform simplifies and normalizes these processes so network teams can gather required data from all their network devices, controllers, and IT systems for use in a workflow.

In this demo, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, shows how Itential Automation Platform users can:

• Use Command Templates to gather data using CLI methods.
• Gather data using API methods from an onboarded integration.
• Create a Data Transformation to handle return data and formatting.
• Implement and test multi-layered pre-check and post-check workflows.