How to Build an Itential Workflow to Automate Any Network Change Process

Itential continues to develop features and functionality to help network teams at every level of their automation journey; from teams just getting started building their first automations to teams that are already proficient in using Itential to build, test, and publish network automations for self-service.

With the 23.1 release of the Itential Automation Platform, Itential is making it even easier for network teams to deliver and scale automations. Redefined and rebuilt from the ground up, Itential’s new automation workflow canvas ensures the best possible user experience while ensuring full compatibility with any previously created workflows. New features and enhancements to Itential’s Automation Studio such as rich context menus, keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to snap-to-grid and free-float make building workflows more intuitive.

Additionally, these features make it easier to read and comprehend workflows built by someone else, further enabling cross-team collaboration and enabling network automation efforts to scale. Join us for a live webinar as we dive into the new features and capabilities in our latest release including:

• Walk through of the redesigned workflow canvas.
• Using new tools and features to build workflows more efficiently.
• Demonstrating backward compatibility and collaboration enhancements.
• Managing Jobs with improved automation execution visualization.

Getting started with automating network infrastructure requires a logical, step-by-step approach. You should start simple with a relevant use case and translate the process into a series of logical tasks. Then, you can build out integrations and surrounding processes to ensure it works with your infrastructure and meets your standards. Last, you will implement your tasks until the workflow is complete.

In the first part of this demo series on how to build automated workflows with Itential, we will “start simple” by identifying a common networking use case and leveraging Itential’s low-code, visual canvas to build a workflow that supports that use case. We will define the logical steps of the workflow using “stub” tasks as placeholders, and then eventually replace those temporary stub tasks with active tasks to create an automation that’s ready to deploy.

In this live demo, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, will show you step-by-step how to:

• Stub out an initial workflow for a simple network automation.
• Choose and configure tasks for CLI or API network solutions.
• Generate and validate input for the workflow via a form.
• Format and translate data between tasks using Data Transformations.
• Run and test the workflow as part of the building process.

Getting started with automating network infrastructure requires a logical, step-by-step approach. You should start simple with a relevant use case and translate the process into a series of logical tasks. Then, you can build out integrations and surrounding processes to ensure it works with your infrastructure and meets your standards. This webinar demonstrates how to translate this process into practice.

In the second part of this demo series on how to build automated workflows with Itential, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, will show you step-by-step how to:
• Build pre-check and post-check tasks into a network automation.
• Parse and evaluate result data from previous tasks.
• Integrate with IT systems to access data for the automation (IPAM).
• Format and translate data between tasks using Data Transformations.
• Run and test the workflow as part of the building process.

Getting started with automating network infrastructure requires a logical, step-by-step approach, which Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, outlines in the following demo specifically focused on integration and data transformation. Martin will show you step-by-step how to:
• Self-generate an integration using an OpenAPI specification file from NetBox.
• Utilize newly integrated API tasks for IP Address requests and Inventory query.
• Create a Data Transformation to manipulate data for network changes.
• Build, run, and test the workflow using Operations Manager.

Watch the third part of this demo series on how to build automated workflows with Itential, as Martin continues to build upon the workflow from the previous demo. Now that your use case is fully built out with the pre-check, network change, and post-check processes, it’s time to add in integrations with the systems in your ecosystem and data transformation between those systems. This allows for a fully automated end-to-end process.

Getting started with automating network infrastructure requires a logical, step-by-step approach. You should start simple with a relevant use case and translate the process into a series of logical tasks. Then, you can build out integrations and surrounding processes to ensure it works with your infrastructure and meets your standards. Last, you will implement your tasks until the workflow is complete.

In the fourth part of this demo series on how to build automated workflows with Itential, we will continue building on the previous workflow. Now that you can fully automate your use case end-to-end, it’s time to take it a step further and explore how you can build flexible and reusable content pieces that can be standardized and centralized for maximum control and compliance for end-to-end network automation.

In this live demo, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, will show you step-by-step how to:

• Build modular child workflows for common processes that can be reused by other team members in other workflows.
• Use a ServiceNow integration for common tasks like ‘Open and Update Change Request Tickets’.
• Access MS Teams integration to notify teams of an automation’s status.
• Leverage Data Transformations for formatting data between workflows.
• Extend current workflow to use any modular, child workflows.

Getting started with automating network infrastructure requires a logical, step-by-step approach. You should start simple with a relevant use case and translate the process into a series of logical tasks. Then, you can build out integrations and surrounding processes to ensure it works with your infrastructure and meets your standards. Last, you will implement your tasks until the workflow is complete.

In the fifth part of this demo series on how to build automated workflows with Itential, we will conclude by showing you how to publish a workflow in Operations Manager to extend the use of automation across your organization both for Itential users and the networking team’s end users. We’ll explore the four different trigger methods that initiate these shared workflows and how each can work in your environment.

In this live demo, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, will show you step-by-step how to:

• Publish a workflow for self-service by another Itential user within the platform.
• Publish a workflow with an API endpoint to run outside the Itential platform such as end users in ServiceNow or GitLab.
• Publish a workflow on a schedule for recurring tasks.
• Publish a workflow to respond to an event for immediate execution and response.