Design, Build, & Visualize End-to-End Network Automation Workflows
Itential’s low-code automation canvas enables rapid creation of end-to-end network automations across multi-vendor and hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure.
- Automate any type of network or any type of network change with a single automation environment that is vendor and technology agnostic.
- Seamlessly connect disparate IT systems with orchestration tools and custom-built scripts for end-to-end network automation.
- Automate the complete change from ticket creation to ticket closure for true closed-loop network automation capabilities.
- Start fast and stay fast with out of the box, Pre-Built Automations to dozens of standard use cases.
Expand Participation and Enable Automation For All with Low-Code
The Itential Automation Platform can be used by developers and network engineers alike regardless of network engineering knowledge or code writing capabilities. It’s intuitive low-code development interface and built-in network intelligence allows everyone on your team to contribute to your network automation goals.
- Form-driven automation for drag-and-drop ease of use.
- Low-code development interface enables network engineers without application development backgrounds.
- Standards compliant data structures and open APIs allow large teams to rapidly develop network automation workflows.
Built-in Network Intelligence
Itential’s out-of-the-box, built-in network intelligence supports your current operations and future closed-loop logic, enabling a limitless array of network automation capabilities without the deep network specific knowledge.
The intuitive user interface enables engineers of all skill levels to participate in creating, visualizing, building, and executing network automations, reducing human errors and operational inefficiencies.
- Built-in fall out queues for non-predictive behavior with automatic rollback.
- Exhaustive pre and post check capabilities to ensure smooth operational changes.
- Easily drag-and-drop forms and templates specific to network functions to accelerate the automation of network changes and activities.
- Over 300 out-of-the-box built-in network intelligence features to enable rapid automation with Itential.
Build Your Modular Automation Library with Itential’s Flexible & Reusable Pre-Built Collection
Within the Itential Automation Platform, easily drag-and-drop Pre-Built Integrations, Data Transformations, and Workflow Automations from Itential’s Pre-Built Collection onto your automation canvas. These out-of-the-box Pre-Builts enable users to build flexible and reusable content pieces that can be standardized and centralized for maximum control and compliance for end-to-end network automation.
We are now faced with more tools and systems that require automation via APIs, and writing our own code and scripts via Python and/or Ansible is not agile enough anymore. The end goal is to have an end-to-end, self-service automation platform that all our engineers can use. Itential is the only solution that can support this.
Network Automation Director, Global FinTech Firm
Orchestrate End-to-End Processes for Network Operations
With the Itential Automation Platform, easily connect network technologies to IT systems for full end-to-end automation of network operations processes.
- Automate the complete change from ticket open to ticket close.
- Built-in fall out queues for non-predictive behavior with automatic rollback.
- Exhaustive pre- and post-check capabilities to ensure smooth operational change.
Itential Automation Workflow Components
Automation Builder
The Automation Builder the Itential Automation Platform provides a graphical user interface for arranging and connecting tasks in a workflow to define operations and maintenance processes.
Automate operations tasks at your own pace with pass, fail, and revert options. Easily add manual tasks where needed to workflows and always know the status of your completed and running automations at any given point.
Form-Driven Automation
Oftentimes, when working an automation, an activity requires human interaction and data to properly perform the task. With Itential’s form driven automation, users can easily input data or manage automations with a few clicks, no need to write any custom code.
How to Create a JSON Form in the Itential Automation Platform
Command Templates
Build and execute automated operational activities that provide the ability to run network health checks by collecting and evaluating operational data from the network. Perform pre-checks prior to making any device changes to ensure an incident, outage, or conflicting maintenance event is not active. Conducted post-checks such as pass/fail evaluations, rule severities and variable processing, ensure device changes took effect as intended. Implement any number of checks and balances for peace of mind.
Automating Tribal Network Knowledge with Itential’s Command Templates
Analytics Templates
Evaluate and compare results of command template pre- and post-check executions with Itential’s Analytics Templates. Ensure your automations have achieved their desired result by collecting responses from a command at the beginning of the automation execution so that it can be compared against the same command at the end of the automation after a procedure has been performed against it.
Automation Catalog
Securely publish and share network automations to be utilized by other team members and consumed by other platforms. Published automations appear in a self-service catalog within Operations Manager within the platform or can be quickly integrated into other self-service platforms like ServiceNow.
Automations can also be scheduled to run at specific intervals or associated with API endpoints for integration into processes like CI/CD pipelines or called by other platforms.
How Itential Helps NetDevOps Teams to Expose & Deliver Self-Service Network Automations
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Itential Automation Studio?
Itential Automation Studio is an application that enables network practitioners with no programming experience to quickly build powerful end-to-end network automations in a low-code, drag-and-drop canvas. Within the platform, customers have the ability to download from a freely available library of 100+ pre-built use cases, adapters, and transformations to help teams run their first automations within days instead of months.
Automations are built in Automation Studio using a low-code, drag-and-drop canvas. API integrations with different IT systems and networking controllers are presented as tasks that can be dropped onto the canvas with logical paths and operations, linking tasks together into a logical workflow. Automation Studio includes the ability to build pre-check and post-check templates, input validation forms and data transformations, and use these in the automation workflow. A background in programming is not necessary to use Automation Studio.
Learn More
Can automations be reused in a modular fashion?
Yes, the ability to run separate, distinct automations as a child job is available within a workflow. This makes it possible to build automations that focus on a specific function, like opening a change request ticket in an ITSM, and reusing that as a child job in other automations. This allows multiple teams to work within Automation Studio to build and manage automations that are specific to their domain. Network teams can focus on building automations related to networking tasks and leverage automations that another team builds and maintains for processes like opening and updating change request tickets, or communications notifications to different teams.
Does Itential support closed-loop automation?
Yes, Itential supports closed-loop automation with event triggers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, NETCONF, etc.) or through API webhook triggers to start any automation. Any data made available through these triggers is available to be used within your automations or as input to any pre-existing automation script (BASH, Python, etc.) or Ansible Playbook.
How does Itential expose network automations to more departments by allowing specific roles to execute certain tasks, start/stop or schedule recurring automations?
Automations built in Automation Studio can be published and made available through Automation Catalog. In Automation Catalog, teams can define which users and groups can run or manage an automation and schedule it to run once or on a recurring basis.
How does Itential support automation with CLI-based network devices?
The Itential Automation Platform supports both traditional CLI-based networking devices as well as API-based networking services and building automations across either follows the same methodology in Automation Studio.
Learn More
How does Automation Studio support pre-check and post-check processes?
Automation Studio includes tools to quickly create pre-check and post-check functions using Command and Analytic Templates for CLI-based devices. CLI commands can be defined and executed, and the output of these commands can be captured and parsed. These templates do not require any form of code. Additionally, any API tasks that are available through integrated network systems, or any network automation scripts can be used in a workflow to build the most robust pre-check and post-check process needed.
Can pre-existing automations, like Python Scripts or Ansible Playbooks, be used in the platform?
Yes, they can. Instead of throwing away any existing automations your team may have invested in, Itential supports the ability to integrate these valuable automations by onboarding them in Automation Gateway, where they can be decorated and made available through an API interface. Automation Gateway supports nearly any script that can be run from a Linux command line, and has additional integration support for Ansible, Terraform, Nornir, and Netmiko. Automation Gateway also serves as a system to organize, test, run, and publish scripts across the entire network team and helps foster the ability to collaborate and share automations together.
Learn More
Do you provide any pre-existing automations that a customer can use in the platform?
Yes, Itential provides a freely available library of automations that cover a variety of popular use cases for both traditional networking and cloud networking. These Pre-Built Automations are complete and come bundled with documentation, workflows, and any other assets needed to get running quickly in the platform. The full library of Pre-built Automations, Adapters, and Transformations are integrated into the platform so you can easily search and install them as you need them.
Learn More
How does IAP support self-service automation?
IAP supports multiple methods of providing self-service capabilities for an automation. Any automation created in Automation Studio can be made available in Automation Catalog. Automation Catalog provides the ability to define the individuals and groups who can manage or run an Automation from within the platform. For self service capabilities outside the platform, an automation published in the catalog can also be accessed through a RESTful API so it can be integrated into other systems and processes, if so desired.
