How to Automate Basic Network Device CLI Commands in an Itential Workflow

Itential helps network engineers automate the execution of CLI commands on network devices as part of their automation workflows. That means a CLI-driven automation can be part of the same workflow as the API calls that automate changes on or in response to external systems.

Before you run ahead and start making large-scale automated changes, it can be good to check in with the basics. This demo walks through how you can execute basic show commands on statically defined network devices and then read and parse the outgoing variables represented with JSON. Understanding this process is the first building block toward building end-to-end automations that seamlessly include both CLI commands and API tasks.

In this ItentiaLearn demo learn step-by-step how to:

• Create a new automation task for a CLI Show Command on a Cisco device.
• Input required variables for the CLI “task” such as device name and the desired CLI commands.
• Utilize existing CLI and network engineering knowledge within an Itential automation workflow.
• Read basic JSON snippets to understand incoming and outgoing variables.