Table of Contents

Network Inventory: How-to & Usage Guide

Mitchell Paul-Soumis Updated by Mitchell Paul-Soumis

Read Time: 7 mins

What is Network Inventory

Network inventory in this context is used purely to distinguish your trackable inventory between it and Segmentable Inventory. Network Inventory is commonly used to track your networking-enabled devices, including radios, ONTs, OLTs, and Customer Premises Equipment.

Network Inventory empowers your instance by enabling tracking and monitoring:

  1. Network Inventory added to your instance can be assigned an IP address.
  2. Network Inventory can be monitored for its active performance.
  3. Network Inventory can have identifiers, such as MAC Address, Serial Number, and IMSI added to them.

Creating Network Inventory

Segmentable Inventory follows the same creation process as most other inventory. Manufacturers, Categories, and Assignees are covered in a separate article.

Creating Network Inventory starts with creating a model that is trackable, but not segmentable.

  1. Click on “Inventory” from the sidebar
  2. Click on “Manage Items”
  3. On the Inventory Model Management page, click the Add Model button
  4. In the window that appears, define the Network Inventory:
    1. Ensure the Trackable is selected, but Segmentable Inventory is not.
    2. Fill out all required fields
      If this hardware will be remotely accessed, filling out the Protocol and Port can be a helpful tool for managing your networks, as tracking standards minimizes opportunities for error or confusion.
  5. Click “Create”, which will save your created Inventory Model and prompt you to manage the additional details associated with an Inventory Model.

Inventory Model Configuration

Once your Inventory Model is created, you'll be given the option to modify additional information that will be associated with your Inventory Model and Inventory Items.

This form will prompt you to Add Items, add Deployment Types, Modify Device fields, Manage the LTE provisioning, and Add additional Purchase Order Vendors. Below, we'll cover these sections:

1. Modify Fields

Field Modification allows you to create new data entry fields for your hardware devices, which can be filled out for searching, reporting, and provisioning purposes:

  1. The Name of the field, which allows for custom text entry
  2. The Type of the field being added, from a preset list of options:
    1. Decimal
    2. IMSI
    3. Integer
    4. LTE Auth Key
    5. MAC address
    6. OP/OPc
    7. Regular Expression (PCRE)
    8. Text
  3. The Secondary Type field allows you to specify if a device is a Cable Modem when MAC Address is selected as the “Type”.
  4. The Required selector enforces whether this field must be filled out to add an item to inventory
  5. The Primary selector determines whether this field is the primary field, used for searching, reporting, and identification
  6. The Unique dropdown, which allows you to enforce a unique value:
    1. Globally, which means all models across your instance
    2. Locally, which means local to only this Inventory model
    3. None, which doesn't enforce a unique value of any kind
  7. The REGEXP column allows you to define the format of the Regular Expression being entered. This column can only be filled out if the field type is set to Regular Expression.
    1. You might use REGEXP to force a non-FQDN host name to conform to some internal standard. For example, a host name with the requirements of a letter followed by any combination of letters, dashes, and numbers but must be at least 3 characters long would be defined as ^[a-z][-0-9a-z]{2,}
  8. The “Apply” button saves the field date for the current row
  9. The “Add Row” button allows you to add additional row to the Model, each one can contain its field data
2. Deployment Types

Deployment Types are text fields which allow you to add additional precision when assigning a device to a location or user.

Deployment Types allow you to specify different Monitoring Templates within the same Inventory Model. For example, an Ubiquiti Rocket AC might be deployed as a backhaul, an access point on a network site, or even a CPE on a customer account. In all three examples, you would want entirely different monitoring applied to the same inventory model, depending on its deployment. For more information on setting up a Monitoring Template, take a look at the Building a Monitoring Template article.
3. Provisioning

The Provisioning option allows you to select the type of LTE SIM in use by this device. This option is used exclusively for Inventory Models which deliver LTE-based service.

4. Add Vendor

The Add Vendor option allows you to associate this Inventory Model with a specific Purchase Order Vendor. You'll need to provide the model information and default price details. These will autofill when a Purchase Order is created, but can be modified during PO creation.

Adding & Viewing Items

Once the model is created, items can be added to it. Items can be added automatically through Purchase Orders, or manually through the “Add Items” button on the Inventory Model. This will open a new modal, where you'll be prompted to provide more information about the item.

For more information on adding items through a Purchase Order, refer to the Purchase Orders: Overview and Usage article.
  1. Directly below the Assignee header, there's the primary assignee selector. The options which can be selected as an assignee are:
    1. Address
    2. Generic Inventory Assignee
    3. Inventory Location
    4. Network Site
    5. User
    6. Vehicle
  2. Below the main assignee, you have the specifier for that assignee. For example, an address assignee will have you select the serviceable address, while an Inventory Location will have you select the warehouse.
  3. If you select an inventory location, you'll be prompted to select the internal location after that. The Internal location field will be empty unless internal locations have been created in Settings → Inventory → Inventory Locations.
  4. The top of each column displays two things, the first of which is the name of the field that is being filled out. Certain fields will vary depending on how the inventory model was configured, but two will appear on every item:
    1. Status, which is a field used to monitor the device's physical health.
    2. Purchase Price, which is the price of the item, written in the lowest currency denomination (cents for North America, centavos in Mexico, pence in the UK, etc.)
  5. The second is an icon, indicating the field can receive a scanned input value from a barcode. Simply place your cursor within the entry field and scan. Anytime this icon is shown, you can scan a barcode and extract the value.
    Most generic barcode scanners are compatible with the inventory scanning feature available in Sonar, such as the NADAMOO Wireless Barcode Scanner
  6. The “Save Items as CSV” button allows you to export a file which contains the required formatting to import devices in bulk, which will include all items currently added in the modal.
  7. The “Load Items from CSV” button allows you to add multiple items at the same time by using a filled in template which was previously exported. Each item will be added as a new line to the modal.

Once an item is added, it will appear in the Inventory List. Clicking on the item from the Inventory List will bring you to the Item Overview.

Deploying Network Inventory

Network Inventory can be deployed to any Inventory Location in your Sonar Instance. Generally, Network Inventory will be deployed to a Network Site or Customer Account for installation, and a Warehouse or Technician for storage and transportation.

Network Inventory can be assigned in two ways:

  1. From the Inventory List, Assigned Location, or Item Management Overview page, expand the “Edit” dropdown and select “Change Assignee”
  2. From the Assignee, navigate to the “Network & Inventory” tab, select the Inventory sub-tab, then click on Assign Item
Assigning an item will offer all Inventory Items in your instance, and it's recommended you search for the item by name when assigning it. The individual items will show the Primary field if one was added.

Once Inventory is assigned to a location, its information will be added to the Inventory page. Furthermore, IP Assignments can be made against the items, and any IP assignments will also be reflected on this page.

Monitoring Assignment and Health Details of Network Inventory

Once Network Inventory is deployed, additional tools available in your Sonar instance can be leveraged to monitor your network. Monitoring Templates can be used to continuously track your Network Inventory based on its deployment type.

Information on the creation of Monitoring Templates can be found in the dedicated article here.

With Monitoring Templates, you can also configure Alerting Rotations, which, when combined, will send notifications if your Network inventory experiences connectivity issues.

Additionally, any assigned item can also report information on their connected downstream network inventory. From the Inventory sub-tab on any assignee, you can navigate to the “Connected Devices” table.

How did we do?

Inventory Model Management: General Overview

Segmentable Inventory: How-to & Usage Guide

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