Creating, Populating, and Reporting on Custom Fields

Owned by Mark Henry (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 09, 2020 by andresa (Unlicensed)
2 min read

Note: The concept of Fields is included in Open-AudIT Community, Professional and Enterprise. However, some features described here are only available in the Professional and Enterprise versions.

No matter how many tables or fields a Content Management Database (CMDB) has out of the box there is always a need for a custom field or two. In Open-AudIT custom fields can take the shape of a simple text box, a listbox with defined entries, or a date field.

When creating custom fields we recommend that you document the need for the field(s), how the fields will be used, and define the internal process on who will populate and maintain the Field contents.

  1. Define the purpose for the additional fields
    1. What is it you want to keep track of? Do you need one field, or more to capture this information?
    2. Double-check Open-AudIT to make sure you're not duplicating existing tables/fields
  2. Determine if every Device Group needs to have this field, or only one specific Group? More information on Groups can be found HERE: Groups
    1. Custom fields can be assigned to one specific Device Group, or to all Groups
    2. It can be beneficial to limit which device Groups a field is assigned to. This will improve accuracy of the data being collected and make sure the custom field(s) isn't misused.
  3. What type of information will be stored in the field?
    1. Open-AudIT supports three types of custom fields; simple text, listbox, and date
  4. How will the field be populated?
    1. In most cases Fields are managed manually by users. However, you may also want to consider if you will need to populate these fields from some external source, like a database, an import from a file (csv, json, xml, etc), or via the Open-AudIT API.
  5. Create the new Field.
    1. Select Manage -> Fields -> List Fields from the Open-AudIT menu
    2. To create a new entry click the "+" button in the top-right hand corner
    3. Detailed instructions for creating custom Fields can be found HERE: Fields
  6. Populate the field and test
    1. Once you have created your Field(s) locate a device that should include the new Field and navigate to the Device's Details page

Example - You want to track devices that are licensed under Cisco Smart Net Total Care; to do this you want to include 2 fields - a listbox with Yes/No and a date field to store the date of expiration. These fields should only be assigned to Device in the Routers Group.

Reporting

You can include custom Fields in Queries, but not Reports or Summaries. The general process for for creating a custom report is covered HERE: Creating Custom Reports, with details on using custom Fields covered in depth HERE: Create a Query containing Custom Fields