SevOne NMS 5.4 Quick Start Guide - Metadata

About Namespaces and Metadata Attributes

SevOne NMS uses namespaces to group metadata attributes. You can create multiple namespaces, and within each namespace you can create multiple attributes. Each attribute includes the following three features:

• Attribute Name

• Attribute Type

• Target

The Attribute Name is the name you give to a specific attribute. For example, if you have an attribute for providing the serial number of a device, you might name it Serial Number or SN.

The Attribute Type is used to validate entry inputs. It specifies the format of the data that users will provide for a specific attribute. If you would like to include the installation date for a device, for example, you might create a metadata attribute and call it Installation Date. Because you want it to be in date format, you would select the attribute type Date/Time. This means that data provided for the Installation Date attribute must conform to the Date/Time format. Additional attribute types include IP Address, MAC Address, Integer, Latitude and Longitude, Regular Expression, and URL. There's also an attribute type called Text, which you can use for any number of things, such as phone numbers, names of people, serial numbers, notes, etc.

Target refers to the areas in SevOne NMS that you can apply a specific metadata attribute to. For example, let's say your company has several offices throughout the US. One of your offices is in San Diego, and you'd like to provide a site contact phone number for all of the devices at the San Diego location. In this case, you'll want to select Device as a target. This gives you the ability to use your site contact phone number attribute for individual devices. You can also select Device Group, Object, and Object Group as targets, allowing you flexibility to use an attribute for device groups, device types, objects, and object groups.

Create Metadata Attributes

Create a namespace and add an attribute.

Before you start creating attributes, you need a place to put them. In the first few steps, you'll create a namespace. Once you've done that, you can add your first attribute to it. We'll be working through the steps using an example. Feel free to follow along with the example or make different selections.

1. From the navigation bar, click Administration and select Metadata Schema.
   

2. At the top of the page, click Add Attribute to display the Add Metadata Attribute pop-up.

   

3. Perform the following actions to add a namespace.

   1. Click to display the Namespace Editor pop-up.

      

   2. Click Add.

      

   3. In the text field that appears, enter a name for the namespace. This can be anything you want.

   4. Click Save to save the namespace.

   5. Your new namespace will appear in the list. Click it and then click Select to return to the Add Metadata Attribute pop-up.

      

4. The Target drop-down lets you specify one or more of the following attribute targets. For our example, select Device and Device Group.

   • Device - lets you apply/edit the attribute's values for specific devices, using the Device Manager.

   • Object - lets you apply/edit the attribute's values for specific objects, using the Object Manager.

   • Device Group - lets you apply/edit the attribute's values for specific device groups and device types, using the Device Groups page and the Device Types page.

   • Object Group - lets you apply/edit the attribute's values for specific object groups, using the Object Groups page.

5. The Type drop-down lets you specify one of the following attribute types. For now, select Latitude and Longitude.
   

   • Date/Time - enables the value to be in a date/time format.

   • Integer - enables the value to be numeric.

   • IP Address - enables the value to be an IP address.

   • Latitude and Longitude - enables the value to be a latitude and longitude.
     

   • MAC Address - enables the value to be a MAC address.

   • Regular Expression - enables the value to be a regular expression.

   • Text - enables the value to be text.

   • URL - presents the value as a clickable link to a valid URL.

6. In the Name field, enter a name for the metadata attribute. For this one, let's say Site Location.
   

7. Click Save. Your new namespace should now appear with your new attribute, Site Location, listed below it.
   

Add a couple more attributes.

Now that you've got a namespace set up, you can add additional attributes pretty quickly.

1. Click Add Attribute to display the Add Metadata Attribute pop-up.

2. Click the Namespace drop-down and select the namespace that you created earlier.

3. Click the Target drop-down and select Device and Device Group.

4. Click the Type drop-down and select Text.

5. In the Name field, enter Site Contact Phone.

6. Click Save.

7. Repeat the steps above. For step 4, select URL. For step 5, enter Service Record.

8. Your new attributes should appear below your namespace. To edit the settings for any of the attributes, select the attribute and click .
   

Additional information: Making changes to a namespace

Perform the following steps to make changes to a namespace.

1. Select an attribute that belongs to the namespace that you would like to edit.

2. Click to display the Edit Metadata Attribute pop-up.

3. To the right of the Namespace drop-down, click to display the Namespace Editor.

4. You can make the following changes to the namespace.

   • Edit the namespace: Under Name, double-click the namespace to make changes to the name. Once you're done, click Save.

   • Delete the namespace: Select the namespace. Under Actions, click . Then click Yes to confirm that you want to remove the namespace.

Populate Metadata Attributes

In this section, you're going to populate the attributes that you just created with meaningful data.

1. From the navigation bar, click Devices and select Device Manager.

   

2. Select a device and click to display the Edit Metadata pop-up for it.
   

   You can edit metadata values for multiple devices at the same time. First, select the devices. In the upper left corner of the table, click and select Tools. Then select Edit Metadata to display a pop-up where you can edit the metadata values for all of the selected devices.

3. Under the namespace that you created earlier, locate and select the Site Location attribute.

4. Click to edit the values for Site Location.

   

5. In the Latitude field, you'll need a decimal value between -90.00 and 90.00. For our example, let's enter 32.7833 .

6. In the Longitude field, you'll need a decimal value between -180.00 and 180.00. Enter 79.9333 .

7. Click Update to apply the changes.

8. Locate the Site Contact Phone attribute and click to edit the value for it. Enter 843-555-5309 for our example.

   

9. Click Update.

10. Locate the Service Record attribute and click to edit the values for it.

    

11. In the Link display text field, enter a name for the link. For this example, we might say Service Record for ganymede-01 .

12. In the URL field, enter a URL for the link. You can enter any working URL for the example.

13. Click Update.

14. Before continuing, click the link Service Record for ganymede-01 to confirm that the URL is correct.

15. Click Save.

    

Create a Report on Metadata Attributes

Now we're going to create a TopN report for the device that we looked at in the last section. Our report results will show us the most utilized interfaces along with metadata information for the device.

1. From the navigation bar, click Report and select Create Report.

2. The Sources page is set to TopN by default. That's what we want. Click Next.

   

3. On the Resources page, click the Type drop-down and select Device.

   

4. Click the Device drop-down and select the device that you edited metadata values for in the previous section.

5. Now jump ahead to the Visualizations page.

   

6. The Table visualization should be selected by default. If not, select it.

7. Under Table Settings, you'll see two lists of columns: Available and Using. Under Available, scroll down until you see the namespace you created earlier. Below the namespace, you'll see the namespace's attributes available as columns.

   

8. Select all of the columns under your namespace: Site Contact Phone, Site Location, and Service Record.

9. Click to add the columns to Using.

10. Now click Finish.

11. Your TopN report results should include a site phone number and coordinates for the location of your device along with a link to the device's service record.