Modeling your Telecommunications Network Inventory workflow

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Modeling your Telecommunications Network Inventory workflow

    The Telecommunications Network Inventory application enables ServiceNow customers to create detailed digital models of their telecommunications networks. By accurately representing both physical and logical network assets and their relationships, customers can optimize resource usage and reduce operational costs. The network inventory records are created and maintained through specialized forms and workflows accessible within the Network Inventory Workspace.

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    Key Methods for Creating Network Inventory Records

    • Manual Creation: Customers can manually create and review network inventory records using inventory forms for equipment and network interfaces. This method also allows defining relationships between assets to build the network model. The forms are accessible via the Inventory node in the Network Inventory Workspace List view.
    • Design and Assign Function: This method involves setting up inventory models, templates, and relationships beforehand. Customers use design criteria to initiate change workflows that assign inventory resources and instantiate network inventory records effectively.
    • Resource Inventory Open API: For integration with external systems, customers can use the Resource Inventory Open API to create, retrieve, and delete network resources programmatically. This supports automated management and synchronization of network inventory data.

    Inventory Model and Template

    Inventory models define the network infrastructure by specifying assets, services, and their relationships. Templates provide business rules detailing how network assets should be configured. Customers can create multiple models, templates, and define relationships between them to tailor the inventory structure to their needs.

    What Customers Can Expect

    • A structured and flexible framework to digitally represent and manage telecommunications network assets.
    • Improved visibility into physical and logical network components, enabling better resource utilization.
    • Support for manual, workflow-driven, and API-based inventory record creation to suit different operational scenarios.
    • Capability to define and enforce configuration rules through templates, ensuring consistent network asset setups.

    Learn how to create a network inventory record in the Telecommunications Network Inventory application to store the details about your network assets. As you create the records, you can also define the relationship between each inventory record so that you can design a digital model of your network.

    Network inventory workflow overview

    By building an accurate digital representation of your network, you can view your physical and logical resources, improve how those resources are used, and reduce the operational costs of your network.

    You use a series of forms such as telco equipment and network interface, to create and maintain your network inventory records. You can access these forms in the Inventory node in the Network Inventory Workspace List view.

    Methods for creating a network inventory record

    You can create a network record by either of these two methods in the Telecommunications Network Inventory application:
    1. Create network inventory records manually by using inventory forms. With these forms, you can create and review the network inventory records and then define the relationships between them. You can access the inventory form in the Inventory node in the Network Inventory Workspace List view. To learn more, see Manually creating and reviewing your network asset instances.
    2. Create network inventory records by using the design and assign function. Before you start the design and assign function, you set up the inventory model, template, and model relationships for your design criteria. By using the design and assign function, you perform inventory tasks to set a network design criteria that initiate change workflows. With these workflows, you can assign inventory resources and instantiate your network inventory record. To learn more about design and assign function, see Telecommunications design and assign.
    3. Create network inventory records by using the Resource Inventory Open API. The Resource Inventory Open API provides endpoints to create, retrieve, and delete resources in your network. If you’re integrated with an external system, you can get the inventory records by using the Resource Inventory Open API. To learn more about the functions that enable you to query and manipulate Network inventory templates inventory records, see Resource Inventory Open API.

    Inventory model and template

    Inventory models and templates provide a framework for creating network inventory records in the Telecommunications Network Inventory application. A network inventory model contains the assets, services, and the relationships that define the infrastructure of your telecommunications networks. A template contains the business guidance rules on how the network asset must be configured in a network.

    You can create the models, templates, and the relationships between them. You can have multiple configurations of the network inventory templates.​