Taking Actions in Change Management

Action icons in the table provide access to change traces and the configuration difference viewer. Each listing in the table represents a change incident on a device. A single device can have more than one Change listed here. Each table row provides an Action icon, from which you can view detailed comparisons of before-and-after versions of configuration changes.

Each table row in the Network Analysis > Changes table represents a change to a device's configuration, not the device itself. A single device may have several individual changes listed in the table. Related data presentation that makes this clear is seen in the Most Changed Devices chart.

You can also perform the following:

To change the date and period, see Setting the Date and Period.
To filter by device group, click the desired hyperlink in the Select Device Groups panel to the right.
To view change traces, in the Actions column for the desired device, click the icon and choose View Change Details. A Change Details dialog appears, listing the date and time for each related change (Trace Time), and the change Type.
To view a device's Running Configuration changes, in the Actions column for the desired device, click the icon and choose View Running Configuration Difference. A separate Configuration Difference window appears, titled Comparing Configuration Files. This window shows the device's running-configuration file and the changes to the config file associated with the current change instance. It is quite possible that the changes you see in the instance you have selected may already have been fully committed to the system by being saved to the startup-configuration for the device.
To view a device's Startup Configuration changes, in the Actions column for the desired device, click the icon and choose View Saved Configuration Difference. These are the changes to a device's startup-configuration shown in this particular change instance after the admin has performed a wr mem or a copy running-config startup-config command (in Cisco syntax. Other devices may differ in syntax but not in principle).

Custom fields can be defined for additions to tables. These custom fields are not shown in the Changes table by default. The custom fields must be defined in NetMRI before using them in other data tables. See Defining and Using Custom Fields for more information.

To display custom field columns in the Network Analysis > Changes table, complete the following:

Hover over any column heading in the table, then click the down arrow at the right end of the column heading.
In the drop-down menu, hover over Columns.
In the Columns submenu, check the custom field column(s) you want to appear in the table.

To enter or revise custom field data for a change, complete the following:

In the Actions column for the desired device, click the icon and choose Custom Fields.
In the Custom Fields dialog, fill in data as needed, and then click the Save button.