Telecommunications Network Inventory release notes
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Summary of Telecommunications Network Inventory Release Notes - Zurich
The ServiceNow® Telecommunications Network Inventory (TNI) application in the Zurich release enhances how network planners model physical, logical, and virtual networks. It supports datacenter infrastructure management and streamlines design and service assignment workflows. This release introduces improvements that help prevent duplicate configuration items (CIs), enrich visualization capabilities, and enable operational data monitoring to optimize datacenter management.
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Key Features
- Improved Interface Relationships: Logical interfaces (e.g., VLANs) are now automatically linked to their parent equipment or cards, preventing duplicate CI creation and ensuring data consistency.
- Network Visualization: A new consolidated L1 menu provides a unified canvas with tabular views for sites, floors, and topology, improving infrastructure visualization.
- Datacenter Floor and Geo Maps: Users can upload and manage CAD/PNG floor maps via Map Studio to view physical asset placement and operational data such as power and thermal metrics. Geo maps display geographical locations of network sites and data centers with direct access to floor maps.
- Service Operations Workspace Integration: Provides a unified interface for agents to access incident and alarm details alongside Network Inventory data, enhancing operational efficiency.
- Capacity and Operational Data Management: Supports pushing operational data to REST APIs and storing it in ClothoDB. Time-series metrics can be overlaid on floor maps for health monitoring and performance tracking.
- Datacenter Infrastructure Modeling: New capabilities to define datacenter records, power circuits, facility hardware (power, HVAC, network), and facility models based on manufacturer specifications.
- Enhanced Equipment and Network Interface Management: Allows creation of equipment records through design and assign functions, with added attributes such as wavelength and port positions for network interfaces.
- Role-Based Access for Datacenter Management: Introduction of roles like DC Floor Designer, DC Ops Agent, and DC Ops Viewer to facilitate design, operations oversight, and viewing capabilities for datacenter infrastructure.
- User Interface Updates: Adoption of the Coral theme as default for portals and web/mobile interfaces, with a dark mode option. Network visualization menus have been reorganized for streamlined navigation.
Activation and Requirements
- To enable these features, customers must install the Network Inventory Advanced plugin (snniadv) from the ServiceNow Store.
- Additional required plugins include Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API and Customer Service Problem Management for incident and alert details, and Indoor Mapping for managing datacenter floor maps.
Related ServiceNow Applications
- Configuration Management Database (CMDB): Stores detailed infrastructure asset and service relationships supporting network inventory accuracy.
- Telecommunications, Media, and Technology (TMT): Integrates customer care and operations to support service provider business scaling.
- Indoor Mapping: Enables building and floor plan visualization essential for datacenter layout management.
- MetricBase: Provides time-series data storage and visualization for operational metrics monitoring.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
This release empowers network planners and datacenter operators to better model, visualize, and manage network and datacenter assets with integrated operational data. The prevention of duplicate CIs, enhanced visualization tools, and role-based access improve data accuracy and operational efficiency. Integration with Service Operations Workspace streamlines incident and inventory management, enabling faster response and better decision-making. Overall, Zurich’s Telecommunications Network Inventory release provides robust tools to optimize network infrastructure management within the ServiceNow platform.
The ServiceNow® Telecommunications Network Inventory application enables network planners to model physical, logical, or virtual networks, support datacenter infrastructure management, and perform design and assign services. Telecommunications Network Inventory was enhanced and updated in the Zurich release.
Telecommunications Network Inventory highlights for the Zurich release
- The Logical interfaces (such as VLANs) and physical interfaces (such as Gigabit Ethernet ports) are now related to their parent equipment or card to help prevent duplicate CI creation.
- Get converged experience for Network Inventory workflows using Service Operations Workspace.
- Upload and manage CAD/PNG of floor maps to view the datacenter layout with physical asset placements over the floor.
- Ingest operational data and show time series metrics on the datacenter floor map to monitor health.
- Capture an inventory of operational facilities and define their relationships to respective network hardware such as the power chain.
See Telecommunications Network Inventory for more information.
Important:
Telecommunications Network Inventory is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
New in the Zurich release
- Create a logical connection record using the Design and Assign function
- Logical interfaces created are now automatically related to their corresponding cards or parent equipment. This enhancement ensures consistency across systems and helps prevent duplicate CI creation by improving the alignment between logical and physical interfaces.
- Visualize your network infrastructure
- Use the new L1 menu that consolidates all network visualizations into a single canvas and include a tabular section for each view, such as site, floor, and topology. The following roles are introduced to manage
datacenter infrastructure.
- DC Floor Designer (sn_ni_core.dc_floor_designer) – Design floor layout in Map Studio.
- DC Ops Agent (sn_ni_core.dc_ops_agent) – Oversee the operations of the data center floor.
- DC Ops Viewer (sn_ni_core.dc_ops_viewer) – View the Network Inventory Workspace and its components.
- Floor map
- Use the floor map to view the layout of your datacenter infrastructure. View network asset placement and operational details to monitor power, thermal, and usage data. View the incidents and alerts and take appropriate action.
- Geo map
- Use the geo map to view the geographical locations of your network sites and data centers. Geo map supports rendering data centers on the map, enabling the relevant persona, such as the DC Ops Viewer, to view connected data centers. You can open a data center floor map directly from the geo map for more detailed insights.
- Upload and manage floor map for your datacenter
- Upload and manage your datacenter map objects using the Map Studio interface. Enable you to view respective floor plans for a selected building in a campus.
- Service Operations Workspace for TNI
- Provides a converged experience for agents to view both incident/alarm details and Network Inventory entities within a single Workspace. Enhances efficiency in retrieving information and significantly improves the overall user experience.
- Capacity management
- Supports pushing operational data to REST endpoints through an exposed API and store it in the ClothoDB. Overlay time series metrics on the datacenter floor map to monitor overall health and take appropriate action.
- Collect operational values for datacenter
- Manually record operational values of Configuration Items (CI) and store it in ClothoDB. Use this data for datacenter performance tracking.
- Define the datacenter details
- Define your datacenter record to view the location-specific attributes for each datacenter, including the campus, buildings, and floors where your network asset is located.
- Define the power circuit details
- Define the power circuit record to represent the electrical pathway that delivers power within a data center.
- Define the facility hardware details
- Define the facility hardware record to represent power, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), network representation, and their connectivity in a data center.
- Create a facility model
- Create a facility model to define the physical characteristics data of the facility record based on the product manufacturer's recommendations.
- Create an equipment record by using design and assign
- View datacenter records listed in the Equipment task attribute form.
- Define the network interface details
- Add Wavelength attribute to the Network Interface form and Port position attribute to Interface Model form.
- Create an equipment holder model
- Added RU numbering direction attribute to define the numbering sequence of rack units in the Rack view.
UI changes
- Coral theme
- Coral is now the default theme for new portal, web, and mobile experiences with Next Experience or Core UI enabled. This theme provides a fresh look and feel, featuring brand-neutral illustrations to enhance your user experience. A dark theme option is available for web and mobile experiences.
- Visualize your network infrastructure
- The Network Visualization L1 menu is added to the Telecommunications Network Inventory Workspace. The Topology L1 menu has been removed and is available as Topology tab within the Network Visualization view.
- Geo map
- Network site map L1 menu is removed and repositioned as Geo map tab in the Network visualization view.
- Define the power circuit details
- The Power Circuits inventory is added.
- Define the facility hardware details
- The All Facilities inventory is added.
- Create a facility model
- The Facility Models inventory model is added.
- Lists view
- The Network site is renamed to Site.
Changed in this release
- Define network service instance details
- xNF Instance is renamed to Service Instance.
- Define network function details
- xNF is renamed to Network Function.
Activation information
Install Network Inventory Advanced plugin (sn_ni_adv) by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. For installation details, see Install Telecommunications Network Inventory . Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.
Additional requirements
- You must install Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API (sn_ind_tmf642) and Customer Service Problem Management (sn_sprb_mgmt) plugin to view incident and alert details.
- You must install the Indoor Mapping plugin (sn_map_core) to create and manage floor maps for data centers.