Nautobot Plugin: Welcome Wizard

Whenever I build out a new instance of Nautobot, I struggle with where to start. I try to add a Device, only to find that I need to create a Device Type, Site, and Device Role. I go to add a Device Type and find I need a Manufacturer (which is not directly required for a Device). It would be great if Nautobot would alert me when I am missing required objects.

Speaking of Device Types, I find that I am adding numerous Device Types to Nautobot. There is a nice community resource DeviceType-library to add Device Types into Nautobot, but tracking down the right YAML file to then import into Nautobot takes time.

We are excited to introduce the solution to these problems in the Welcome Wizard plugin for Nautobot.

Overview

The Welcome Wizard is an open-source Nautobot plugin with the goal to assist users with the necessary initial steps in populating data within Nautobot.

The Welcome Wizard adds four (4) key features:

Import Wizard

Welcome Wizard uses the Import Wizard to allow ease of adding community-defined Device Types and Manufacturers into Nautobot. This is built upon the Git datasources feature of Nautobot.

Quick-Start Settings

Welcome Wizard includes by default the DeviceType-library, but this can be disabled and a custom library can be used instead.

Helpful Middleware

Welcome Wizard includes banners in forms to alert the user when required form fields have no associated resources in Nautobot.

Welcome Wizard Dashboard

The Welcome Wizard Dashboard contains a list of common Nautobot Data Models that many other Nautobot models require. This page allows ease of adding items to Nautobot or, if supported, importing them. This ties all of the features together.

Installing the Plugin

The plugin is available as a Python package in PyPI and can be installed atop an existing Nautobot installation using pip:

pip install nautobot-welcome-wizard

This plugin is compatible with Nautobot 1.0.0b4 and higher. Once installed, the plugin needs to be enabled in your nautobot_config.py:

# nautobot_config.py
PLUGINS = [
    # ...,
    "welcome_wizard",
]

Accessing the Welcome Wizard Dashboard

You can begin by selecting Plugins -> Nautobot Welcome Wizard -> Welcome Wizard from the navigation bar (or navigating to /plugins/welcome_wizard/) on your Nautobot instance to view the Welcome Wizard dashboard:

Welcome Wizard shows a set of Nautobot objects that lay the groundwork for other Nautobot objects. The goal of the dashboard is to help introduce features of Nautobot and keep track of their use. For instance, Sites are used in a number of objects inside of Nautobot. A Site is used when creating Devices, Racks, and Rack Groups. In addition, they are optional in many other objects.

From the dashboard, you can click on the green Add button in the Sites role to take you directly to the form for adding a Site. For Manufacturers and Device Types, you can click on the blue wizard hat to take you to the Welcome Wizard Import page.

Welcome Wizard Import

Welcome Wizard allows easy import from a Device Type library for Manufacturers and Device Types. Let’s take a look at the Device Type Import. From the dashboard, click on the blue wizard hat in the Device Types row.

Note if this is the first time loading this page, it will take a minute to synchronize the data with the Git Datasource.

On this page you can search for a Device Model or filter by Manufacturer. To import a Device Type into Nautobot, click the blue import button next to the Device Model you are trying to import. Once you confirm the import, the Device Type will now be available for use in Nautobot.