Tags and organization

This topic explains how to use tags and provides guidance on organizing inventories to manage your automation targets effectively.

Use tags

Tags provide flexible categorization within inventories. Apply tags to inventories and nodes for filtering and organization.

Apply tags to inventories

Tag inventories to categorize them, for example:

• Environment tags: production, staging, development
• Region tags: us-east, us-west, emea, apac
• Function tags: core-network, edge-network, security

{
  "name": "cisco-routers",
  "tags": ["production", "core-network", "us-east"]
}

Apply tags to nodes

Tag nodes for filtering and targeted action execution, for example:

• Location tags: building-a, datacenter-1, site-chicago
• Role tags: core, distribution, access
• Status tags: active, maintenance, decommissioned

{
  "name": "core-router-1",
  "tags": ["core", "datacenter-1", "active"]
}

Filter by tags

Use tags to filter inventories and nodes in the Inventory Manager UI:

1. Navigate to inventories or nodes
2. Apply tag filters
3. View only resources matching the selected tags

This helps you quickly find specific resources in large deployments.

Key behaviors

Tags are not exposed through Device Broker. Configuration Manager device groups and Inventory Manager tags operate independently.

• Tags are visible only in Inventory Manager
• Configuration Manager doesn't see tags
• Use Device Broker's native device group functionality in Configuration Manager
• Tags are for organizing and filtering within Inventory Manager

Duplicate devices across inventories

The same physical device can exist as nodes in multiple inventories. Node names must be unique within an inventory, but the same device can appear in different inventories.

Examples

Different commands for the same device:

Inventory: full-configs
  Node: core-switch-1
  Action: get-config → show run

Inventory: interface-configs  
  Node: core-switch-1
  Action: get-config → show run interface

Different environments accessing the same devices:

Inventory: prod-routers
  Node: core-router-1
  (Restricted RBAC)

Inventory: readonly-routers
  Node: core-router-1
  (Read-only RBAC for operations team)

Cross-functional access:

Inventory: network-team-devices
  Node: firewall-1
  
Inventory: security-team-devices
  Node: firewall-1

Device naming with duplicates

When using the adapter with device name prefixing enabled, duplicate devices appear with different names in Configuration Manager and command templates:

• full-configs::core-switch-1
• interface-configs::core-switch-1

This prevents confusion about which inventory's action will execute.

Best practices

Start simple:

• Begin with device-type-based inventories
• Add complexity only when needed
• Validate your approach with a pilot inventory

Plan for growth:

• Consider how your inventory structure scales
• Design for the organization you'll have in a year, not just today
• Make it easy to add new device types or regions

Use tags consistently:

• Define a tagging taxonomy
• Document what each tag means
• Apply tags consistently across inventories