Cable Tracing Date

[deadlance]

Netbox Community 5.1.2

I am looking at a device - in particular, an outside fiber bulkhead / patch panel, inside of a data center rack. I have documented all of the devices that the bulkhead connects to, with patch cables, and all the details of those patch cables.

I had assumed that the "Last Updated" field would show the date the cable information was last updated, however, I just re-traced all these cables by hand, correcting almost all of them as a lot of hardware was replaced recently. The "Last Updated" field on almost all the cables in this screenshot should show today as they were updated today. I'm guessing now though, that this date resembles the last time the interface was modified, not the cable itself.

So, the question is, from a device's interface screen like I have here in this screenshot, is there a way to display the actual date of the most recent time a cable - not interface - was modified?

I have added a custom field to the cables for "date traced" but that field does not show up on this particular page under the customize table options. It works fine on the cables page, but with quite a few data centers and 30k cables documented, we don't use the cables screen as much as we use device -> interfaces.

[pheus]

Hi,

You’re looking at a table of front ports, so all columns in that table relate to the front port objects. This means the Updated column shows the date of the last change to the front port, not the connected cable.

If you want to see the dates related to the cable, you’ll need to check the cables table instead.

[deadlance]

I understand that the update column shows port information. Is there a way to include the cable date information on the port / interface table display also? Is that something that could be added in an update? Do I need to request this feature? I was just hoping it could be added with a simple database query on the back end so it would show up in the configure table options if it wasn't already there and I was just missing it. It seems like a thing more people than just myself could use.

[pheus]

Thanks for clarifying.

I may have misunderstood your original point. When you said:

I'm guessing now though, that this date resembles the last time the interface was modified, not the cable itself.

I read that as uncertainty about what the Updated column represents.

In general, NetBox tables show columns related to the objects in the current view. So, in an interface or port table, the available columns are primarily related to those interface or port objects. If you want to see details for related objects, such as cables, you would usually either click through to the related object or use the list/table view for that object type (in this case, the cables table).

NetBox generally avoids loading too much related-object data into every table, partly for performance reasons and partly to keep each table focused on the object type being displayed.

Since similar requests have been declined in the past, I don’t think opening a new feature request would be likely to change that. However, developing a NetBox plugin could be an option if you need a custom view that presents all the information you’re looking for.

Hope that helps.

[deadlance]

For anyone looking to do this same thing - display the last updated date of a cable while looking at the interfaces of a device - here's what I did

Go to Customization -> Custom Links

In the Object Types field - select - DCIM>Front Ports, DCIM>Back Ports, DCIM>Interfaces
In the Link Text Field

{%if object.cable.last_updated %}
{{ object.cable.last_updated.strftime('%d %B %Y') }}
{% endif %}

In the Link URL field - /dcim/cables/{{ object.cable.id }}/changelog/ - This makes let's a user click directly to a cable's history to see who did what.

I left Weight at 100 and Button class at default.

Now, on the interfaces listing of a device, Click on the Configure Table button and add your field to the table. You should now have a date for when the cable was last modified. This is all dependent on which version of Netbox you're running. I'm using Netbox Community 4.5.2