I am on a network transition project. It consists of about 1500 remote sites each of which have a very small network that needs to have a network and rack diagram created along with a few other bits of info, all of which we have in Excel for tracking purposes.
Of the 1500 sites, there are about 10 different types (minor variations) with templates that never change except for the site specific info (hostnames, IP's, BGP ASN, site address, site ID's, telephone # for modem, things like that)
Each network drawing template consist of 4 tabs.
1) A generic rack layout that just needs a hostname labled to the device in the rack. Positions never change. Literally just need hostnames applied to each device at the right side of the rack parallel with the device.
2) An equipment list page that just needs a hostname labled at the top of each grouping of equipment. Equipment never changes in each "type" of template.
3) A very simple network diagram page that consists of 2 - 6 connected generic "square boxes" that represent devices (routers, switches, modems) that would need a hostname, IP, Interface and Part# label associated, all of which is available in Excel.
4) A background page that has things like address info and some boilerplate legal/privacy advisories.
From what I have seen/read, it's easy enough to set up the site specific data to auto populate the shapes in a template with a row of Excel data.
Here is the question I have:
Is there a way to automate the creation of the 1500 network diagrams using that data? What I am am hoping to acomplish to to run a script or something that will import a row of excel data into the drawing to populate all of the site specific info, save that file out as an individual Visio named for the site ID of the site and then move on to the next row of Excel data and do the same. I am hoping this can be done without having to manually intervene in each seperate file.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Can this be done without a huge amount of scripting?
Thank you!!
