Catalyst Center platform is a network management solution that

• provides extensibility for building value-added applications,

• enables optimization of IT processes through integrated APIs and workflows, and

• supports event and notification services to streamline operations.

Catalyst Center provides an extensible platform that allows customers and partners to create applications that can be built on top of its native capabilities. These platforms optimize end-to-end IT processes, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), and help create new value networks by leveraging Intent APIs, integration flows, and event and notification services.

Features

• Intent APIs: The Intent APIs are northbound REST APIs that expose specific capabilities of Catalyst Center platform. The Intent APIs provide policy-based abstraction of business intent, allowing you to focus on an outcome to achieve instead of struggling with the mechanisms that implement that outcome. The APIs conform to the REST API architectural style, are simple, extensible, and secure to use. They support the standard REST methods, which include GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE operations through HTTPS.

• Integration Flows: Integration capabilities are part of westbound interfaces, enabling IT operators to scale and accelerate operations in modern data centers with intelligent, end-to-end workflows built using open APIs. Catalyst Center platform provides mechanisms for integrating Assurance workflows and data with third-party IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions.

• Events and Notifications Services: Supported services are available for Cisco Catalyst Assurance events and Catalyst Center SWIM events to be captured and forwarded to third-party applications.

Note

The Catalyst Center platform application is accessible to a user with a SUPER-ADMIN-ROLE. Log in as a user with a SUPER-ADMIN-ROLE to view the Catalyst Center platform and do tasks through its GUI. Additionally, as a user with a SUPER-ADMIN-ROLE, you can create a custom role with read, write, or deny permissions to various platform functionality (APIs, bundles, events, and reports). From the main menu, choose System > Users & Roles > Role Based Action Access Control to access this feature.

The intent APIs are northbound REST APIs that expose specific capabilities of Catalyst Center platform. The Intent APIs provide policy-based abstraction of business intent, allowing you to focus on achieving the outcome rather than struggling with the mechanisms that implement it.

The APIs conform to REST API architectural styles that are simple, extensible, and secure. They support standard REST methods, which include GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE operations through HTTPS. A REST endpoint accepts and returns HTTPS messages containing JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) documents. You can use any programming language to generate the messages and the JSON documents that contain the API methods. These APIs are governed by the Catalyst Center Role Based Access Control (RBAC) rules. As a security measure, users must authenticate successfully before using the API.

The Intent APIs are listed in the API catalog located in the Catalyst Center platform GUI. You can view this catalog by navigating to Platform > Developer Toolkit > APIs . For information about the rate limit of an API, click the Features tab in the API details page. The intent APIs have a default API rate limit of 50 requests.

Catalyst Center platform event is a notification mechanism that

• triggers custom notifications when specific conditions are met,

• enables integration with third-party applications such as IT Service Management (ITSM) tools, and

• supports publishing events through webhook REST endpoints for automated workflows.

Catalyst Center platform supports sending custom notifications based on event triggers.

This feature is valuable for third-party systems that act on specific event types. For example, when a network device is not compliant, a custom application can receive notifications and initiate a software upgrade.

From the main menu, choose Platform > Manage > Configurations to view available events for a specific release. You can customize these events for IT Service Management (ITSM) incidents.