# 2 Inventory

#### Overview

You can keep the inventory of networked devices in Zabbix.

There is a special *Inventory* menu in the Zabbix frontend. However, you
will not see any data there initially and it is not where you enter
data. Building inventory data is done manually when configuring a host
or automatically by using some automatic population options.

#### Building inventory

##### Manual mode

When [configuring a host](host), in the *Host inventory* tab you can
enter such details as the type of device, serial number, location,
responsible person, etc - data that will populate inventory information.

If a URL is included in host inventory information and it starts with
'http' or 'https', it will result in a clickable link in the *Inventory*
section.

##### Automatic mode

Host inventory can also be populated automatically. For that to work,
when configuring a host the inventory mode in the *Host inventory* tab
must be set to *Automatic*.

Then you can [configure host items](/manual/config/items/item) to
populate any host inventory field with their value, indicating the
destination field with the respective attribute (called *Item will
populate host inventory field*) in item configuration.

Items that are especially useful for automated inventory data
collection:

-   system.hw.chassis\[full|type|vendor|model|serial\] - default is
    \[full\], root permissions needed
-   system.hw.cpu\[all|cpunum,full|maxfreq|vendor|model|curfreq\] -
    default is \[all,full\]
-   system.hw.devices\[pci|usb\] - default is \[pci\]
-   system.hw.macaddr\[interface,short|full\] - default is \[all,full\],
    interface is regexp
-   system.sw.arch
-   system.sw.os\[name|short|full\] - default is \[name\]
-   system.sw.packages\[package,manager,short|full\] - default is
    \[all,all,full\], package is regexp

#### Inventory overview

The overview of all inventory data entered is available in the
*Inventory* menu.

In *Inventory → Overview* you can group the display of available data by
various fields of the inventory.

In *Inventory → Hosts* you can see all hosts that have inventory
information. Clicking on the host name will reveal all the details in a
form.

#### Inventory macros

There are host inventory macros {INVENTORY.\*} available for use in
notifications, for example:

"Server in {INVENTORY.LOCATION1} has a problem, responsible person is
{INVENTORY.CONTACT1}, phone number {INVENTORY.POC.PRIMARY.PHONE.A1}."

::: noteimportant
{PROFILE.\*} macros from previous Zabbix versions
are still supported but it's highly recommended to change those to
{INVENTORY.\*}
:::

For more details, see the [Macros supported by
location](/manual/appendix/macros/supported_by_location) page.