Onboarding docs - out-of-date references, assumptions

[msheiny]

Environment

• Python version: 3.12.8
• Nautobot version: 2.3.15b1
• nautobot-device-onboarding version: 4.1.0
• ntc-templates version: 6.0.0

Expected Behavior

Documentation would walk me through how to setup the nautobot-device-onboarding app to add to a fresh nautobot instance. Any user assumptions that I made that were not explicitly called out in the onboarding docs should be exposed via the UX as an error or feedback.

Observed Behavior

I ran into some problems related to the plugin documentation:

• The jobs were not found in the described location. There is no SSOT dashboard, and it seems like the docs are referring to the older 1.x nautobot UX.
• The job i found has to be activated before first use.
• You have to create a number of dependent attributes in order to start this app - locations, roles, secrets. During writing of this ticket I also see that both of the problems I had were called out in the FAQ BUT I'm a technical user whom is new to the platform. This guidance/feedback should be up-front within the the job creation screen:
  • The locations/roles need to have a content_type of dcim | device. I was able to determine this by monitoring the API calls made but this is no apparent to the user with any kind of feedback.
  • Secrets must be using the GENERIC type which is not inuitive to me since nautobot would be using ssh to get to the device so it would seem like the ssh username and ssh password would make the most sense here. This was not apparent in any application feedback. I had to dig into the documentation for the nornir plugin to figure that part out.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Follow the job creation guidance in the documentation. You can't find the job using the readme because it's out-dated instructions, figure out they must be referring to the following screenshot.

3. Create a secret group, location, and role
4. During job creation realize that you cannot see the relevant locations / roles as a drop-down option - find the fix for that in the FAQ
5. During job creation use the secret you created - obtain mysterious feedback from the job:

A paramiko SSHException occurred during connection creation:

No authentication methods available

6. Go back and read the FAQ and realize you made the secret wrong, whoops !