Router: Scripting in Cisco routers and Management Enhancements

Cisco IOS have features available which enables you to create custom commands and scripts which will aid in managing IOS routers using the TCL scripting command.
Tool Command Language

With embedded management tools, you can even monitor events or set thresholds that will trigger a script or CLI applet.
Embedded Event Manager (EEM)
Embedded Syslog Manager (ESM)
Embedded Resource Manager (ERM)

To automate tasks, you can schedule EXEC commands to run periodically Unix Cron-style.
Command Scheduler (KRON)

You can archive multiple versions of the config, then either replace or rollback configurations.
Configuration Replace & Rollback

Using the command "show archive config differences", the router can do a line-by-line comparison of two versions of the configurations ie. between the startup config and the running config.
Contextual Configuration DIFF utility

Wow! All this I unearthed after chancing upon this page for the Embedded Event Manager (EEM) Scripting Community. Proceed with caution. This is the domain of the Cisco l33t.