Organize and define automation sources and targets

Projects and inventory files help you organize your automation sources and targets.

Create an automation execution project
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A project is a logical collection of playbooks. Projects are useful as a way to group your automation content according to the organizing principle of your choice.

About this task
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You can set up an automation execution project in the platform UI.

Procedure
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  1. From the navigation panel, select Automation Execution > Projects.
  2. On the Projects page, click Create project to launch the Create Project window.
  3. Enter the appropriate details into the following required fields:
    • Name (required)
    • Optional: Description
    • Organization (required): A project must have at least one organization. Select one organization now to create the project. When the project is created you can add additional organizations.
    • Optional: Execution Environment: Enter the name of the execution environment or search from a list of existing ones to run this project.
    • Source Control Type (required): Select an SCM type associated with this project from the menu. Options in the following sections become available depending on the type chosen. For more information, see Managing playbooks manually or Managing playbooks using source control.
    • Optional: Content Signature Validation Credential: Use this field to enable content verification. Specify the GPG key to use for validating content signature during project synchronization. If the content has been tampered with, the job will not run. For more information, see Project signing and verification.
  4. Click Create project.

Create an automation decision project
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Like automation execution projects, automation decision projects are logical collections of automation decision content. You can use the project function to organize your automation decision content in a way that makes sense to you.

Before you begin
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  • You have set up any neccessary credentials. For more information, see Setting up credentials.
  • You have an existing repository containing rulebooks that are integrated with playbooks contained in a repository to be used by automation controller.

About this task
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Procedure
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  1. From the navigation panel, select Automation Decisions > Projects.
  2. Click Create project.
  3. Enter the following information:
    • Name: Enter project name.
    • Description: This field is optional.
    • Organization: Select the organization associated with the project.
    • Source control type: Git is the only SCM type available for use.
    • Proxy: Proxy used to access HTTP or HTTPS servers.
    • Source control branch/tag/commit: Branch to checkout. Can also be tags, commit hashes, or arbitrary refs.
    • Source control refspec: A refspec to fetch. This parameter allows access to references through the branch field not otherwise available.
    • Optional: Source control credential: The token needed to use the source control URL.
    • Content signature validation credential: Enables content signing to verify that the content has remained secure during project syncing. If the content is tampered with, the job will not run.
    • Options: Checking the box next to Verify SSL verifies the SSL with HTTPS when the project is imported.
  4. Click Create project.

What to do next
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Your project is now created and can be managed in the Projects screen.

After saving the new project, the project’s details page is displayed. From there or the Projects list view, you can edit or delete it.

About inventories
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An inventory is a file listing the collection of hosts managed by Ansible Automation Platform.

About this task
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Organizations are assigned to inventories, while permissions to launch playbooks against inventories are controlled at the user or team level.

You can find inventories in the UI by navigating to Automation Execution > Infrastructure > Inventories. The Inventories window displays a list of the inventories that are currently available. You can sort the inventory list by name and search by inventory type, organization, description, inventory creators or modifiers, or additional criteria. Use the following procedure to create a new inventory.

Procedure
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  1. From the navigation panel, select Automation Execution > Infrastructure > Inventories. The Inventories view displays a list of the inventories currently available.
  2. Click Create inventory, and from the list menu select the type of inventory you want to create.
  3. Enter the appropriate details into the following fields:
    • Name: Enter a name for the inventory.
    • Optional: Description: Enter a description.
    • Organization: Choose among the available organizations.
    • Only applicable to Smart Inventories: Smart Host Filter: Filters are similar to tags in that tags are used to filter certain hosts that contain those names. Therefore, to populate this field, specify a tag that contains the hosts you want, not the hosts themselves. Filters are case-sensitive. For more information, see Smart host filters.
    • Instance groups: Select the instance group or groups for this inventory to run on. If the list is extensive, use the search to narrow the options. You can select multiple instance groups and sort them in the order that you want them run.
    • Optional: Labels: Add labels that describe this inventory, so they can be used to group and filter inventories and jobs.
    • Only applicable to constructed inventories: Input inventories: Specify the source inventories to include in this constructed inventory. Empty groups from input inventories are copied into the constructed inventory.
    • Optional and only applicable to constructed inventories: Cache timeout (seconds):Set the length of time you want the cache plugin data to timeout.
    • Only applicable to constructed inventories: Verbosity: Control the level of output that Ansible produces as the playbook executes related to inventory sources associated with constructed inventories. Select the verbosity from Normal to various Verbose or Debug settings. This only appears in the "details" report view.
      • Verbose logging includes the output of all commands.
      • Debug logging is exceedingly verbose and includes information on SSH operations that can be useful in certain support instances. Most users do not need to see debug mode output.
    • Only applicable to constructed inventories: Limit: Restricts the number of returned hosts for the inventory source associated with the constructed inventory. You can paste a group name into the limit field to only include hosts in that group. For more information, see the Source variables setting.
    • Only applicable to standard inventories: Options: Check the box next to Prevent instance group fallback to enable only the instance groups listed in the Instance groups field to execute the job. If unchecked, all available instances in the execution pool will be used based on the hierarchy described in Control where a job runs . Click the tooltip for more information. Note
      Set the prevent_instance_group_fallback option for smart inventories through the API.
    • Variables (Source variables for constructed inventories):
      • Variables: Variable definitions and values to apply to all hosts in this inventory. Enter variables using either JSON or YAML syntax. Use the radio button to toggle between the two.
      • Source variables for constructed inventories are used to configure the constructed inventory plugin. Source variables create groups under the groups data key. The variable accepts Jinja2 template syntax, renders it for every host, makes a true or false evaluation, and includes the host in the group (from the key of the entry) if the result is true.
  4. Click Create inventory.

What to do next
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After creating the new inventory, you can proceed with configuring permissions, groups, hosts, sources, and viewing completed jobs, if applicable to the type of inventory.