Creating an Automation Plan

An Automation Plan contains all of the data required to run a sequence of Fixlets, Tasks, and Baselines across multiple endpoints. You create your Automation Plans in the Server Automation domain. You can select a site and a domain to host your Automation Plan and define a sequential or parallel processing path for the steps in the plan. Each step can have an optional failure step that runs if the step fails. You can also save a set of default targets for both computers and computer groups, default parameters, and filters for each step in the Automation Plan.

Automation Plans contain the following data:

The Automation Plan name and description.
The site and domain that host the plan.
The Automation Plan category.
The Automation Plan source, source release date, and source severity.
The Automation Plan steps.
The plan type, sequential or parallel and the sequence of the steps in the Automation Plan. The sequence can be a simple sequence or can include parallel processing of steps.
An action for each step in the plan.
Optional pending restart settings that enable you to pause or continue the plan if the target endpoints require a restart.
Optional non-reporting threshold settings.
Optional failure behavior for each step, including step failure mode, advanced failure behavior to fail incomplete targets after a specified time, and an optional failure step for each step in the Automation Plan.
If the plan is a parallel path plan, the plan also contains the dependencies that you set between steps in the plan. The dependencies determine the execution order of the steps in the plan. Sequential type plans do not contain dependencies because each step runs after the previous step has executed.
Every step in an automation plan, whether it is sequential or parallel, has a unique identifier (UID).

Creating your Automation Plan

Use the Automation Plan Editor in the Server Automation domain to create an Automation Plan. When you are creating your Automation Plan you can create and save a set of default targets, default parameters, and filters for the plan. These default settings are then selected when you run the plan.

Before you begin

You must log on to the BigFix console as a master operator or a console operator. You must have Custom Content permissions set to Yes to create an Automation Plan. For complete information about BigFix permissions, see Operator's Permissions.

About this task

Each Automation Plan step is a Fixlet, Task, or Baseline. The steps are run in the order that they are displayed in the Flow tab in the Automation Plans dashboard. You can view the BigFix console Task, Fixlet or Baseline panel for a step by clicking the Go to source icon for the step in the Steps tab. You can view the BigFix console Task or Fixlet panel for a Component in a Baseline by clicking the Component name in the Steps tab. To return to the Steps tab, click Back in the menu bar.

Each step in the Automation Plan can contain a maximum of one action. When the Fixlet or Task that you add to a step contains one or more actions and no default action, you must select an action for the step. If the Fixlet or Task has a default action, this action is automatically added to the step. An action with Script Type of URL cannot be added to a step. An Automation Plan that contains Baseline steps will not necessarily fail when the Baselines contain Components for which no action is selected.

To control how the Automation Plan is processed when a step fails on one or more endpoints, you can define step failure behavior for each step in the Automation Plan. If a step in the Automation Plan fails, you can stop the Automation Plan. Alternatively, you can continue the Automation Plan on only the endpoints on which the step was successful or on all endpoints. For more information about the step failure behavior, see Defining step failure behavior settings.

You can define a non-reporting threshold to exclude non-responsive endpoints from your plan. For example, you might set a non-reporting threshold of one hour, and if some endpoints have been unresponsive for one hour before the first step in the plan is processed, these endpoints are excluded from the target list for the first step in the plan. If these endpoints subsequently report back to the BigFix server, and unless the step failure behavior settings for the step specify that they are excluded from future steps, these endpoints will be included in the processing for subsequent steps. To enable the non-reporting threshold, you must check an option on the Settings tab for each Automation Plan and you must also specify the non-reporting threshold using Fixlet 156 Configure the Automation Plan Engine.

When you create an Automation Plan, you can optionally add a single corresponding failure step for each Automation Plan step. A failure step can include a Fixlet, Task, or Baseline. However, you cannot add a Baseline that contains Fixlets or Tasks with parameters as a failure step. (Note that you cannot add a Baseline that contains Fixlets or Tasks with parameters as a regular step in a plan either.) If a step action fails and the Automation Plan contains a failure step for the failed step, the Automation Plan Engine identifies and runs the failure step action. You can target a failure step to run on either all of the endpoints for the corresponding step action or only on the endpoints that returned a failed status for the step action. When a failure step action processing is complete, the Automation Plan Engine stops the failure step action and then the Automation Plan action, regardless of the overall final status of the failure step action.

Note: When you create an Automation Plan, the list of available Automation Plans in the Automation Plans dashboard is automatically refreshed. To manually refresh the list of available Automation Plans, click the Refresh icon in the dashboard.

Complete the following steps to create an Automation Plan.

Procedure

Open the Server Automation domain and from the navigation tree in the Domain Panel, click Automation Plans.
From the Automation Plans dashboard, click Create to open the plan editor. By default, the plan type is a sequential plan. This means that the steps in the plan will be executed in sequence, in the order in which you add them to the plan. You can change a sequential plan type to a parallel plan type (where steps are executed concurrently). This is described below. However, you cannot change a parallel plan type to a sequential plan without manually changing the dependencies so that no steps are run in parallel.
In the Details tab, enter the Automation Plan name and description. The Name is a required value. Enter a site and a domain to host the Automation Plan. The Site and Domain fields are required values. Enter values in the Category, Source, Source Release Date, and Category Source Severity fields. The Source Release Date is a required field.
To add one or more steps to an Automation Plan, click the Steps tab. You must add a minimum of one step to an Automation Plan. Complete the following procedure to add one or more steps to an Automation Plan:
1. Click Add Step. By default, the Add Step dialog box does not display any Fixlets, Tasks or Baselines. To search for Fixlets, Tasks, or Baselines to add to the plan, from Add Step panel, select Fixlets, Tasks, or Baselines from the Include list to view Fixlets, Tasks or Baselines. The default value, All, displays Fixlets, Tasks and Baselines. Only Fixlets and Tasks which contain actions are displayed.
2. To filter the list of Fixlets, Tasks and Baselines, use the lists and the input box. To add or remove filters, use + - .
3. After you add the relevant search criteria, click the search icon or press Enter to search for Fixlets, Tasks and Baselines.
4. From the list of Fixlets, Tasks and Baselines, select one or more to add to the Automation Plan.
5. When you finish selecting Fixlets, Tasks and Baselines, click Add. The name and execution order of each step in the Automation Plan is shown in the Flow tab. Each step in the plan, whether sequential or parallel, is automatically assigned a unique identifier (UID) to help you to identify the step in the Automation Plan Action Status dashboard and Take Action screen. The UID is read-only and you cannot change it. The UID does not represent the execution order of steps in the plan and does not change if you change the order of steps in the Steps tab.
6. If the Fixlet, Task, or Baseline contains action script that requires the endpoints to be restarted, you see an alert warning on the Settings tab, indicating that the step contains an action that requires the target endpoints to be restarted. Go to the Settings tab and configure the Pending Restart settings. For more information, see Managing pending restart states.
Note: If you add a Baseline to a plan and if the Baseline has custom action settings defined, these custom action settings are not recognized by the Automation Plan Engine and the Baseline is processed based on the settings defined in the Automation Plan.

Note: If you use baseline as (regular) step instead of multi-step fixlets. This practice helps you to execute the plans in a relatively shorter time. Under the take-action and Default dialog box, the baseline step and its component fixlets are represented in parent-child structure to provide parameter support for each component. This feature only works when baseline is added as a regular step and not as a failure-step. For more information, see Adding Baseline to a multi-step plan.

Note: If the source Fixlet, Task, or Baseline is subsequently updated, you are notified of the change by a message displayed in the user interface. You can then update the copy of the Fixlet, Task, or Baseline in the Automation Plan.
For each step that is a Fixlet or a Task, select an action from the Action list. If the Fixlet or Task contains a default action, this action is automatically selected. If the Fixlet or Task contains one or more actions with no default, No Action Selected is displayed in the Action list. An action with a Script Type of URL is not displayed in the Action list.

Optional: To save a set of default targets, default parameters, and filters for the step, complete the procedures described in the following table, depending on what you want to set.

Table 1. Saving default options
Default setting	Description
Default targets	Click the Default Settings icon for the step. From the Targets tab, search for and select the computers that you want to save as default targets for the step and add them to the Selected Targets list. You can also save default targets using the The same computers targeted by step or The computers specified in the list of names options. However, you cannot save a computer group by entering the computer group name using the The computers specified in the list of names option. To save default groups, you must select the computer group and move it to the Selected Targets list. When you do this, the computer group name is added to the list of Selected Targets. If you are saving a computer group as a default target, the group membership is not determined until the step is being executed. Therefore if computers belong to the group when you are creating the Automation Plan but not when the step is being executed, they are not targeted. Additionally, if the computer group that you save as a default target does not exist when the step is being executed, the computer group is no longer included in the Selected Targets list because it is no longer a valid target. For more information, see Targeting by computer group. Similarly, if computers that you save as default targets do not exist when you are running the Automation Plan, the Selected Targets list in the Take Automation Plan Action dialog box is updated to reflect this. Depending on security settings, users running the Automation Plan might not be able to see all of the default targets that you set if they do not have sufficient permissions. If you filter the search settings to view Computer Groups, the Use Applicability check box is disabled.
Default parameters	Click the Default Settings icon for the step. If there are parameters associated with the action for the step, you can set and save default parameters. From the Parameters tab, enter the parameters that you want to save as default parameters. You can enter some or all of the parameters associated with the action for the step. Note that the parameters that you set as defaults are not validated when you create the Automation Plan, they are validated when you run the Automation Plan. The Parameters tab is displayed only if there are parameters associated with the action for the step. When you move your mouse over the Default Settings icon after you have saved default parameters, a tooltip is displayed providing information that default parameters have been set. This tooltip provides this information for any Fixlet that has default parameters, not just for default parameters that you have saved. If a default parameter was set for the Fixlet when the Fixlet was created, the tooltip will display information that default parameters are set.
Filters	Click the Default Settings icon for the step. You can set and save filter criteria, including custom properties, for targets for the step. To save filters, select the filters that you want displayed in the Take Automation Plan Action dialog box when you are running the Automation Plan. Note: If you are saving custom properties as filters, these properties must not be reserved or default properties, and they cannot come from an analysis. The custom properties must have been reported by at least one computer. If you export an Automation Plan containing custom properties and then import it on another server, and the custom properties are not specified on the server to which you import the Automation Plan, the custom properties are automatically deleted. If you delete the custom properties, they are also deleted from the Automation Plan.

Click OK and then Save to save the defaults that you have set and repeat this process for each step in the Automation Plan for which you want to save default options. If you delete the Automation Plan, default options are also deleted.

Optional: To define step failure behavior for a step, expand Failure Behavior:
1. From the Failure Step Mode list, select either Stop Automation Plan or Continue Automation Plan, depending on whether or not you want to stop the Automation Plan if this step fails on some or all endpoints. If you select Stop Automation Plan, the system runs any associated failure step and then stops the Automation Plan. If you select Continue Automation Plan, the system runs any associated failure step and then moves on to the next step in the Automation Plan. You must then choose to continue the Automation Plan on all endpoints, or only on the endpoints on which this step was successful.
2. If you selected Continue Automation Plan, from the Failed Targets list, select either Include in Future Steps or Exclude from Future Steps, depending on whether or not you want to continue the subsequent steps in the Automation Plan on the endpoints on which this step failed.
For more information about the step failure behavior feature, see Defining step failure behavior settings.
To add a failure step to a step, click the Add Failure Step icon for the step. A failure step is optional and can be a Fixlet, Task, or Baseline. To add a failure step to a step:
1. In the Add Step panel, select Fixlets, Tasks, or Baselines from the Include list to view Fixlets,Tasks, or Baselines.
2. To filter the list, use the lists and the input box. To add or remove filters, use + - .
3. After you add the relevant search criteria, click the search icon or press Enter to search.
4. From the list of Fixlets, Tasks, and Baselines, select one to add to the step.
5. Click Add. The failure step is shown in the Steps tab. If you selected a Fixlet or Task and there is no action selected for the Fixlet or Task, an icon is displayed indicating this. If necessary, select an action for the Fixlet or Task.
6. To change the targeting for the failure step, expand Failure Step: for the step. To target all endpoints that are targeted by the step action, select All from the Targeting list. The default option is Failed Only. This option targets only the endpoints that return a failure status in the corresponding step action.
7. To choose an action in the failure step, expand Failure Step: for the step. Select an action from the Action list. Note that you cannot select an action if you have a Baseline selected as a failure step. If you have selected a Baseline as a failure step and if any of the Baseline components do not have an action selected, the failure step remains in view. If you selected a Baseline as a failure step and there are components in the Baseline that do not have an action selected, you are notified in the user interface. To select an action for the components, you must go to the All Content domain, search for the Baseline and select an action for any components that do not have an action selected. The Baseline that you added to the failure step in Server Automation will now be out of sync, and an out-of-sync icon will be displayed in Server Automation notifying you of this. Click the out-of-sync icon to update the Baseline so that it contains the latest content, as per the All Content domain. If the source Fixlet, Task, or Baseline subsequently changes, an out-of-sync icon is displayed in Server Automation, notifying you of this. You can click the out-of-sync icon in edit mode to synchronize the Fixlet, Task, or Baseline to the latest source content.
  
  Note: If any of the components in the Baseline you added as a failure step contain steps that require a restart, an icon is displayed to notify you of this. When you see this icon, review the Pending Restart settings for the step.
8. To remove a failure step from a step, click the Remove Failure Step icon for the step.
Optional: To enable the non-reporting threshold, click the Settings tab. In the Execution section, check the Exclude non-reporting endpoints option. When you check this option, endpoints that have not reported within the time threshold that you specified in Task 156 Configure the Automation Plan Engine are excluded from execution. For information about how to configure the non-reporting threshold, see Configuring the Automation Plan Engine.
If you want your Automation Plan to be a parallel plan, from the Steps tab, click the Parallel radio button for the Plan type. You must then set the step dependencies to control the flow of the plan. For a step that you want to make dependent on another step, expand Depends on for that step. Enable the check box for the step that you want this step to be dependent on. For example, if you want step 5 to be dependent on step 2, enable the check box for step 2. Refer to the Flow tab to see how the processing flow of the plan changes as you makes updates and set dependencies. For more information about setting dependencies, see Parallel processing and step dependencies. If you delete a step and other steps use the same targets as that step, a message displays to inform you that other steps are targeting those endpoints. You can confirm that you want to remove the step but you then need to re-select target endpoints for the steps that use the same endpoints. If you delete a step and other steps are dependent on that step, a message displays on the user interface to notify you that other steps have a dependency on the step that you are deleting. Where possible the system will maintain the dependencies but in some cases this is not possible and you must set the dependencies between steps.

Attention: After you have selected a parallel plan type and set dependencies, you cannot revert the plan to a sequential plan type by selecting the Sequential radio button for the Plan type. For complete information about setting dependencies, see Parallel processing and step dependencies.
Click Save to save the Automation Plan.

Results

You created an Automation Plan. The list of available Automation Plans in the Automation Plans dashboard is refreshed to display the new Automation Plan. You can run, edit, copy, or delete this plan. You can easily move or replace any of the steps in the plan at a later time. You can also insert new steps before or after existing steps in the plan. If you need to subsequently change the steps in the plan, click the Move, Insert, or Replace this step icon for any step in the plan while in edit mode. From the pop-up menu that is displayed, select an option to move an existing step, insert a new step, or replace the currently selected step. Make the updates to the plan as required.