Running an Automation Plan

You run or schedule your Automation Plan from the Automation Plans dashboard in the Server Automation domain. If you run or schedule an Automation Plan from any other dashboard or panel, it will fail. The Automation Plan Engine runs the Automation Plan, one step at a time, by opening, processing, and then stopping each step in the order that you specify when you create the Automation Plan. The Automation Plan Engine calculates the state of each step and uses these states to control the execution of the Automation Plan. In the Automation Plans dashboard, you must specify one or more endpoints for each step in an Automation Plan. You must specify the correct value for each parameter in a step or a failure step to ensure that the step or failure step can run successfully. Only steps that are Fixlets or Tasks can have parameters.

Before you begin

You must log on to the IBM® BigFix console as a master operator or console operator. If you log on as a console operator, you must have permission to target each endpoint that you select. You must have Custom Content and Can Create Actions permissions set to Yes to run an Automation Plan. For more information about IBM BigFix permissions, see Operator's Permissions.. You must run the Automation Plan in the Automation Plans dashboard in the Server Automation domain. If you run an Automation Plan in any other dashboard or panel, it will fail.

To schedule an Automation Plan, ensure that the latest version of the Automation Plan Engine is installed on your IBM BigFix console. If the latest version is not installed, the Install Latest Automation Plan Engine Task is relevant. To upgrade to the latest version of the Automation Plan Engine, see Upgrading the Automation Plan Engine.

About this task

The Automation Plan Engine opens a step as it begins to process it. When the step processing is complete, the Automation Plan Engine stops the step. If the step is successful, the Automation Plan Engine then opens and processes the next step. If the step fails, the Automation Plan Engine then opens the associated failure step, if one exists, and processes it. To understand how the Automation Plan Engine calculates if a step is complete or not, review the state mapping information that is described here. To calculate the overall state of an Automation Plan step, the Automation Plan Engine gets the individual results that are retrieved from each of the endpoints. The Automation Plan Engine uses these results to calculate the overall state of the step. This state mapping information shows how that overall state of the step is used by the Automation Plan Engine to control the running of the Automation Plan. The Automation Plan Engine runs each step in the Automation Plan based on a wait, success, or failure status. The following table outlines the states that map to the wait, success, or failure status.

Table 1. Automation Plan state mapping
Status of action	Outcome of action status	Description
Running Evaluating Waiting Pending Downloads Postponed Pending Restart Pending Message Pending Login Not Reported	Wait	The action is still in progress or waiting for user input. The Automation Plan Engine waits for this status to change.
<Error> Failed Canceled Download Failed Invalid Signature Expired Completed Locked Constrained	Failure	The action cannot proceed. There might be an error or problem with the targeted endpoint. The Automation Plan Engine stops the Automation Plan.
Fixed Not Relevant	Success	The action completed successfully. The Automation Plan Engine proceeds to the next step.

A final state for the Automation Plan step is not calculated until all of the targeted endpoints report a state that maps to either a success or failure decision. Until that happens, the overall state of the Automation Plan step is wait. This includes the scenario where one or more targeted endpoints do not exist or are unavailable for some other reason, for example, if the endpoint is powered off, or if you do not have permission to target the endpoint. Unless all of the targeted endpoints report a status that maps to either a success or failure decision, the Automation Plan stays in a wait state. In the case of non-existent or unavailable endpoints, this results in an infinite wait state, and causes the Automation Plan to wait indefinitely.

When you run an Automation Plan, you must specify one or more endpoints for each step. You can assign endpoints to a step by using one of the following approaches:

Select one or more computers from the list of computers that are managed by the IBM BigFix server.
Select one or more computer groups from the list of computers groups that are managed by the IBM BigFix server.
Type the names of one or more computers.
Specify the same endpoints as another step in the Automation Plan.

Important: You must not add a Baseline as a step if it contains any Component that prompts for parameter values when run. You cannot specify the values of the parameters in a step that is a Baseline. If you run an Automation Plan containing a Baseline that has a Component with an unspecified parameter, the Automation Plan might fail or result in some other unexpected behavior. Only steps that are Fixlets or Tasks can have parameters that prompt for values when run.

Scheduling an Automation Plan and prefetching downloads

You can schedule an Automation Plan to run at a specified date and time. The date and time that you specify in the Take Automation Plan Action panel is the IBM BigFix console local time. The IBM BigFix console converts the specified time to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the Automation Plan Engine runs the Automation Plan at the specified UTC time. If the scheduled UTC time and date are less than or equal to the current UTC time and date, the Automation Plan Engine runs the Automation Plan immediately.

If you are scheduling your Automation Plan, you can choose to prefetch the content that needs to be downloaded. This option allows you to download the content required as part of the Automation Plan in advance of the execution of the Automation Plan. This speeds up the execution of the Automation Plan so that when the plan runs, the content has been downloaded in advance and the plan runs much faster. The system evaluates the relevance of each step in the plan on the target endpoints and downloads only content that is relevant and required for the execution of the plan at the point of the plan submission. This helps minimize network traffic. If there are steps in the plan with download content that is not relevant until an earlier step has run, the content in these steps is not be prefetched and is downloaded at run-time. To prefetch downloads, select the Enable prefetching check box when you are scheduling your Automation Plan. If you select this option, an open action is created for each step in your Automation Plan that has a prefetch or download statement. You can view these actions from the Automation Plan Action Status dashboard.

Important: If Enable prefetching actions run in parallel with Automation Plan steps to the same endpoints, the step waits until all prefetch download steps are completed. Because the step action and the step download action share the same download, the IBM BigFix client detects this and waits for it to complete.

Important: There is a potential performance impact associated with using the Enable prefetching option because an additional action is created for each step that requires software downloads. The recommended maximum number of open actions on the system is 2,500. For any given Automation Plan, an action is open for the Automation Plan and also for each individual step in the Automation Plan. If you use the Enable prefetching option, additional actions are created and opened for each step that requires software downloads. So instead of having two open actions per Automation Plan at any one point (one action for the Automation Plan and one for the current step) there are additional actions opened for each step that requires software downloads.

Note: If an endpoint does not yet exist, the Automation Plan Engine waits until the endpoint is created before executing the step.

Complete the following steps to run or schedule an Automation Plan.

Procedure

Open the Server Automation domain.
From the navigation tree in the Domain Panel, click Automation Plans. The Automation Plans dashboard is opened. A list of available Automation Plans is displayed in the dashboard. To sort the list, click any column title. To filter all columns in the list, use the filter field.
Select an Automation Plan from the list.
Click Take Action. The Take Automation Plan Action panel is opened.
To schedule the Automation Plan, click Configure Plan, enable the check box under Execution and specify the start time and date for the Automation Plan by selecting a date and time from the Starts on menu. You can also type values for the date and time in the Start Time field and the Start Date field. The time and date that you specify is the console local time. The default values of the Start Date list and the Start Time list are the current IBM BigFix console local time and date. You can select the Enable prefetching option to download the relevant content required for each step in the Automation Plan in advance of the execution of the Automation Plan. If you select this option, an open action is created for each step in your Automation Plan.
Select a step from the Steps list. By default, targets are not automatically loaded in the Available Targets list. If you want to load all available targets, click the search icon or press Enter. To view only the applicable endpoints for the selected step, select the Use applicability check box. To view all the endpoints that are managed by the IBM BigFix server, clear the Use applicability check box. If there are no applicable endpoints for the selected step, the Use applicability check box is disabled.
To filter computers or computer groups that you want to target based on their properties, use the lists and the input box. To add or remove filters, click + or -. After you enter the relevant criteria to search, click the search icon or press Enter to search.
To assign one or more endpoints as targets for the step, use one of the following methods:
- Click Specific computers selected in the list below to select one or more computer names as endpoints for the step:
  1. From the Include list, select Computers and use the property filters as necessary to help you find the targets.
  2. Click the search icon or press Enter to search for the target computers.
  3. To add all of the computers in the Available Targets list to the Selected Targets list, click Add All Displayed Targets.
  4. To add selected computers to the Selected Targets list, select one or more computers in the Available Targets list and click Add Highlighted Targets.
- Click Specific computers selected in the list below to select one or more computer groups as endpoints for a step:
  1. From the Include list, select Computer Group.
  2. Click the search icon or press Enter to search for the target computers.
  3. To add all the computer groups in the Available Targets list to the Selected Targets list, click Add All Displayed Targets.
  4. To add selected computer groups to the Selected Targets list, select one or more computer groups in the Available Targets list and click Add Highlighted Targets.
- Click The computers specified in the list below (one per line) to specify one or more computers as endpoints for a step:
  1. Type or copy and paste the names of the computers that you want to target.
  2. Enter one computer name per line.
- Select a step name from the Use same targets as list to specify the same endpoints as another step in the Automation Plan.
Note: If the step has a set of default targets saved when the Automation Plan is created, these targets are displayed in the Selected Targets list.
Repeat steps 5, 6, 7, and 8 for each step in the Automation Plan.
To specify parameters for a step, select the step from the list and click the Parameters tab. For each parameter required by the step, a description and an entry field are displayed. If the parameter has a default value, the entry field contains the default. If the step has a saved default set of parameters, an icon is displayed to indicate this. To ensure the step runs successfully, each parameter displayed on the tab must have a valid value.
To specify parameters for a failure step, select the step from the list and click the Failure Step Parameters tab. If the selected step has a failure step that requires parameters, a description and entry field is displayed for each parameter. If a parameter has a default value, the entry field contains the default. To ensure the failure step runs successfully, each parameter displayed on the tab must have a valid value. The failure step parameters are independent of the step parameters.
To run or schedule the Automation Plan, ensure that all steps have one or more endpoints selected as targets and that all step parameters have values, then click OK. The following graphic shows an example of the Take Automation Plan Action screen.

Results

The Automation Plan runs and the Automation Plan Action Status dashboard is opened. In this panel, you can view the Automation Plan action and the corresponding step actions for the Automation Plan.