Automation Dashboard and Analytics - Solution Guide
## Overview
As the use of automation grows across an organization, so does the return on investment (ROI) in Ansible Automation Platform. To help teams and leaders quantify this impact, the platform provides analytics tools: the automation dashboard (on-premise) which is used for internal usage and savings tracking and the automation analytics (cloud-based) which offers advanced insights into usage and financial savings. These tools allow you to easily visualize key metrics such as the top automation projects, the most active users, and the overall job outcomes. You can effortlessly filter the data by date, project, label, and then save, export, and share reports to communicate across your organization.
**Automation Dashboard:** Automation dashboard is deployed on premise as a self-contained utility to ensure your automation data remains protected and secure within your own environment. It automatically syncs usage and savings data from your existing Ansible Automation Platform instances. **Automation Analytics:** Automation analytics is a cloud-based service and is accessed via the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. For users running Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 or earlier, this service must be explicitly activated before use. ## Operational impact None. ## Who Benefits: Insights by Stakeholder **Technical Teams (Engineers & Network/Infrastructure Managers)**- Performance and Optimization
- Optimize job templates and workflows to improve efficiency
- Monitor job duration and performance trends over time
- Improve performance of high-volume automation tasks.
- Troubleshooting & Health
- Investigate job failures, timeouts, or bottlenecks
- Identify patterns behind recurring job failures for root cause analysis
- Technology value drivers
- Track job success rates through the dashboard
- Perform automation job tracking and automation monitoring through analytics.
- Adoption & Benchmarking
- Track automation efforts and adoption across group or environments
- Compare performance and efficiency between different teams
- Strategic planning
- Identify opportunities for additional automation coverage
- Build roadmap for expanding automation into new domains
- Measurement
- Analyze job duration, frequency, and overall efficiency
- Assess and quantify operational efficiency gains
- Business value drivers
- Monitor automation utilization and progress against efficiency goals
- Financial impact
- Understand cumulative time and cost savings realized over months or quarters
- Use data to support budget decisions and justify resource allocation
- Strategy & Maturity
- Measure progress against overall automation goals
- Support business cases for scaling the automation program
- Monitor long term organizational automation maturity and adoption
- Business value drivers
- Track return on investment (ROI) and time and financial savings
- Use data to forecast automation performance
- This content is not included.Automation dashboard interactive demo
- Content from www.youtube.com is not included.Getting started with automation analytics video demo
To access the necessary analytics tools, ensure you have the required access:
- Automation Dashboard (on-premise) requires access to the local instance where the Dashboard utility is deployed
- Automation Analytics (cloud-based) requires access to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console via access.redhat.com
- Using automation dashboard
- Activating automation analytics
- Using automation analytics
- This content is not included.Automation analytics FAQ
Step 1: Prepare the host and install dependencies
- Download the latest installer bundle (ansible-automation-dashboard-containerized-setup-bundle-*.tar.gz) from access.redhat.com and copy it to your RHEL 9 host.
tar -xzvf ansible-automation-dashboard-containerized-setup-bundle-0.1-x86_64.tar.gz
cd ansible-automation-dashboard-containerized-setup/
- Install ansible-core and required collections
sudo dnf install ansible-core
ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml
Step 2: Configure AAP for OAuth2
- You must first create an OAuth2 application. Navigate to the Applications section in your AAP instance.
- For AAP 2.4, navigate to Content from aap_controller_fqdn is not included.Content from aap_controller_fqdn is not included.https://aap_controller_fqdn/#/applications
- For AAP 2.5 and 2.6 navigate to Content from aap_gateway_fqdn is not included.Content from aap_gateway_fqdn is not included.https://aap_gateway_fqdn/access/applications
-
Create a new application with the following details, substituting your Dashboard FQDN:
Name: automation-dashboard-sso
Authorization grant type: authorization-code
Organization: Default
Redirect URIs: Content from automation_dashboard_fqdn is not included.Content from automation_dashboard_fqdn is not included.https://automation_dashboard_fqdn/auth-callback
Client type: Confidential
** Note that the Name, Organization, and HTTPS port number for AAP are configurable. The example above assumes use of port 443. -
Save the
client_idandclient_secret_informationinputs into the inventory file. -
Now you have to create a personal access token. Navigate to the Token section in your AAP instance: Content from aap_gateway_fqdn is not included.Content from aap_gateway_fqdn is not included.https://aap_gateway_fqdn/#/users/
/tokens. -
Create a new token for the OAuth application you just created using the following information:
OAuth application: automation-dashboard-sso
Scope: read -
Save the generated access_token and refresh_token.
Step 3: Run the Dashboard installer
- Copy the example inventory file and edit the variables with your environment details.
cp -i inventory.example inventory
vi inventory
- Change the following values to use the inventory configuration in your environment:
- Change the RHEL 9 host occurrences from Content from host.example.com is not included.host.example.com to your FQDN host
- Change the phrase TODO to match your passwords within all
_admin_passwordor_pg_passwordvalues.
** For more information, see the Inventory variables document
- Run the installer playbook using your modified inventory.
ansible-playbook -i inventory ansible.containerized_installer.dashboard_install --ask-become-pass
Step 4: Integrating Automation Dashboard with your Ansible Automation Platform
Integrate your Ansible Automation Platform instance into the automation dashboard configuration to collect and visualize data and gain insights into your automation.
- In order to configure clusters.yaml copy the example cluster configuration file and edit it.
cp clusters.example.yaml clusters.yaml
vi clusters.yaml
-
For each AAP instance you want to monitor, update the configuration block with the saved credentials:
address: Your AAP FQDN
access_token,refresh_token,client_id,client_secret: Use the values saved from Step 2.
sync_schedules: Define how often the data should be pulled. (e.g., FREQ=MINUTELY; INTERVAL=5 for every 5 minutes) -
Copy the customized clusters.yaml file into the running Dashboard container and activate it.
podman cp clusters.yaml automation-dashboard-web:/
podman exec automation-dashboard-web /venv/bin/python ./manage.py setclusters /clusters.yaml
- Manually trigger a data synchronization task to verify communication and credentials.
*Change the date accordingly.
podman exec -it automation-dashboard-web /venv/bin/python ./manage.py syncdata --since=2024-01-01 --until=2024-06-01
- You can use the journalctl to check progress:
sudo journalctl -fn10
Step 5: Verification and Access
- Access the dashboard and confirm that the core services are running
podman ps --all --format "{{.Names}}"
# Expected output: postgresql, automation-dashboard-task, automation-dashboard-web
- Refresh your web browser and navigate to the Dashboard’s FQDN to view the retrieved automation data.
Filters
Use one or more of the following filtering options to focus your automation analysis:
- Template: Select one or more specific Job Templates
- Organization: Select one or more AAP Organizations
- Project: Select one or more Projects
- Label: Select one or more automation projects by assigned labels
** Note: To use the Label filter, you must first preconfigure and assign labels within the Ansible Automation Platform when creating job templates. See Creating a job template for more information.
Time Period and Currency Selection
| Setting | Purpose | Key Considerations |
|---|---|---|
| Time Period | Defines the time window for the included data. | Use a shorter period for specific use case analysis; use a longer period for overall platform growth and usage trends. |
| Currency | Selects the currency symbol to display automation savings. | The Dashboard does not automatically convert currency values. You must manually update the manual and automation cost figures to match the selected currency. |
Saving a Report
Once configured, use the ‘Save as Report’ feature to store your customized report directly within the automation dashboard. This allows you to quickly retrieve the exact analysis configuration at any time.
Summary of Top and Overview Usage
The automation dashboard provides an immediate summary of key metrics based on your selected report filters and time period. This data helps gauge platform activity and health at glance:
| Metric Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Job Outcomes | Total number of successful jobs and failed jobs. (Analysis of failures is the key to improving efficiency.) |
| Host Usage | Total number of unique hosts automated (Controller inventory records). |
| Execution Load | Total hours of automation (cumulative job running time) and Number of times jobs were run (total job executions). |
| Top Activity | Top 5 projects (based on running jobs) and Top 5 users (based on jobs run by each user |
Analyzing cost and savings
The cost and savings analysis is a core feature used to calculate the total derived savings (ROI) by comparing the estimated cost of performing tasks manually versus the actual cost of automation execution using AAP.
1 Enter the estimated Average cost per hour to manually run the job. (i.e., the cost of an engineer’s labor)
2 Enter the Average cost per minute of running on Ansible Automation Platform (i.e., the platform’s operational cost).
3 Select Time taken to create automation into calculator to include the cost of initial and ongoing automation development time.
Data Supplied by the Dashboard:
| Metric | Calculation and Meaning |
|---|---|
| Cost of manual automation | Estimated cost of manually performing all automated tasks. This represents potential expenses avoided by automating. |
| Cost of automated execution | The actual operational cost incurred for running the jobs on AAP (server time, processing, etc). |
| Total savings/cost avoided | The ROI metric: (Cost of manual automation - Cost of automated execution) |
| Total hours saved/avoided | The calculated time benefit:(Host executions + Automation creation time) - Running time in minutes |
| Time taken to manually execute (mins) | The estimated time it takes a user to perform the task. |
Automation savings is calculated by analyzing job execution data (across all organizations, hosts, and templates) and translating that into time and cost metrics. Note that the initial savings feature uses default values. We highly recommend entering your organization’s specific costs to ensure accuracy when using this tool.
The calculator works by using a few key variables to compute the total saving:
| Average cost per hour to manually run the job ($) | The estimated salary cost per hour for an employee who would normally perform this task without automation. |
| Average cost per minute of running AAP ($) | The effective cost of using AAP, calculated by dividing the total amount spent on AAP during the selected dashboard time frame by the total time automation jobs were executed. |
| Time taken to manually execute (min) | The amount of time it would take a person to complete this job manually. This works together with the average manual cost per minute to determine the total manual cost and effort. |
| Time taken to create automation (min) | An optional field capturing the time required to build the automation scripts for this task. |
The default savings figure is based on platform estimates. You can easily tune this calculation using your organizational data to achieve a more precise result.
The steps for tuning the calculation is:
- In the ‘Calculate your automation’ section, input the precise manual process cost and automated process cost for your organization.
- In the ‘Top templates’ section, adjust the time value for the 25 most frequently run templates. This time should reflect how long it would take an employee to manually perform the task that the templates automate.
- As you enter or adjust these features, the Total savings updates instantly, reflecting the impact of your precise costs. Note that the calculations are not saved within Red Hat Automation Analytics; they are generated live based on the data and cost inputs you provide.
You can curate the view by using the toggle switch for each template to selectively include or exclude it from the saving bar graph and the total savings figure. This helps you focus the ROI report on specific projects or domains.
By clicking the info icon next to any template, you can view detailed context including:
- Total/Success/Failed elapsed sum: Runtime breakdowns
- Automation percentage: The template’s contribution to the total automation load
- Associated organizations and clusters: Operational context for the template’s execution
The Savings Planner enables you to:
- Plan: Define the scope and tasks required for a new automation project.
- Track: Link the plan to an actual Ansible job template to measure real-world performance against projections.
- Analyze: Generate accurate projections of time and cost savings, which is essential for business case development and prioritization.
Steps:
- Navigate to ‘Automation Analytics’ -> ‘Savings Planner’ and click ‘Add Plan’.
- Provide the fundamental data required for the calculation.
a. The number of hosts the job will get
b. The estimated manual time it takes to complete the entire job
c. The frequency of the job’s execution - List the individual tasks of the automation for organizational planning purposes.
- Associate the newly created plan with a specific Ansible Job Template and click save.
- Your new savings plan is now created and displayed on the automation savings planner list view.
Once the plan is created and linked, the planner calculates the potential return.
To view the ROI projections:
- From the ‘Savings Planner’ list, select the name of an existing plan and navigate to the ‘Statistics’ tab.
- The statistics chart uses the estimated manual cost and subtract the projected automated cost to show the total resources saved.
- You can toggle the chart to view projected savings in both money and time, displayed cumulatively over time to show long term ROI.
You can also easily edit any existing plan’s details or update the linked job template. The list view can be filtered and sorted based on criteria like automation type or status to help managers prioritize which project to focus on next.
## Next Steps Now that you have successfully installed and configured the Automation Dashboard and Analytics, focus on maximizing your return on investment and integrating data-driven decision-making into your daily operations.- Implement Accurate Costing: Update the Automation Calculator with precise, organization-specific Manual Process Cost and Automated Process Cost figures to ensure all reported savings and ROI calculations are highly accurate and finance-ready.
- Create Strategic Savings Plans: Use the Automation Savings Planner to model and prioritize at least three high-impact automation initiatives for the next quarter. Link these plans to new job templates as they are created to track real-time ROI against your initial projections.
- Establish Governance and Reporting: Define a regular cadence for reviewing the tailored reports saved in the Automation Dashboard.
- Standardize Labeling: Establish and enforce a mandatory labeling convention within your Ansible Automation Platform. This ensures all future jobs are easily filterable and categorizable within the Dashboard, enabling consistent, clean reporting across all projects.