Understand Ansible Automation Platform execution steps

Automation orchestrator provides two step types for running Ansible Automation Platform automation jobs directly from your workflows:

  • Launch AAP job template: This automation orchestrator step launches a single Ansible Automation Platform job template. Use this to run one playbook, such as patching servers, deploying an application, or executing a remediation runbook.

  • Launch AAP workflow template: This automation orchestrator step launches an Ansible Automation Platform workflow job template. Use this to trigger an entire Ansible Automation Platform pipeline that coordinates multiple job templates with conditional paths and convergence points.

Why run Ansible Automation Platform from automation orchestrator

Running Ansible Automation Platform templates from automation orchestrator adds the following capabilities:

  • AI-driven decisions: A task agent step can analyze logs, alerts, or infrastructure state. It then dynamically selects which Ansible Automation Platform job or workflow template to launch and which parameters to use.

  • Cross-platform orchestration: Combine Ansible Automation Platform with HTTP requests, scripts, AI analysis, and other non-Ansible actions in a single workflow.

  • Human-in-the-loop governance: Add approval steps that gate whether Ansible Automation Platform automation runs. Gates can use context from upstream steps, such as an AI assessment or a data lookup. Although Ansible Automation Platform has its own approval nodes, it cannot access context from systems outside Ansible Automation Platform.

  • Chaining Ansible Automation Platform with external systems: Run an Ansible Automation Platform provisioning job, call a third-party API to register new infrastructure, then send a notification from one workflow.

  • Multi-environment orchestration: A single automation orchestrator workflow can run across development, staging, and production environments in sequence. You can add approval gates, conditional logic, or AI-driven decisions between each stage.

When to use each step type

Scenario Step type
Run a single playbook Launch AAP job template
Trigger a multi-job-template pipeline already defined in Ansible Automation Platform Launch AAP workflow template
Dynamically select a job template based on AI analysis Launch AAP job template (with expressions)
Dynamically select a workflow template based on AI analysis Launch AAP workflow template (with expressions)

How the Ansible Automation Platform execution steps work

Both Ansible Automation Platform execution step types follow the same execution pattern:

  1. The workflow engine resolves any expressions in the step's configuration.
  2. If you specified resources by name, the engine looks up the template and inventory in the specified Ansible Automation Platform organization.
  3. The engine sends a launch request to the automation controller API with the resolved parameters.
  4. The engine polls the job status at regular intervals until it reaches a terminal state: successful, failed, error, or canceled.
  5. The engine retrieves the results and makes them available to downstream steps.

If you cancel the automation orchestrator workflow while an Ansible Automation Platform job is running, the engine sends a cancellation request. Ansible Automation Platform then stops the running job.