9-win-workflow

Create an Ansible Workflow

This exercise walks you through building an automation controller workflow in Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) 2.x. A workflow is an end-to-end orchestration that links job templates (and other nodes) into a logical flow with conditional paths.

In our case, the flow will:

• install latest selected Windows Updates
• install IIS (using our advanced role)
• install additional packages (with Chocolatey)
• finally, check Chocolatey facts and configuration

You can also wrap conditional logic (run on success/failure/always) and even add rollback paths if needed. The steps below reflect the AAP 2.5 UI.

Section 1 — Create the Workflow

We’ll create a Workflow Job Template and add our existing job templates as nodes.

It’ll look like this when finished:

Step 1 — New Workflow Template

1. In the AAP web UI, go to Automation Execution → Templates.
   Click Create template and choose Create workflow job template.

2. Fill out the form:

Key	Value	Note
Name	Example Workflow
Description	End-to-end process
Organization	Default
Inventory	Windows Workshop Inventory
Limit	windows

3. Click Create workflow job template. You’ll land in the Workflow Visualizer. (If you exit, you can always re-open the visualizer from the template’s Details page.)

Step 2 — Add the first job template (Windows Updates)

1. Click the Add step button, then select the Windows Updates job template from the right panel.
2. Set properties:

Key	Value	Note
Node Type	Job Template
Job template	Windows Updates
Convergence	Any

3. Click Next, then Finish.

4. Back in the visualizer, click the 3 dots and select Add Step and link

Step 3 — Add the IIS Advanced job template

1. Choose IIS Advanced job template.
2. Set:

Key	Value	Note
Node type	Job Template
Job template	IIS Advanced
Status	Always run
Convergence	Any

4. Click Next → Finish.

At this point, you have a two-stage process: Windows Updates → IIS Advanced, where IIS runs regardless of update outcome. (You can later add notifications for failures.)

Step 4 — Add Chocolatey steps

1. Hover over IIS Advanced, click the 3 dots and select Add step and link, select Chocolatey – Install Packages.
   Set:

Key	Value	Note
Node type	Job Template
Job template	Chocolatey - Install Packages
Status	Run on success
Convergence	Any

2. Click Next → Finish.
3. Hover over Chocolatey – Install Packages, click the 3 dots and select Add step and link, select Chocolatey – Facts and configuration.
   Set:

Key	Value	Note
Node type	Job Template
Job template	Chocolatey - Facts and configuration
Status	Run on success
Convergence	Any

4. Click Next → Finish.

5. Click Save in the visualizer to save the workflow graph.

Section 2 — Run the Workflow

1. From the left navigation, go to Automation Execution → Templates.

2. Click the rocket ship (Launch) icon for Example Workflow to start it. You can also open the workflow template and click Launch template from its details.

You’ll see real-time output for each node as the workflow runs.

If all goes well, your results will resemble: