Automation
Azure Automation allows you to automate the creation, monitoring, deployment, and maintenance of resources in your Azure environment using a highly-available workflow execution engine. Orchestrate time-consuming, error-prone, and frequently repeated tasks against Azure and third party systems to decrease time to value for your cloud operations.
Visit the Automation page to learn more about Automation and how to get started.
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Trigger email notifications or Azure log generation when a certificate is nearing expiration.
We recently ran into an issue where the AzureRunAs cert expired and caused most automations to fail due to a connectivity error. The client hadn't checked on AA for a bit and didn't see the portal warning.
Would be nice to have an email alert option to alert admins when certificates stored in AA are nearing expiration, or generate a log we which we can use to build Azure Alerts or feed into OMS. As of now, we had to create an AA runbook that pulls cert info on a schedule and alerts if necessary.
168 votesThe Product Group is coming up with the support of managed identity for Automation to be used instead of Runas account with a tentative ETA of CY21 March-End. All our investments would be towards moving customers to use managed identity rather than RunAs. With the support of managed identity , customers would not have to worry about the overhead of certificate management.
We will , however , prioritize email notification for cert expiry if resourcing allows. -
PowerShell cmdlet to get Runbook context.
It would be great if you could use in runbook code something like Get-RunbookContext to retrieve the current ResourceGroup and/or Automation Account the runbook is executing in. Then it would be much easier to locate Automation Account Assets like connections and variables without the need to hard-code them into your Runbook. The PowerShell commands available to retrieve and use assets require you to specify the ResourceGroup and Automation Account the asset is stored under.
137 votesThank you for contributing this idea. We are considering how this can be implemented in our future plans.
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Add possibility to end a test job when it hangs.
Sometimes when running code in a PS runbook something seems to hang. I'm getting the following error although the job probably finished long time ago:
"BadRequest: Test job is already running."
I would like to have the opportunity to clear any running test jobs to bypass this bug.107 votesGreat feedback that is currently under review
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Increase 1MB Size Limit for DSC Node Configurations (MOF files)
Azure DSC node configuration (MOF files) are currently limited to 1 MB in size. This limitation does not allow for significantly detailed or complex configurations.
In my specific scenario, we have several IIS websites in a our web farm and we've hit the limit of how many unique websites we can configure per server because the MOF file is larger than 1 MB. The resulting error is that the MOF cannot be encrypted by Azure DSC Automation.
79 votesGreat feedback. We will consider this a bug to be addressed in the future.
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WebHook Job Monitoring
Allow people to use the same WebHook Url used for triggering a runbook for querying job status.
Instead of doing a HTTP POST (used for triggering) you could allow a HTTP GET with the JobId as parameter. This would be a lightweight alternative for consuming runbook results no matter client and platform.
Note: Using the same url means same access token which leads to monitoring being possible for the lifetime of the access token.78 votesThis is a great idea that we are continuing to review.
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Make Automation an Azure Trusted Service
the Azure automation ip range should be added as an Azure trusted service so when I use vnet endpoints on storage accounts, etc and tell it to allow azure trusted services automation works.
76 votesThe ask is under review. Storage team would be able to add Azure Automation as a trusted service, once Automation supports managed identity which is planned for March-End CY21.
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Change behavior when sandbox runs out of memory (1MB max to one stream limit)
There is currently a maximum limit of 1MB when outputting values to the any stream (Serialized size per object in pipeline).
I understand why this limit is there, but I don't think the current behavior is the right way to go.Current behavior is that the runbook restarts, and runs 3 times until it is stopped with the following error:
Suspended
The job action 'Activate' cannot be run, because the process stopped unexpectedly. The job action was attempted 3 times.If we run it on look at the eventlog on a hybrid worker (this error also happens in Azure workers),…
74 votesThanks for posting this feedback! I’m checking with our team to see if there is anything that we can do about this in the short term. We’ll definitely take this into consideration in our longer term plans.
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Ability to rerun a job with same parameters of the last job
The feature I propose is a 'Rerun Command’. I have a ‘crude’ mockup attached. Clicking on Rerun would bring up the Start Runbook blade; but with the parameter values prepopulated with the same values from the previous execution. I can now modify any value, if necessary, or just click OK, to start the job quickly.
I see myself rerunning my runbook with mostly the same values. When I have many input parameters, I have to be very careful not to mess up any values, and what I do now is open two browser windows. Open the previous job’s Input blade…
62 votesThanks for this feature suggestion!
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Create a native SCSM Azure Automation connector
System Center Service Manager (SCSM) only has connectors to SMA and Orchestrator. To be able to shift to Azure Automation for all our automations there have to be an Azure Automation SCSM connector. Please add this soon!
60 votesGreat Feedback. We will get the ask triaged.
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Make securestring a supported input type for runbooks
As of right now you can´t secure the runbook input. Using a string works fine but it leaves the password for example in the input as plain text. If we could write the password as a secure string instead, that would be great and solutions to reset passwords etc. would be safe to implement in production.
59 votesThanks for posting this. We will take a look.
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Fixed IP for Automation PowerShell sandbox in order to fit ACL requirements for public endpoints
If VM has external endpoints (WinRM, SSH) protected by ACL, the Azure Automation doesn't able to connect for such VMs.
54 votesThanks for this suggestion!
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Support populating and displaying arrays for account-level Variables
While it's possible to set arrays with Set-AutomationVariable, they cannot be displayed or edited from UI.
It makes them a bit inconvenient - if I have a job that I need to execute against a set of something, I need to have separate jobs to validate and change that set.53 votesThank you for the feedback. The product team has noted this suggestion and will consider it if resourcing allows.
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Allow description/instructions of parameters to be seen by person starting a runbook
I have a PowerShell runbook that requires input for several parameters. I'd like to customize the text here when someone starts the runbook. For example, to let the automation operator know that this input is required to be less than 10 characters, or must have numbers, etc. This looks similar to these:
1) https://feedback.azure.com/forums/246290-automation/suggestions/6560476-display-parameter-help-messages-in-ui
2) https://feedback.azure.com/forums/246290-automation/suggestions/10921377-open-up-for-helpmessage-and-validation-to-be-suppo47 votesThanks. This is similar to other feedback we have and this will help us to prioritize this as a feature we can add. I will update here once we have concrete plans to implement.
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Display Parameter Help Messages in UI
When using [Cmdletbinding()] along with parameter property Helpmessage and [ValidatePattern()] it would be nice if these messages were fed back to the user interface. Right now the users have to guess what the parameter allows them to input through trial and error.
For example:
[code]
[Cmdletbinding()]
param ([Parameter(Mandatory=$true),HelpMessage='Enter 1 computername']
[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
[string] $Computer)
In the console, when referencing a workflow with this parameter set you could enter !? to get the help message.
46 votesThanks for the feedback! We will look at making these modifications to starting a runbook job.
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Outgoing WebHooks
It would be nice if it was possible to register callbacks for events like "Runbook Status Changed".
This would allow people to execute runbooks using your existing WebHooks concept (HTTP POST), store the jobid and consume the result of the runbook through the callback once completed.46 votesThank you for the feedback. The product team has noted this suggestion and will consider it if resourcing allows.
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Desired State Configuration Source Control
Provide the ability to sync DSC Configurations with remote GitHub Repo's. Similar to how the Runbook integration works. When a push to a Git Repo is made, synchronise it with the Azure Automation Account.
42 votesThanks for this suggestion! Our team can look into this.
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Email after runbook job
Is it possible to send an email of the azure runbook automation job output ?
37 votesYou can use Logic apps as an alternative to this.
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Use an existing SPN instead of creating one new SPN for each Azure Automation account
It would be nice to have an option to use an existing SPN instead of creating new SPN for each Azure Automation account for easy maintenance
36 votesGreat Feedback. We are in the process of reviewing this ask.
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Schedule exclusions
It would be nice to be able to exclude specific dates from schedules. For instance one might want to schedule a runbook every Friday of the month except on Friday 13th or if the Monday of the month is the 1st of that month. (like we could do in Orchestrator)
31 votesThanks for posting this! Moving to “Under Review”.
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Move "Run on" to runbook settings
It doesn't make sense to have "Run on" dynamically selecteable. Please move it to "Runbook settings" so that we can do a one-time configuration of whether a runbook should run using hybrid workers or cloud-based workers.
30 votesThanks for this suggestion! Our team is looking at this.
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