Limit hosts using Workflow Template - ansible-tower

Question

I'm using Ansible AWX (Tower) and have a template workflow that executes several templates one after the other, based on if the previous execution was successful.
I noticed I can limit to a specific host when running a single template, I'd like to apply this to the a workflow and my guess is I would have to use the survey option to achieve this, however I'm not sure how.
I have tried to see if I can override the "hosts" value and that failed like I expected it to.
How can I go about having it ask me at the beginning of the workflow for the hostname/ip and not for every single template inside the workflow?

Answer 1

You have the set_stats option.
Let's suppose you have the following inventory:
10.100.1.1
10.100.1.3
10.100.1.6
Your inventory is called MyOfficeInventory. First rule is that you need this inventory across all your Templates to play with the host from the first one.
I want to ping only my 10.100.1.6 machine, so in the Template I choose MyOfficeInventory and limit to 10.100.1.6.
If we do:
---
- name: Ping
hosts: all
gather_facts: False
connection: local
tasks:
- name: Ping
ping:
We get:
TASK [Ping] ********************************************************************
ok: [10.100.10.6]
Cool! So from MyOfficeInventory I have my only host selected pinged. So now, in my workflow I have the next Template with *MyOfficeInventory** selected (This is the rule as said). If I ping, I will ping all of them unless you limit again so let's do the magic:
In your first Template do:
- name: add devices with connectivity to the "working_hosts" group
group_by:
key: working_hosts
- name: "Artifact URL of test results to Tower Workflows"
set_stats:
data:
myinventory: "{{ groups['working_hosts'] }}"
run_once: True
Be careful, because for your playbook,
groups['all']
means:
"groups['all']": [
"10.100.10.1",
"10.100.10.3",
"10.100.10.6"
]
And with your new working_hosts group, you get only your current host:
"groups['working_hosts']": [
"10.100.10.6"
]
So now you have your brand new myinventory inventory.
Use it like this in the rest of your Playbooks assigned to your Templates:
- name: Ping
hosts: "{{ myinventory }}"
gather_facts: False
tasks:
- name: Ping
ping:
Your inventory variable will be transferred and you will get:
ok: [10.100.10.6]
One step further. Do you want to select your host from a Survey?
Create one with your hostname input and add keep your first Playbook as:
- name: Ping
hosts: "{{ mysurveyhost }}"
gather_facts: False