Installing self-service automation portal

Open your Ansible Automation Platform instance in a browser and log in as an administrator.

Navigate to Access Management › Organizations.

Click Create organization.

Enter a unique Name and optionally provide a Description for your organization.

Click Next to show the Review pane.

Click Finish to create your organization.

Open your Ansible Automation Platform instance in a browser and log in.

Navigate to Access Management › OAuth Applications.

Click Create OAuth Application.

Complete the fields in the form.

Click Create OAuth application.

Copy the clientId and clientSecret values and save them.

In a browser, log in to your Ansible Automation Platform instance as a user with admin privileges.

In the navigation pane, select Settings › Platform gateway.

Locate the Allow external users to create OAuth2 tokens setting.

Enable Allow external users to create OAuth2 tokens if it is not already enabled:

In the Platform gateway settings page, verify that the Allow external users to create OAuth2 tokens setting is enabled.

Log in to your instance of Ansible Automation Platform as the admin user.

Navigate to Access Management › Users.

Select the admin user.

Select the Tokens tab

Click Create Token.

Select your OAuth application. In the Scope menu, select Read.

Click Create Token to generate the token.

Save the new token.

You have created a project for self-service automation portal in OpenShift Container Platform.

You have created a plugin registry in your project.

You have set up secrets for Ansible Automation Platform authentication and SCM authentication.

In a browser, navigate to your OpenShift project for self-service automation portal that you created earlier.

Select the Developer view.

Click the Helm option in the OpenShift sidebar.

In the Helm page, click Create and select Helm Release.

Search for Portal in the Helm Charts filter, and select the Automation Portal chart.

In the modal dialog on the chart page, click Create.

Select the YAML view in the Create Helm Release page.

Locate the clusterRouterBase key in the YAML file and replace the placeholder value with the base URL of your OpenShift instance.

  redhat-developer-hub
    global:
      clusterRouterBase: apps.example.com

The Helm chart is set up for the Default Ansible Automation Platform organization.

  catalog:
    providers:
      rhaap:
        production:
        # Replace 'Default' with the name of the organization you created
          orgs: '<your-org-name>'

Click Create to launch the deployment.

In a browser, log in to your OpenShift instance.

In the Developer view, navigate to the Topology view for the namespace where you deployed the Helm chart.

Check the Helm release status:

$ helm list -n ${MY_NAMESPACE}

Monitor the pods in your namespace to ensure they are running:

$ oc get pods -n ${MY_NAMESPACE}

Check for ImagePullBackOff or other errors in pod events:

$ oc describe pod <pod_name> -n ${MY_NAMESPACE}

If the chart uses routes to expose services, verify that the routes are created and accessible:

$ oc get route -n ${MY_NAMESPACE}

In a browser, log in to your OpenShift instance.

In the Developer view, navigate to the Topology view for the namespace where you deployed the Helm chart.

The deployment appears: the label on the icon is D.

Click the icon representing the deployment.

The Details pane for the deployment opens.

Select the Resources tab.

Click View logs for the deployment pod in the Pods section:

Select the Logs tab in the Pod details page.

To view the install messages, select the install-dynamic-plugins container from the INIT CONTAINERS section of the dropdown list of containers:

 ======= Installing dynamic plugin http://plugin-registry:8080/ansible-backstage-plugin-catalog-backend-module-rhaap-dynamic-0.1.0.tgz
 *=> Grabbing package archive through pm pack'
 •=› Vertfying package Integrity
 •*> Extracting package archtve /dynamtc-plugtns-root/anstble-backstage-plugtn-catalog-backend-nodule-rhaap-dynamic-0.1.0.tgz
 •*› Removing package archive /dynamic-plugins-root/ansible-backstage-plugin-catalog-backend-module-rhaap-dynamic-0.1.0. tgz
 -> Successfully installed dynamic plugin http://plugin-registry:8080/ansible-backstage-plugin-catalog-backend-module-rhaap-dynamic-0.1.0.tgz

Select the Environment tab in the Pod details page to view the environment variables for the containers. If you set additional environment variables in your Helm chart, check that they are listed here.

Determine the Redirect URI from your OpenShift deployment:

Update the Redirect URIs field in the OAuth application in Ansible Automation Platform:

You have configured an OAuth application in Ansible Automation Platform for self-service automation portal.

You have configured a user account in Ansible Automation Platform.

In a browser, navigate to the URL for self-service automation portal to open the sign-in page.

Click Sign In.

The sign-in page for Ansible Automation Platform appears:

Enter your Ansible Automation Platform credentials and click Log in.

The self-service automation portal web console opens.

Log in to self-service automation portal with an account that has admin privileges.

In the navigation pane of self-service automation portal, select Administration > RBAC.

Click Create to create a new role.

In the Create Role section, enter a name for the new role, for example auto-generated-templates-role, then click Next.

In the Users and Groups section, select the Ansible Automation Platform teams and users to assign to this role, then click Next.

In the Add permission policies section, select the Catalog and Scaffolder plugins from the Select plugins dropdown menu. The selected plug-ins are added to a list.

Click Select to expand Catalog and Scaffolder in the list of plug-ins.

To allow users to view templates and execute jobs in Ansible Automation Platform, grant the following minimum permissions for the selected plug-ins by selecting the check box to the left of the permission names.

Click Next to review your settings, then Create to create the new role.

Create a directory on your local machine to store the files.

$ mkdir /path/to/<automation-portal-plugins>

Set an environment variable ($DYNAMIC_PLUGIN_ROOT_DIR) to represent the directory path.

$ export DYNAMIC_PLUGIN_ROOT_DIR=/path/to/<automation-portal-plugins>

Download the setup bundle. In a browser, navigate to the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Product Software downloads page. and select the Product Software tab.

Click Download now next to Ansible self-service automation portal Setup Bundle to download the latest version of the plug-ins.

Extract the self-service-automation-portal-plugins-<version-number>.tar.gz contents to $DYNAMIC_PLUGIN_ROOT_DIR.

$ tar --exclude='*code*' -xzf self-service-automation-portal-plugins-x.y.z.tar.gz -C $DYNAMIC_PLUGIN_ROOT_DIR

In a terminal, log in to your OpenShift Container Platform instance.

Open your OpenShift project for self-service automation portal.

$ oc project <YOUR_SELF_SERVICE_AUTOMATION_PORTAL_PROJECT>

Find the name of your current plug-in registry build configuration:

$ oc get buildconfig

From the output, identify the correct build configuration name, for example aap-self-service-plugins.

Run the following command to start a new build in in your OpenShift project.

$ oc start-build <build_config_name> --from-dir=$DYNAMIC_PLUGIN_ROOT_DIR --wait

 Uploading directory "/path/to/dynamic_plugin_root" as binary input for the build ...
 Uploading finished

Open the Topology view in the Developer perspective for your project in the OpenShift web console.

Select the plugin registry icon to open the plugin-registry details pane.

In the Pods section of the plugin-registry details pane, select View logs for the new build pod. The format for the pod name is <build_config_name>-<build_number>-build.

Click the terminal tab and log in to the container.

In the terminal, run ls to view the TAR files in the plugin registry.

Verify that the new TAR files have been uploaded.

Update the Helm chart from the command line:

Update the Helm chart using the OpenShift web console:

Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform console and open the project for self-service automation portal in the Developer perspective.

Navigate to Helm.

Click the More actions ⋮ icon for your self-service automation portal Helm chart and select Upgrade.

Select YAML view.

Locate the redhat-developer-hub.global.dynamic.plugins section of the Helm chart.

To disable telemetry data collection, add the following lines to the redhat-developer-hub.global.dynamic.plugins section.

redhat-developer-hub:
  global:
    ....
    dynamic:
      plugins:
        - disabled: true
          package: >-
            ./dynamic-plugins/dist/backstage-community-plugin-analytics-provider-segment

Click Upgrade to apply the changes to the Helm chart and restart the pod.