Error handling with the visual design experience

By default, when an action reports an error, Automation stops the runbook's workflow entirely. This is because the default value for the onFailure property on all actions is Abort. You can configure how Automation handles errors in your runbook's workflow. Even if you have configured error handling, some errors might still cause an automation to fail. For more information, see Troubleshooting Systems Manager Automation. In the visual design experience, you configure error handling in the Configuration panel.

Retry action on error

To retry an action in case of an error, specify a value for the Max attempts property. The default value is 1. If you specify a value greater than 1, the action isn't considered to have failed until all of the retry attempts have failed.

Timeouts

You can configure a timeout for actions to set the maximum number of seconds your action can run before it fails. To configure a timeout, enter the number of seconds that your action should wait before the action fails in the Timeout seconds property. If the timeout is reached and the action has a value of Max attempts that is greater than 1, the step isn't considered to have timed out until the retries complete.

Failed actions

By default, when an action fails, Automation stops the runbook's workflow entirely. You can modify this behavior by specifying an alternative value for the On failure property of the actions in your runbook. If you want the workflow to continue to the next step in the runbook, choose Continue. If you want the workflow to jump to a different subsequent step in the runbook, choose Step and then enter the name of the step.

Canceled actions

By default, when an action is canceled by a user, Automation stops the runbook's workflow entirely. You can modify this behavior by specifying an alternative value for the On cancel property of the actions in your runbook. If you want the workflow to jump to a different subsequent step in the runbook, choose Step and then enter the name of the step.

Critical actions

You can designate an action as critical, meaning it determines the overall reporting status of your automation. If a step with this designation fails, Automation reports the final status as Failed regardless of the success of other actions. To configure an action as critical, leave the default value as True for the Is critical property.

Ending actions

The Is end property stops an automation at the end of the specified action. The default value for this property is false. If you configure this property for an action, the automation stops whether the action succeeds or fails. This property is most often used with aws:branch actions to handle unexpected or undefined input values. The following example shows a runbook that is expecting an instance state of either running, stopping, or stopped. If an instance is in a different state, the automation ends.