Learn about statuses returned by Systems Manager Automation

AWS Systems Manager Automation reports detailed status information about the various statuses an automation action or step goes through when you run an automation and for the overall automation. Automation is a capability of AWS Systems Manager. You can monitor automation statuses using the following methods:

• Monitor the Execution status in the Systems Manager Automation console.

• Use your preferred command line tools. For the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), you can use describe-automation-step-executions or get-automation-execution. For the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, you can use Get-SSMAutomationStepExecution or Get-SSMAutomationExecution.

• Configure Amazon EventBridge to respond to action or automation status changes.

For more information about handling timeouts in an automation, see Handling timeouts in runbooks.

About automation statuses

Automation reports status details for individual automation actions in addition to the overall automation.

The overall automation status can be different than the status reported by an individual action or step as noted in the following tables.

Detailed status for actions

Status	Details
Pending	The step hasn't started running. If your automation uses conditional actions, steps remain in this state after an automation has completed if the condition wasn't met to run the step. Steps also remain in this state if the automation is canceled before the step runs.
InProgress	The step is running.
Waiting	The step is waiting for input.
Success	The step completed successfully. This is a terminal state.
TimedOut	A step or approval wasn't completed before the specified timeout period. This is a terminal state.
Cancelling	The step is in the process of stopping after being canceled by a requester.
Cancelled	The step was stopped by a requester before it completed. This is a terminal state.
Failed	The step didn't complete successfully. This is a terminal state.
Exited	Only returned by the aws:loop action. The loop didn't fully complete. A step inside the loop moved to an outside step using the nextStep, onCancel, or onFailure properties.

Detailed status for an automation

Status	Details
Pending	The automation hasn't started running.
InProgress	The automation is running.
Waiting	The automation is waiting for input.
Success	The automation completed successfully. This is a terminal state.
TimedOut	A step or approval wasn't completed before the specified timeout period. This is a terminal state.
Cancelling	The automation is in the process of stopping after being canceled by a requester.
Cancelled	The automation was stopped by a requester before it completed. This is a terminal state.
Failed	The automation didn't complete successfully. This is a terminal state.