Now that you have visibility of your resources, and an understanding of them using insights, you are ready to take action with . Bots are automated programs that execute those actions. Bots are composed of scope, filters, and actions.

Creating a Bot

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Understand Resources and Insights

Make sure you have a good understanding of resources and insights before creating your first bot. Review your understanding of Resources, and Insights.

1. Go to the BotFactory page (under Automation on the left-side menu) and click on Create Bot.

2. Give your bot a name and description. Select its category (security, compliance, best practices, curation, or miscellaneous).

3. Define the SCOPE of your bot by selecting the appropriate resource types, badges, and clouds/resource groups.

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Scoping Multiple Resource Types

You may select multiple resource types for the scope of your bot, but be aware that some filters and actions support only certain types of resources. You will only be able to choose bot actions which support all resource types scoped.

Resource Types - Use the search box to select one or more resource types. Note that selecting multiple resource types can impact the available conditions/actions.

Badges - Use the search box to select one or more badges. Unless the "Must have all badges" checkbox is set, any cloud with one or more badges specified will be included in the scope. If "Must have all badges" is checked, only clouds with all specified badges will be included in the scope.

Cloud/Groups - Use the search box to select one or more clouds or resource groups.

4. Define the CONDITIONS of your bot by selecting the appropriate FILTERS. You can add multiple filters/conditions.

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Bot Filters

Bots may have more than one filter. If a bot has more than one filter, resources are matched only if they match all of the bot’s filters.

5. Define the ACTIONS your bot should take.

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Bot Actions

Bots may have more than one action. If a bot has more than one action, those actions are executed in series, i.e., the topmost action executes first and when it is finished, the following action is executed, and so on until the list of actions has been fully traversed.

Bots may also have specific actions for resources that match all of their filters as well as actions for those that do not.

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Jinja2

Certain actions have the ability to use Jinja2 templating in the message body. This enables bot authors to insert a variety of useful data about resources into the message. To learn more click here.

6. Choose WHEN TO RUN your bot.
   The basic options for running your bot are Reactive and Scheduled. You may choose one or more of these options.

Reactive
The bot will take action as a reaction to changes detected by harvesting. These changes are:

• Resource Created - a new resource appears in a cloud account already connected to DivvyCloud, or any resource is discovered within a cloud account newly connected to DivvyCloud.
• Resource Modified - a resource in an already-connected cloud account changes, e.g., you up-size or down-size an instance.
• Resource Tags Modified - a resource's tags are modified.
• Resource Destroyed - an existing resource is destroyed.

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To Run Your Bot Immediately

Bots are created in a paused state. This is done to allow you to review your bot first--a DivvyCloud best practice--before running your bot.

You can review your bot using the Bot Overview window (see Overview of Your Bot below). When you are ready to run your bot, go to the Bot Listing tab, and select 'Resume' from the action hamburger next to the name of your bot. Then return to the action hamburger and select 'Ondemand Scan'.

Scheduled
The bot will take action according to a recurring schedule, as you specify:

• No Schedule
• Hourly
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly.
  For example, you can specify that the bot should run at nightly shutdown by selecting Daily and then specifying the time of nightly shutdown.

7. Save your bot. Click Save to finish creating your bot. After you save the bot, you will be returned to the BotFactory main page. From here, click on your newly created bot to review the bot's settings.

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Bot Example: Resource Group Curation

A best practices action is resource group curation. Resource groups simplify cloud automation, management, and permissions at scale. End-users can leverage DivvyCloud curation capabilities to automatically add/remove resources to these groups. Learn more about resource group curation.

Creating a Bot from an Insight

You can also create bots from existing insights. You can pre-populate the Conditions and the Resource Type for your new bot by using an existing bot with those same attributes.

1. Go to the Insights page from the navigation menu; select the insight you want to leverage for your new bot.
2. Click on the to the left of the insight name.
3. Read the warning message displayed (see below).
4. Complete the definition of your bot as you normally would.

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Creating Multiple Bots From the Same Insight

Warning! Use caution when creating multiple bots from the same insight so as not to have them perform the same actions on the same resources.

Configuration Required! Bots created from insights require scope and actions be set. By pressing "SUBMIT", a bot will be created with defaults based on the insight you selected; you will be prompted to edit it.

Managing Bots

Once you have successfully set up a bot (or bots), you can locate and manage them using a number of DivvyCloud-provided displays and tools, including Listing, Overview (of your bot), History, Scheduled Events, Non-Compliant Resources, and Audit. In addition, selecting the "Show My Bots" checkbox will filter all Bots to only display those you have created.

Listing

You can access a listing of your bots by choosing BotFactory from the navigation menu. The Listing page should be the default view; you can also select the Listing tab at the top of the page. On this page you can use the action hamburger (to the left of each listed bot) to execute the life-cycle actions shown in the table below:

Clicking on the name of a bot (in blue) will open an additional page of information specific to that bot:

Overview of Your Bot

Once you click on the name of your bot from the Listing page, the Overview page opens, providing you with granular detail about your bot.

Info & Settings

The Info and Settings section displays:

• Name of bot creator
• Bot description
• Bot category - categories include Security, Optimization, Best Practices, Curation, and Miscellaneous
• Bot current state - current states can be Running, Paused, Archived, or Scanning (see the table below for details)
• Active Hookpoints - the number of reactive states of the bot (Resource Created, Resource Modified, Resource Tags Modified, Resource Destroyed)
• Schedule Enabled - shows whether bot has a recurring execution scheduled

Lifecycle Actions

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Viewing & Changing Life-cycle Actions

Bot life-cycle actions are controlled using the Actions button on the Info & Settings panel of the Overview page. These same life-cycle actions can be changed by selecting the hamburger menu next to each bot's name on the BotFactory Listing page. (See the table of bot life-cycle actions above.)

Actions:Match

• Displays the different actions that your bot takes and the history of the last 5 evaluations.

Bot Configuration

• Displays the JSON configuration of your bot; you can copy this for another bot template.

BotScope

• Displays the particular clouds, resource groups, or badges you are using for your bot's scope.

Targeting Resource Types

• Displays the types of resources your bot is targeting.

History

The History tab for a bot selected from the BotFactory Listing page displays the log history when the bot runs Reactive to events and/or each resource when the bot runs as Batch or Scheduled. The history shows the context of the harvester (e.g., on-demand), the number of resources to which the bot was scoped, the number of matched actions and resources, and whether any errors were found.

Scheduled Events

The Scheduled Events tab displays the events or actions that are scheduled for the bot.

Non-Compliant Resources

The Non-Compliant Resources tab displays the resources that the bot has identified as non-compliant.

Audit

The Audit tab displays a log (an API trail) of actions your selected bot has taken.
A green check for the status code indicates the action was successful; a red x indicates the action failed. In the latter case, you can click on the red x to view more information concerning the failed action.

The audit will also show who ("Name") initiated the action and the type of action executed, e.g., 'get compliance counts', 'edit', or 'validate permissions' (found in the '"Path" portion of the audit).

Logs

If your Bot is not working, you can investigate the logs for more information via the Logs tab.

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Viewing All API Activity

Domain Admins can view a similar audit trail as shown above for all active bots from the System Administration page, API Activity tab. The audit shown above is for the single bot selected from the BotFactory listing.