I am attempting to set up a Trigger that runs periodically. I have set up the schedule, however under the “Trigger Action” section I seem only to be able to choose the runbook as well as the environment. My Runbook has several variables, how do I input them?
Unfortunately, prompted variable passing isn’t currently available via the standard runbook scheduling mechanism. However, we do have a community step template that can help you control several of the intermediate runbook features, and you can use that to help with your orchestration.
In the Octopus Community Step Template Library, we have a step called Run Octopus Deploy Runbook. This step allows you to define run conditions for a specified runbook, including any necessary prompted variables.
By placing the step template in a runbook, you can then schedule that runbook to run on your predefined timelines. The step template takes care of any of your prompted variables, and your “outer” project can handle the orchestration pieces.
For example, we use this pattern quite heavily in our Samples Instance (anyone can log in as a guest to see the projects). We have an orchestration runbook in almost every space (Release the Kraken) which is scheduled to run every morning to create the corresponding infrastructure for the relevant samples contained in that space. Inside that orchestration runbook, we have several Run Octopus Deploy Runbook step templates to control the individual behavior of each runbook run - for example, this Terraform sample which relies on a prompted variable to control the manual intervention behavior on our automated runs:
This pattern is used heavily throughout our Samples work, and has been consistently stable for achieving exactly the goal you’re looking for - scheduled runbook runs with specified values. Have a look, and let me know if you have any other questions or concerns! We’re happy to help get this working the way you need it to.