# Creating your own runbooks
<a name="automation-documents"></a>

An Automation runbook defines the *actions* that Systems Manager performs on your managed instances and other Amazon resources when an automation runs. Automation is a tool in Amazon Systems Manager. A runbook contains one or more steps that run in sequential order. Each step is built around a single action. Output from one step can be used as input in a later step. 

The process of running these actions and their steps is called the *automation*.

Action types supported for runbooks let you automate a wide variety of operations in your Amazon environment. For example, using the `executeScript` action type, you can embed a python or PowerShell script directly in your runbook. (When you create a custom runbook, you can add your script inline, or attach it from an S3 bucket or from your local machine.) You can automate management of your Amazon CloudFormation resources by using the `createStack` and `deleteStack` action types. In addition, using the `executeAwsApi` action type, a step can run *any *API operation in any Amazon Web Services service, including creating or deleting Amazon resources, starting other processes, initiating notifications, and many more. 

For a list of all 20 supported action types for Automation, see [Systems Manager Automation actions reference](automation-actions.md).

Amazon Systems Manager Automation provides several runbooks with pre-defined steps that you can use to perform common tasks like restarting one or more Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances or creating an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). You can also create your own runbooks and share them with other Amazon Web Services accounts, or make them public for all Automation users.

Runbooks are written using YAML or JSON. Using the **Document Builder** in the Systems Manager Automation console, however, you can create a runbook without having to author in native JSON or YAML.

**Important**  
If you run an automation workflow that invokes other services by using an Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) service role, be aware that the service role must be configured with permission to invoke those services. This requirement applies to all Amazon Automation runbooks (`AWS-*` runbooks) such as the `AWS-ConfigureS3BucketLogging`, `AWS-CreateDynamoDBBackup`, and `AWS-RestartEC2Instance` runbooks, to name a few. This requirement also applies to any custom Automation runbooks you create that invoke other Amazon Web Services services by using actions that call other services. For example, if you use the `aws:executeAwsApi`, `aws:createStack`, or `aws:copyImage` actions, configure the service role with permission to invoke those services. You can give permissions to other Amazon Web Services services by adding an IAM inline policy to the role. For more information, see [(Optional) Add an Automation inline policy or customer managed policy to invoke other Amazon Web Services services](automation-setup-iam.md#add-inline-policy).

For information about the actions that you can specify in a runbook, see [Systems Manager Automation actions reference](automation-actions.md).

For information about using the Amazon Toolkit for Visual Studio Code to create runbooks, see [Working with Systems Manager Automation documents](https://docs.amazonaws.cn/toolkit-for-vscode/latest/userguide/systems-manager-automation-docs.html) in the *Amazon Toolkit for Visual Studio Code User Guide*.

For information about using the visual designer to create a custom runbook, see [Visual design experience for Automation runbooks](automation-visual-designer.md).