How To Customize using Harness Custom Template Library

For the purpose of this tutorial we will be focusing on customizing the project creation workflow but this can be done for any workflow.

Setup the Custom Template Library

1. Clone harness-template-library and custom-harness-template-library from your account.

   • harness-template-library has the source

   • custom-harness-template-library has the scaffold

2. Open in your code editor and create a branch.

3. Copy idp_resource_template, the entire directory from harness-template-library, into custom-harness-template-library

   • This directory contains files for setting up connections and resource templates. It is used presently, and if it don’t exist it will fail.

4. Copy idp_registry_mgr.yaml into root you want this to be in the same exact location at harness-template-library

   • Inside this file look for the workflow you want to customize and delete the entities that do not apply. We are deleting them because they are not needed because they do not exist!

   • If you already have other custom workflows make sure you don’t delete the ones you’ve already created and just add another under entities.

   • Chance the source to custom-template-library

   • Change the created_by

   • Save

• For our example our idp_registry_mgr.yaml will look like this:

--- 
annotations: 
    source: custom-template-library 
    created_by: Mine 
entities: 
    - org: Harness_Platform_Management 
        project: Solutions Factory 
        workflows: 
            - name: harness-project

5. Copy the directory of the workflow you are modifying and drop it at the root of custom-harness-template-library

   • Go into .harness → catalog_template.yaml file to make changes so that the catalog file is pointed to the custom copy

   • Find the template_library_connector and change the default to <variable.account.custom_template_library_connector>

   • Find the template_library_repo and change the default to <variable.account.custom_template_library_connector>

   • Note: These variables are set and already in our Harness account under Account Settings → Variables as Custom Template Library Repo and Custom Template Library Connector._

   • Find the template_library_branch and change the default to whatever you named your branch

   • If you wanted multiple different workflows you could customize even further and edit template_library_directory

   • Change the properties repo_source default to custom. This will set the tag for bulk actions.

   • Save, commit, push

6. Go back to Harness → Solutions Factory Project → Pipelines and run the Register Custom IDP Templates pipeline which will read from the file we just edited.

   • Change the hsf_branch pipeline variable to the branch we just pushed to

   • Note: Generally the branch will be set to main but for testing purposes we are setting it to the branch we just pushed to.

   • This pipeline is cloning the repo, and read the registration file

You don’t need to worry about the one that currently exists because it has an annotation is_harnesss_official: “True”. When this workflow runs it will match the ID of the workflow, then change the annotation is_harness_official to “False” and replace any of the changes. From this point forward if I run the official IDP it won’t touch the one I modified.

Any workspaces that are created with the custom template library will now be configured with the source:custom tag, and have the appropriate connectors, branch and repos.

Adding in a Variable

Going back to our example let’s assume that you want to add a variable into the project creation workflow.

1. Navigate to the Terraform Harness Documentation

2. Under Next Gen find harness_platform_variables

3. Go into your code editor

4. Add in file harness_variables.tf and paste in declaration from the Terraform docs

   • Change org_id to data.harness_platform_organization.selected.id

     • You could use a variable but this was pulled from the others where the data object already exists.

   • Change project_id to data.harness_platform_project.selected.id

     • You could use a variable but this was pulled from the others where the data object already exists.

   • Change fixed_value to var.application_id

resource "harness_platform_variables" "application_id"{ 
    identifier = "application_id" 
    name = "Application ID" 
    org_id = data.harness_platform_organization.selected.id 
    project_id = data.harness_platform_project.selected.id 
    type = "String" 
    spec { 
        value_type = "FIXED" 
        fixed_value = var.application_id
    }
}

5. Add in the application_id variable into variables.tf

variable "application_id"{ 
    type = string 
    description = "[Optional] Please provide your team's application ID" 
    default = "n/a" 
}

6. Add the variable to catalog_template.yaml. This will tell the user what to do and pass the information.

application_id: 
    title: "ServiceNOW Application Identifier" 
    type: string 
    description: "Please provide your team's application ID"

• If you wanted to add in validations you can add this in here and add in things like patterns, minLength, and maxLength.

• Let’s say all new builds must have this field, so now we will add it into required

• Note: the default value covers all pre-existing builds

• Scroll down to configure_workspace and under RESOURCE_VARS add

application_id: ${{ parameters.application_id }}

• This will pass in the application ID into workspace creation.

• Save, commit and push

7. Run the Register Custom IDP Templates pipeline since we made changes to the workflow.

Workflows are registered using APIs not git experience therefore the change would only take effect if it’s reloaded back in.

Adding a New Group

1. Create a new file under groups

The name of the file is very important as it is going to determine the identifier

As an example let’s create a Security Champions group by creating the Security_Champions.yaml file that looks like this:

tags: 
    purpose: Security Champions 
role bindings: 
    - role: _project_viewer 
        resource_group: _all_project_level_resources 
    - role: _sto_secops_role 
        resource_group: _all_project_level_resources

2. Save, commit and push