---
# System prepended metadata

title: Ansible Community Personas
tags: [Documentation]

---

# Ansible Community Personas
###### tags: `Documentation`

The goal of this document is to describe the main personas for the people interacting with the Ansible community, with a focus on docs.ansible.com. The end goal would be to ensure we have a smooth journey into and through our documentation for each of these personas (aka reader types).

**note** - This is not a linear journey, nor are these exclusive personas. People will shift based on their background and what they are trying to achieve. 

* flesh out the top tasks for each persona
* map out journeys -how a user becomes a contributor, becomes a creator or developer, and path to being on Steering committee, collection maintainer, etc
* Verify all this with community.

# High-level personas
The following lists the main Ansible community personas:
* **user** - Uses content created by someone else or creates playbooks, roles, etc. Does not require python/coding skills. Users can become contributors if they share their content or knowledge with the community (via galaxy/NG etc).

* **contributor** Participates in the Ansible community. Contributes to one or more Ansible projects, including coding and non-coding contributions. Participates in meetups, social media, blogs,forums etc to share their Ansible knowledge

Anyone involved in Ansible can be a potential contributor.

See the [docsite personas](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?view) to see how these map into potential entry points on docs.ansible.com.

# Personas in detail

## User (content consumer/content creator)
**Goal** to automate repetative tasks within their organization.


### Docsite personas that map to Users
* [novice](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?view#Ansible-novice--)
* [content creator](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?view#Content-creator--)
* [AWX/GalaxyNG admin](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?view#AWXGalaxy-operations--)


### Top tasks
* Beginner tasks:
    * Installs and/or updates ansible or ansible-core
    * Installs or updates individual collections
    * Creates and tests playbooks
    * Creates inventories
    * Tests, publishes, and maintains all of these

    
* Intermediate tasks:
    * Creates roles
    * Creates job templates (for AWX users)
    * Uses event-driven automation (ansible-rulebook - new)
    * Contributes to collections (bugfixes, modules etc)
    * Tests, publishes, and maintains all of these

    
* Advanced: 
    * Creates collections (reusable plugins, roles, and playbooks)
    * Creates execution environments (collections, libraries, and ansible-core version)
    * Tests, publishes, and maintains all of these

#### Top tasks for AWX/GalaxyNG operations
 * Manages private galaxyNG to store and share collections, roles, and EEs. 
 * Includes AWX for job templates etc.
 * Configure which execution environments to use with an automation job, where to execute it, and manage who can run it.
 

### Ansible projects of interest to newer users
 - Ansible, ansible-core and most all of its commands
 - galaxyNG (to install a collection with its playbooks)
 - AWX

Playbook troubleshooting tools of interest:
 - ansible-navigator
 - ansible-xxx (vscode, vim, and emacs) plugins

 
### Ansible projects of interest for the intermediate/advanced user
* ansible/ansible-core including ansible-test
* ansible-lint
* ansible IDE plugins (vscode, vim, emacs)
* ansible-navigator (for developing and testing collections, playbooks with/wo EEs)
* ansible-builder
* ansible-rulebook
* ansible-sign (signed verification of collections)
* molecule
* event-driven ansible
* wisdom
* https://github.com/ansible/creator-ee

They may use AWX and galaxyNG but are not typically administering those instances.
 
### Ansible projects of interest to AWX/GalaxyNG operations
* AWX - controls playbooks, EEs, RBAC, projects,and inventories within job templates that content consumers can use. Includes logging and monitoring.
* GalaxyNG - hosts collections and EEs.
 


## Contributor
 **goal** To participate in the Ansible community, including code and non-code participation.

### Docsite personas that map to contributors

* [community member/contributor](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?both#Community-membercontributor--)
* [developer](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?view#Ansible-developer--)
* [collection maintainer](https://hackmd.io/pZb5w5JFRQW3RJ73n23tlw?view#Collection-ownermaintainer--)


 ### Top tasks
 This persona has overlap with users and developers but includes unique element such as:
 * Shares content for public reuse, either in the Ansible package or in Galaxy(NG).
 * Provides bugfixes or enhancements to existing Ansible projects and collections.
 * Interacts with community, including meetups, working groups, discussions, votes, issues, and PRs (creating or reviewing).
 * May be a coder, writer, release infrastructure manager, community manager, etc.

### Ansible projects of interest for contributors
All projects are of interest. What is helpful for a community member or contributor is to have a common process to interact with different or multiple Ansible projects. This may include such items as:
* Common contributor guidelines and ways to interact (e.g. matrix vs slack, irc,, discourse vs mailing lists, etc).

### Developer (subset of contributors)
 **Goal** To extend or modify existing Ansible projects or content to support their individual needs. Develops code in the Ansible ecosystem for private use or to share (contributor).


#### Top Tasks 
  * Extends any Ansible project - bugfixes
  * Creates individual plugins or playbooks/roles for a collection
  * Maintains one or more collections
  * Troubleshoots problems with their plugins/collections
  
Public collection developers are heavy plugin developers but private collection developers may do more with roles/playbooks wrapped into a collection package. 

#### Projects of interest to developers

Same as content creator but with additional needs for:
* CI test setup (no specific ansible project for this)
* Developing content  or code (developer and contributor guides that are part of Ansible and ansible-core as well as individual contributor guides for other Ansible projects).

# List of projects
The following lists all projects considered in the development of these personas:

* ansible/ansible-core including ansible-test
* ansible-lint
* ansible IDE plugins (vscode, vim, emacs)
* ansible-navigator (for developing and testing collections, playbooks with/wo EEs)
* ansible-builder
* ansible-rulebook
* ansible-sign (signed verification of collections)
* EDA (event-driven ansible)
* galaxyNG 
* AWX


Projects still TBD (do they fit here?):
* ansible-sdk
* molecule
* runner
* pinakes
* receptor
* wisdom


see [this issue](https://github.com/ansible-collections/overview/issues/49) for other notes.

