What you'll learn
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 Overview
- Key Highlights
- Unlock More Value: Automation Dashboard
- Benefits
- Operate More Efficiently: Lightspeed Intelligent Assistant
- Highlights
- Achieve New Levels of Scale: Self-Service Automation Portal
- Key Features
- Additional Enhancements in AAP 2.6
- Upgrade Guidance
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 Overview
**Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) 2.6** is now generally available, introducing new capabilities that blend **AI-powered assistance**, **scalability**, and **real-time analytics**. This release focuses on helping IT operations teams automate more effectively, measure impact, and scale across hybrid environments.
Red Hat describes this release as a step toward “automating for the future,” emphasizing trusted automation foundations for modern enterprise IT.
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Key Highlights
With the 2.6 release, Red Hat delivers three major feature areas designed to drive measurable value:
1. **Unlock more value** – Track and visualize automation ROI with the new automation dashboard.
2. **Operate more efficiently** – Harness generative AI through the Ansible Lightspeed Intelligent Assistant.
3. **Achieve new levels of scale** – Expand automation access with the new self-service automation portal.
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Unlock More Value: Automation Dashboard
The **automation dashboard** provides an on-premise, secure utility for visualizing and reporting the business impact of automation initiatives.
Benefits
- **Monitor performance:** Track job success rates, time savings, and ROI in real-time.
- **Optimize efficiency:** Identify underutilized or overextended nodes to rebalance workloads.
- **Secure insights:** The dashboard runs entirely on-premise, ensuring sensitive data stays protected.
- **Flexible reporting:** Export dashboards to PDF or CSV for use in BI tools or presentations.
This new dashboard helps automation teams demonstrate value, justify investment, and make smarter, data-driven decisions.
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Operate More Efficiently: Lightspeed Intelligent Assistant
AAP 2.6 integrates the **Ansible Lightspeed Intelligent Assistant** directly into the user interface — expanding the use of **generative AI** across the platform experience.
Highlights
- **Context-aware chatbot:** Ask questions in natural language — “How do I upgrade Ansible?” or “What’s an execution environment?”
- **Instant answers:** Get validated, non-hallucinated responses based on Red Hat’s latest documentation.
- **Flexible AI integration:** Bring your own LLM on-prem or connect through Red Hat AI.
- **Faster onboarding:** New users can learn the platform more easily with real-time guidance.
This integration marks a shift from AI-assisted code generation toward **AI-assisted operations**, helping IT teams troubleshoot, configure, and manage automation more efficiently.
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Achieve New Levels of Scale: Self-Service Automation Portal
The new **self-service automation portal** in AAP 2.6 simplifies automation access for non-technical users and domain experts.
Key Features
- **Point-and-click automation:** Launch pre-approved playbooks through guided forms.
- **Admin control:** IT teams maintain full governance while delegating execution rights.
- **Ease of use:** A clean, user-friendly interface empowers more tea