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Pipeline Operations

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Harness IaCM pipelines support several operational features that help you manage infrastructure changes safely and efficiently. These operations integrate into your provision workflows to add approval gates, detect configuration drift, automate pull request reviews, and prevent concurrent execution conflicts.

This guide covers the available pipeline operations and when to use each one.

Before you begin​

  • Harness account with IaCM enabled: You need Infrastructure as Code Management under Infrastructure in Harness when it is entitled on your account. For how to access or create a Harness account, see Getting started with Harness Platform.

    Contact Harness support:

    If IaCM does not appear, see Get started with IaCM or contact your account administrator or Harness Support.

  • Pipeline permissions: You need View, Create/Edit, and Execute for Pipelines. To get these, an administrator must assign you a role that includes them. See RBAC in Harness and Manage roles.

  • Approval permissions (for Approval step): Users who will approve or reject plans need Approve permission for the relevant pipeline or stage. See Approvals in Harness.

  • Existing provision pipeline: You need a pipeline with an IaCM stage that includes Plan and Apply steps. Go to Provision workspace to create one.

Available operations​

Choose the operation that fits your workflow:

OperationUse caseWhen to use
Approval stepReview and approve infrastructure changes before applying themWhen you need manual review of Terraform plan output, cost estimates, or policy evaluation before applying changes
Queue stepSerialize pipeline executions targeting the same workspaceWhen multiple pipelines or triggers could run concurrently against the same workspace, preventing state file conflicts
Drift detectionIdentify manual changes made outside of your IaC workflowWhen you want to detect resources created or modified directly in the cloud console instead of through code
PR automationAutomatically post Terraform plan output as pull request commentsWhen your team reviews infrastructure changes via GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket pull requests before merging

Operation guides​

Select an operation to view the full guide:

Troubleshooting​

Approval step times out after 60 minutes in Harness IaCM pipeline

The default approval timeout is 60 minutes. You can configure this in the approval step settings. If the step times out, the pipeline fails and you need to re-run it.

Permission denied when trying to approve or reject IaCM approval step

Ensure you have Approve permissions for the pipeline or stage. Contact your administrator to assign the required role. See RBAC in Harness documentation.

IaCM approval step not showing plan details or resource changes

Verify that the Plan step completed successfully before the Approval step. Check the Plan step logs for errors. If the plan generated no changes, the approval may show empty resource lists.

Approval step shows incomplete cost estimation data

Cost estimation requires Infracost integration and depends on cloud provider API availability. Check that your workspace has cost estimation enabled and that the provider credentials are valid.

Queue step not preventing concurrent executions in IaCM pipeline

Verify that all pipelines targeting the same workspace use the exact same resource key. Check the Queue step configuration in each pipeline and ensure consistency.

Pipeline applies outdated plan after being queued

Place the Queue step before the Plan step, not between Plan and Apply. A queued pipeline may resume with an outdated plan if the Queue step is placed incorrectly.

Drift detection pipeline shows no drift but manual changes exist

Verify that the workspace state file is up to date. Run a plan-refresh-only operation first to sync the state, then run drift detection again.

PR automation not posting Terraform plan as comment in pull request

Check that the webhook trigger is configured correctly with the same connector as the workspace. For public repositories, add the HARNESS_PASSWORD_API environment variable with your git token.

Next steps​

You have reviewed the available IaCM pipeline operations. Choose the operations that fit your team's workflow and add them to your provision pipelines.