How To append system.categories to a device not overwriting existing categories.

[DII-dsward]

I need to append a category to the existing list of properties in system.categories. Can action: add and action: update be used to overwrite system.categories or append as needed? Or should we submit a feature request to have an append: true capability?

• name: Updating LM Device block:
  • name: Update devices facts in LM delegate_to: localhost lm_device: action: update company: "{{ lm_company }}" access_id: "{{ lm_access_id }}" access_key: "{{ lm_access_key }}" display_name: "{{ inventory_hostname_short }}" collector_id: "{{ lm_collector_id }}" hostname: "{{ inventory_hostname }}" properties: { system.categories: categoryToAppend }

[lm-carlos-alvarenga]

@DII-dsward Sorry about the late response, but we didn't have issues notifications properly enabled (now fixed). Actions add & update should properly append a category to any parent groups categories in the following way:

• Parent group A has category "x"
• Device B being updated has category "y" and parent category "x" -> ["y", "x"]

Update Device Playbook has the following field

properties: {
system.categories: "z"
}

Result:

• Group A still has category "x"
• Device B has category "y" updated to "z" but still has parent category "x" -> ["z", "x"]

Similarly, if device C under group A were being added with category "q", it would have two categories -> ["q", "x"]