Additional HCP Terraform Features

Welcome. This guide covers several additional HCP Terraform workspace features you should understand at a high level. These features are commonly referenced on the Terraform Associate exam: know what each feature does, why it exists, and when you’d use it. Below are concise explanations, typical workflows, and where to find these settings in the HCP Terraform UI.

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Health assessments

Terraform provisions resources based on your configuration and state, but it does not continuously monitor those resources after an apply completes. Manual changes made directly in a cloud provider console (for example, resizing a VM or modifying a security group) can cause infrastructure drift — the real-world resources diverge from what Terraform expects. HCP Terraform health assessments provide automated, periodic checks so you can detect drift and surface runtime policy or health issues. When enabled for a workspace, HCP Terraform runs assessments roughly every 24 hours and evaluates two main categories:

• Drift detection — Compares live resources to the workspace state to find resources modified outside Terraform.
• Continuous validation — Evaluates check blocks, preconditions, or postconditions in your Terraform configuration to validate runtime conditions (for example, SSL certificate expiry or a health endpoint’s response).

Typical lifecycle with health assessments:

• Provision infrastructure with a normal plan/apply.
• HCP Terraform performs periodic health checks (drift detection and continuous validation).
• If a problem is detected (drift or failed validation), HCP Terraform notifies your team according to workspace notification settings (Slack, email, webhooks, etc.).
• The team remediates by reapplying Terraform (to restore declared state) or updating configuration (if the change was intended).
• The cycle continues, providing ongoing visibility and auditability.

Key details:

• Workspace health warnings appear on the workspace list for at-a-glance visibility.
• Health assessments are available in the Standard and Premium editions (paid feature).
• You can enable health assessments per workspace or enforce them org-wide. Org-level enforcement overrides individual workspace settings.
• Health checks run approximately every 24 hours; you should still rely on CI/CD and run-time monitoring for real-time operations.

To enable health assessments:

• In the workspace UI, go to Settings → Health.
• Toggle assessments on or off and save changes.

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Run triggers

Many workspaces depend on outputs or state from other workspaces. For example, a networking workspace may create subnets that a firewall workspace must consume to create rules. Relying on manual coordination to trigger downstream runs does not scale — run triggers automate this process. How run triggers work:

• Connect a downstream workspace to one or more source (upstream) workspaces.
• When the source workspace completes a successful apply, HCP Terraform automatically queues a run in the downstream workspace.
• The downstream run reads the updated state from the source workspace and applies any necessary changes.

Typical workflow:

• Source workspace (e.g., networking) is planned and applied successfully.
• The configured run trigger queues a run in the downstream workspace (e.g., firewall).
• The downstream workspace runs and picks up the latest state to reconcile resources.

Important run trigger facts:

• A workspace can be connected to up to 20 source workspaces.
• Triggers only fire on successful applies in source workspaces — not on failed applies or plan-only runs.
• Run triggers include an auto-apply toggle specific to trigger-created runs; this is separate from the workspace’s general auto-apply setting.
• Run triggers enable workspace-to-workspace automation and help implement infrastructure pipelines without manual coordination.

To configure a run trigger in the UI:

• Open the downstream workspace and go to Settings → Run Triggers.
• Connect one or more source workspaces.
• Optionally enable the run-trigger-specific auto-apply toggle.

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Change requests (tracking work)

At scale, operators need a lightweight way to track work: upgrades, provider or Terraform version changes, drift remediation, and other maintenance tasks. Change requests provide workspace-specific action items so teams can assign, track, and resolve needed changes. Highlights:

• Act as actionable “to-do” items tied to a workspace (think lightweight tickets).
• Can be created from the Explorer or directly on a workspace.
• If a change request affects multiple workspaces, each workspace receives an independent copy that can be resolved and archived separately.
• Support Markdown in the message field and can notify teams responsible for the workspace.
• Available in the Standard and Premium editions.

To create a change request from Explorer:

• Open the Create Change Request dialog.
• Provide a subject and message (Markdown supported).
• Review the affected workspaces count and click Create Change Request.

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Explorer (organization-wide visibility)

Explorer is the organization-level view that ties these features together and provides visibility across dozens or hundreds of workspaces. Use Explorer to find risk, prioritize work, and launch change requests. What Explorer provides:

• Types: Queryable views by modules, providers, workspaces, and Terraform versions to understand usage and distribution.
• Use cases: Pre-built filters that answer common operational questions — for example, which module versions are most used, which Terraform versions are deployed, which workspaces are not connected to VCS, or which workspaces have failed checks.
• Actionability: Click into any view to get a filtered, actionable list. Create change requests directly from Explorer and save custom views for recurring operational queries.

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Summary table

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Study tips for the Terraform Associate exam

• Be able to describe each feature, its operational benefit, and when to enable it.
• Understand where to configure each feature in the workspace or org settings.
• Know which features are paid (Standard/Premium) vs. available in free tiers.

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Links and references

• Terraform Associate exam preparation course (example)
• HCP Terraform documentation — see the official HashiCorp docs for Health Assessments, Run Triggers, Explorer, and Change Requests
• Terraform documentation — https://www.terraform.io/docs

Good work getting through these final HCP Terraform topics.