topic RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room in Product Forum

API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ramprasad8791 — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 07:50:00 GMT

Hi,

can we access the Blue prism control room from other tools like SOAPUI to trigger the process and also get the information like available resources and session logs details like how processes is available and to read and control the bots. Please let me know how to configure and proceed if any documentation is available provide me.

Many Thanks!
Ramprasad

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ramprasad vaddepally
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ramprasad.gajula — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 10:23:00 GMT

Hi Ramprasad,

It’s possible in Blue Prism version 07.

Please find the below link for your reference.

https://bpdocs.blueprism.com/video/installation.htm?

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Ram Prasad Gajula
Software engineer
EY
Bangalore
+919704497828
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ewilson — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 11:09:00 GMT

As @Ram Prasad Gajula pointed out, there is a RESTful API that was introduced with Blue Prism v7. It doesn't give you the ability to directly launch a specific process though. It provides the ability to add work to work queues, assuming you'll have a process running (ex. via a schedule) that will either handle that work itself or distribute to other processes.

Prior to v7 you could perform the tasks you've outlined in two ways:

Leverage AutomateC
Use the HTTP interface of the individual runtime resources

More information about either option is available on the Blue Prism Help system.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

Walter.Koller — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 13:28:00 GMT

Great to hear BP is opening for more integration.
Are there also improvements in the HTTP interface for runtime resources?
My last status was it does not work with SSO.

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ewilson — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 17:36:00 GMT

Hi @Walter Koller,

There are no changes to the HTTP interface of the runtime resources that I'm aware of. However, have you taken a look at the help docs related to the /getauthtoken and /internalauth options? They're not really what I would consider SSO, but our tech writers seem to think they better enable support for SSO and AD authentication. 🤷‍♂️

v7 Resource PC Commands

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

Walter.Koller — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 07:36:00 GMT

Hello Eric,

Thanks for your reply.
I know the features you mentioned but didn't try them yet.
Unfortunately they are provided by automate.exe only. So in order to provide web services to other systems, those system have to first use Windows shell to authenticate. This creates a tighter bound between those systems and they probably could use only automate.exe instead of switching between EXE and WS.

I didn't have the opportunity to have a look at HUB and other components recently enhancing BP suite. Maybe there is something that could act as middleware between external WS consumer and BP.

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

EVIPUTI — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 12:40:00 GMT

You can use command-line interface to get all the Bp info and triggering\stopping bots :https://bpdocs.blueprism.com/bp-6-7/en-us/helpResourcePCCommands.htm?tocpath=Interface%7CAdvanced%20options%7C_____4&_gl=1*1lc6irv*_ga*Nzc0MDg4NTI4LjE1ODg3NzUyNzg.*_ga_MFBQ2KFZ1L*MTYzMDU4MTQxNC44LjEuMTYzMDU4NjMyMi4w&_ga=2.13044274.442054740.1630471957-774088528.1588775278

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Vipul Tiwari
Senior Process Simplification and Optimization Designer(Solutions Architect)
Fidelity International
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

PoojaSamudre — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 07:03:00 GMT

Hi Eric,

I found this thread relevant with the issue I am facing...

I have done necessary installation for using Blue Prism API , web based control room.

How can I login to control room using Authentication APIs? I have downloaded Open API specification for Blue Prism 7.0.0 but for authentication I couldn't find API endpoint and payload.

By using authentication server URL how can I get oauth2.0 token to access further APIs of Blue Prism like for schedules and work queues.

Please assist me resolving this.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Pooja

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Pooja Samudre
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ewilson — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 11:33:00 GMT

@PoojaSamudre,

There isn't a specific authentication method that you call. There's an OAuth2 handshake that occurs during the regular RESTful requests. All of this takes place out-of-band via the HTTP headers.

There's a Postman Collection available on the DX that might help you visualize this. You can find it here: https://digitalexchange.blueprism.com/dx/entry/3439/solution/blue-prism-api-postman-configuration

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

PoojaSamudre — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 13:51:00 GMT

Hi Eric,

Thank you for your response.
I have imported postman collection, While getting access token from https://authentication.local/connect/token if we mention scope as bp-api or bp-server it is not accepting , I am getting scope invalid error in console. But without specifying any scope I am able to get access token successfully.

Using same access token for authenticating other APIs facing below error. please find snapshots

Thanks & Regards,

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Pooja Samudre
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ewilson — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 14:18:00 GMT

@PoojaSamudre - Are you sure the values of your Base URL and Oauth2 URL are correct? Are you running this test on a machine that has everything installed locally?

@Bruce Liu - Any thoughts?

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

bruce.liu — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 21:34:00 GMT

Hi Pooja,

The most common cause for 401 is that your service account has not received sufficient permission in Blue Prism. Using an Interactive Client, you should find your service account under Security > Users screen with a yellow lock to the left. This user is brought in by the Authentication Server automatically and should be configured to provide necessary access to key Blue Prism resources as if a human user. In your case permissions related to work queue should apply. If you are testiing, you would be able to get away by just granting the maximum permissioin possible for the user so you can be sure, i.e. granting the user "System Administrators" role.

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Bruce Liu
Senior Product Consultant, Professional Services
Blue Prism
Australia/Sydney
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

PoojaSamudre — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 07:50:00 GMT

Hi Eric and Bruce ,

The values of Base URL and Oauth2 URL are correct and I am running this test on Separate lab environment where everything installed locally. Also I have tried accessing APIs from Client machine.

Yes , Earlier my BP API service account didn't had sufficient permissions, Now for BP API service account I granted "System Administrators" role as you can see in below snapshot. After granting all permissions I have restarted IIS Website. Still I am getting 401 unauthorized error.

Thank you for getting back to me.

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Pooja Samudre
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

bruce.liu — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 23:00:00 GMT

Hi Pooja,

Now looking at the screenshots from you last few posts, I am uncertain on things you did there, it was not how you meant to use the DX asset.

The following screen should be all you need to configure the asset to work. BPAPI_CLIENTID should be set to the exact name of the service account you created, which is also the same as the account with yellow key you can see from within Blue Prism user screen. You seem to be using many different values over time. I cannot be certain which is actually your API service account, and if sufficient permissions have been granted to it.

The asset should also have variables set so you do not need to enter any value, for example, on the next screen. But you chose to override the values here, and somehow you used "AuthenticationServer" on Client ID, which just does not make sense. This should be set to your API service account name instead, and if you have been using the asset in the way it is designed, you would have set that in the previous screen, against variable BPAPI_CLIENTID.

My assessment on your situation is that you did not plug in the authentication values and because of that you were getting 401. In this very case, 401 does not mean insufficient permissions, but rather incorrect credentials.

I would think you should check your service account, make sure you are using the right service account name for the asset. Once done, consider reimport the DX asset by overwriting the existing one, followed by reconfiguration of all parameters according the instructions given in the user guide and see if it works for you.

Lastly, you do not need to reset your IIS after making any changes anywhere. By design, obtaining a new oAuth 2.0 token is sufficient for the API services to take into consideration of updated permissions you have set in Blue Prism against your service account.

Hope this helps.

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Bruce Liu
Senior Product Consultant, Professional Services
Blue Prism
Australia/Sydney
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

PoojaSamudre — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 11:59:00 GMT

Hi Bruce,

Thanks a lot that was really helpful. I got the response.

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Pooja Samudre
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

PoojaSamudre — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 17:03:00 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to access API end points using python code, When trying to get access token getting 400 response, but same I am able to do with postman.

Can I get more details on what will be the headers or json data we can pass for authorization using client id and client secret.

Sample code i am using -

def collect_access_token(host_name,oauth2_url,client_id,client_secret):
header = {'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8'}
data = {"grant_type":"client_credentials","BPAPI_OAUTH2URL":oauth2_url,"BPAPI_CLIENTID":client_id,"CLIENT_SECRET":client_secret,"scope":"bp-api "}
print("Getting response")
response = requests.post(host_name, data=data,headers=header, verify = False)
print(response)

I am refering to this document - https://bpdocs.blueprism.com/bp-7-0/en-us/api-spec.html
Also, can i get documentation link on how i can use blueprism APIs outside of postman or using python or any other programming language.

Thanks in advance.

Pooja Samudre

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Pooja Samudre
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

ewilson — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:16:00 GMT

@PoojaSamudre,

If you are able to use the BP REST API from Postman have you tried looking at the code that Postman can generate for any action? There's an option to select the language you want to the code generated in and Python is one of the options. Here's an example of getting the work queues using Python http.client.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

bruce.liu — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 22:57:00 GMT

Hi Pooja,

Please refer to the following page to get a clear understanding how OAuth2 Client Credential flow is implemented.

https://www.oauth.com/oauth2-servers/access-tokens/client-credentials/

You will then notice you have specified your request body incorrectly. It is expecting a plain string like

grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=xxxxxxxxxx&client_secret=xxxxxxxxxx

But you have specified a Python dictionary

{"grant_type":"client_credentials","BPAPI_OAUTH2URL":oauth2_url,"BPAPI_CLIENTID":client_id,"CLIENT_SECRET":client_secret,"scope":"bp-api "}

Your header is also incorrect, it cannot be application/json as the body is not in Json format. If you are supplying any header, you should have the following

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

But you may even get away with leaving header completely unfilled for this Post request.

Hope you get the idea.

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Bruce Liu
Senior Product Consultant, Professional Services
Blue Prism
Australia/Sydney
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RE: API to interact with Blue Prism Control Room

PoojaSamudre — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 16:32:00 GMT

Hi Eric, Bruce,

@Eric - I didn't knew about that option, Thanks for letting me know.

@Bruce - Now I have clear understanding how OAuth2 Client Credential works, that was really helpful.

Thanks for help 🙂

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Pooja Samudre
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