topic RE: Expose web service as rest api in Product Forum

Expose web service as rest api

pavanikoduri — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 13:39:00 GMT

Hi,

I need help to expose the WSDL soap Webservice as rest API to use this in chatbots to call the BP process, so please guide me how to do this?

Thanks Pavani

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pavani koduri
RPA Consulatant
Pearson
Europe/London
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

Jay — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 11:45:00 GMT

I'm looking for the same thing, did you have any luck @pavanikoduri?

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Jay
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ewilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:19:00 GMT

Blue Prism does not support exposing processes/VBOs as RESTful services. We only support exposing them as SOAP web services at this time.

As a workaround, you could place an API gateway like AWS, Azure, IBM Strong Loop, etc in between your client and your Blue Prism installation. Then you would make a REST request to the gateway and it would translate that to SOAP and forward it to BP. It would handle the reverse translation when BP responds too.

There's also an option where you can take the SOAP envelope of a regular SOAP request and simply wrap it in the body of an HTTP POST. It's not truly RESTful, but it's close. There's an example of how to do this on Postman's site.

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Eric Wilson
Director, Partner Integrations for Digital Exchange
Blue Prism
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

DavidRubiano — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 15:30:00 GMT

Hi Eric,

I was wondering if the below scenario can be handled by Blue Prism in a smart way:

We are currently using an IT Service Management tool that end-users create tickets, when these thickets are created, I would like them to trigger an Blue Prism Process using an API that the ITSM is using (using REST, and as you're description above it's doable).

The BP Process will add the items to a specific Work Queue. When an item is added to the queue, Blue Prism will trigger a schedule (or some tasks, login, execute processes, logout) Is this possible without having a client running? Can the Blue Prism Application Server trigger a client to boot up and run the process?

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David Rubiano
Senior Consultant
Capgemini
Europe/Stockholm
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ManishRaw — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 14:27:00 GMT

Hi Eric,

If I understood your problem correctly, you have the below requirements:

1. Add the Item in Blue Prism work queue as soon as the tickets are submitted at the ITSM.
2. Run the process according to the request added into the queue, as soon as the request is added.

The above requirements can be fulfilled by following the below approach:

1. Create a VBO in BP and expose it as web service, which can be called by the ITSM Tool as soon as the the tickets are created - This VBO will just create an entry in your Work Queue.
2. Make sure that the queue is Active Queue - and create the resource pool and a wrapper process which will be run as soon as the Queue has any pending items in the queue, now depending upon the request type you can code your Process to follow one of the other path as mentioned (or some tasks, login, execute processes, logout).

This will keep it as real time as possible.

NOTE: I would suggest to use the VBO for web services to be created with exposure type as Background, and the actual application VBO to be created with exposure type as Foreground so you can utilizes the same resources for Web service and Actual process run both.

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Manish Rawat
Project Manager
Mercer
New Delhi
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

DavidLara — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 05:21:00 GMT

Hello Eric,

I went ahead and did it with PostMan, following the example you gave us, and it worked perfectly fine.. I was able to trigger the exposed process with the API call.. Thank you for that
Could you please enlight me with how can we translate this into the BluePrism Web API Service? Not sure how to do it inside BP.
I really appreciate your help on this one @ewilson

Have a great day,

*Edit: To give more background, I tried filling out the information the exact same way in BluePrism Web API Services, I added the headers and all that specified. The only difference between the link on Postman and BP WS, is that in BluePrism I don't find the way to specify that the code is in raw-xml format.. Is that what it's preventing me to make it work?

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David Lara
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ewilson — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 13:21:00 GMT

Hi @David Lara,

So you're trying to use a Blue Prism digital worker (aka process) to trigger another Blue Prism digital worker using a REST request? The Web API Service feature of Blue Prism is simply a mechanism that allows Blue Prism to easily call RESTful APIs on other platforms (ex. Blue Prism calling ServiceNow using their RESTful API).

I'm not sure I see the benefit of trying to have Blue Prism call itself, via REST, when you have the built-in Process stage and AutomateC.

Am I missing something?

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

DavidLara — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 19:26:00 GMT

Hi @ewilson,

What I'm doing here is automate the Credentials Update. The thing is that we have multiple environments, DEV/QA/PROD
The main process will be running in PROD environment. I got a secondary process that is the one in charge of actually updating the Blue Prism Credentials Manager (Using Credentials VBO). What I require is that once the main process finishes, it can trigger the secondary process both in DEV and QA environments.
I see no other way of communicating PROD with DEV or QA..

Thank you for your help Eric, I really appreciate it
Have a great day,

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David Lara
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ewilson — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 20:34:00 GMT

@David Lara,

OK. I understand. So this is all BP-to-BP communication? Is there a specific reason you're adding REST into the mix? Because you could just expose the processes in QA and DEV as SOAP web services and then have the PROD process call them directly. Or have the PROD process call an exposed VBO in each environment and add a work item to a queue within each environment. Then a process can be run on a schedule to address the work item.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

DavidLara — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 22:18:00 GMT

Hello @ewilson, thank you for your help

Yes, it is all BP-BP communication, from PROD to DEV&QA. I was adding it, since I didn't knew about another way to call you one Process in DEV/QA from a running process in PROD. No specific reason
I already got the process exposed as SOAP Web Service in both DEV/QA, How am I able to make the process call them directly?

I tried going through that second way, but our Application Manager didn't loved the idea of having a schedule in DEV or QA. That's why I was searching for other ways, if the first one you commented: "just expose the processes in QA and DEV as SOAP web services and then have the PROD process call them directly." works, it will be the best approach to get there

Once again, thank you for your help Eric,

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David Lara
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ewilson — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 23:58:00 GMT

@David Lara,

To set this up for SOAP you'll want to do the following:

In your QA and DEV environments you want to expose the specific processes as SOAP web services. I think you said you've already done this, but if you haven't you just go to System -> Process -> Exposure and then click Expose a Process on the right side of the screen. Then follow the prompts in the wizard.
Once you have that done, you want to go to your PROD environment and open a browser on a machine that has the Interactive Client installed.
Enter the following in the browser address bar: http://<IP or Hostname of a DEV runtime resource>:8181/ws/ (if you have certificates set up on your runtime resources you'll need to use "https"). This will pull up the list of exposed Processes and Objects in the DEV environment.
Click on the link that matches the process you want to execute within the DEV environment. This will take you to the generated WSDL for that process.
Copy the full WSDL address from the browser address bar.
Within the Interactive Client, go to System -> Objects -> SOAP Web Services and click Add Service on the right side of the screen.
Paste the address of the DEV process WSDL into the prompt and then following the rest of the wizard prompts. Make sure to select the option to enter HTTP credentials because BP SOAP services require Basic Auth.
Repeat steps 3 - 7 for the QA environment process.

Once you've completed these steps you will now see those processes available as Objects within an Action stage. Just drop an Action stage on a canvas and in the Object dropdown scroll to the SOAP Web Service section. Your services should be displayed there.

FWIW - There's a free training courses about Blue prism and web services available on Blue Prism University. You can find it here.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

Walter.Koller — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 10:11:00 GMT

We are using processes exposed as web services in BP v6.4 for some time now and it works quite well.
Now we want to move those processes to our BP v6.9 environment... and it doesn't work anymore.

I have created a simple proces in both environments (v6.4 & v6.9) that accepts a number, adds +1 and returns the result.
I have exposed them as web services in System tab in BP client.
I have updated the web service user role with the AD group of the user we use for this purpose.
It is the same AD group in both environments. Both resource machines are located in the same network and same AD.
I am using SoapUI for testing. I created two new projects based on the WSDLs generated by Blue Prism. Both requests have the same authentication (BASIC) with the same user, the one that shows up in BP when selecting the Web Service consumer user role.

In v6.4 I receive 200 OK with response XML
In v6.9 I get 401 Unauthorized with response text: invalid operation

I also replaced the web service user with my credentials and I am BP admin but with the same results.
The MS patch that caused issued with SSO authentication not installed on none of the machines. BP client works perfectly fine there.

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

Walter.Koller — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 14:34:00 GMT

I found the reason for the mysterious 401 unauthorized response.

Previously we specified domain and user as: <domain>\<user>
But this format is not accepted anymore in Blue Prism 6.9 and domain and user have to be specified as: <user>@<fq-domain>

In other words 'user principal name' instead of 'Down-Level logon name'
User Name Formats - Win32 apps | Microsoft Docs

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ewilson — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 14:44:00 GMT

Hi @Walter Koller,

Excellent job on the troubleshooting, and thank you for posting your findings. Did you have a ticket for this with support? If not, I'll see if I can get them to create a KB article on the support site about this.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

Walter.Koller — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 09:53:00 GMT

Hi,
No I didn't create a ticket as I was not sure if this issue was related to BP or something else.
It is still possible to specify domain and user separately in the header for basic authentication. Only combining user & domain into the user field does not work anymore. This should be not problem for most of the applications, as shown here in SoapUI:

However, Blue Prism does not support a separate domain field in the System/Objects/SOAP Web Services definition and user principal format has to be used

Regards

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

_Amlansahoo — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 06:25:00 GMT

Hi @ewilson

Could you please help me with what user name and PW need to provide in HTTP credentials,

Is it blue prism Login username pw or system username and pw.

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Amlan Sahoo
Senior RPA Consultant
WonderBotz
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

_Amlansahoo — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 06:40:00 GMT

I figured out it requires Blue Prism admin username and Password.
Thanks!

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Amlan Sahoo
Senior RPA Consultant
WonderBotz
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

NileshJadhavBP — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 12:14:00 GMT

Hi @_Amlansahoo,

You are correct. It's required BP admin username and password to configure the authentication.

Thanks
Nilesh

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Nilesh Jadhav
Senior RPA Specialist
ADP
India
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

TejalDiwani — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 12:20:00 GMT

@ewilson : I am trying to expose blue prism process as webservice, but I do not see any article where we can expose blue prism Process as Rest Web API, if we need to expose the BP Process as REST API, how can we achieve that and also how to set authentication for the same? So that third party user can use/consume our BP Web API.

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Tejal Diwani
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RE: Expose web service as rest api

ewilson — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 13:04:00 GMT

Hello @TejalDiwani,@TejalDiwani

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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