topic RE: Running process on a bot from another bot in Product Forum

Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Wed, 13 May 2020 15:35:00 GMT

Hi,
I have to call a process on a certain bot from a different process on a different bot. the aim is to have a central bot that is running a process and calling process on different bots.
Is there something available in blue prism to achieve this, also how will the central bot check if other bot is busy running something and in that case pass request to a different available bot.If all bots are busy, queue the request and as soon as next bot is free, it picks up the request.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

John__Carter — Wed, 13 May 2020 17:11:00 GMT

You can do it but it can be difficult. Essentially the first process employs the command line to run a process on the other machine. If the first process retains the session ID output of the run command, it can enquire about the status of the session. If the target resource is busy or offline, the run command will return an error. Alternatively, the first process can check the machine status prior to trying to run the process, but that requires 2 calls.

https://portal.blueprism.com/documents/guide-dynamic-process-execution
https://portal.blueprism.com/documents/blue-prism-dynamic-scheduler-examples

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John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

Espen — Thu, 14 May 2020 10:05:00 GMT

If you go with AutomateC.exe, make sure the connection you use for the command-line call does not use the same callback-port as the listener on the "master "bot.

If you haven't specified any callback port (set to 0) you don't have to worry 🙂

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Espen
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Sat, 23 May 2020 23:55:00 GMT

@John Carter - Thanks a lot for your response, is there any link that shows direct implementation of using commands to run process. Also this will work only on a machine that has blue prism installed?
Can this be created as a shell script? Within my shell script i want to first check if a system is busy and if not then invoke a process on it.

@Espen - Kindly provide some more details or example, i wasn't able to understand it. If I create a bat file with commands, where exactly and how callback port comes in play?

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

Espen — Tue, 26 May 2020 08:41:00 GMT

If you have the DB-connection set to a specific callback port on the master bot, the port will be busy.

Eg. DB Connection "Con1" is set to callback port 1234.

When starting a process from AutomateC you have to pass an argument for DB-Connection.
Assuming the listener is running, you can not use "Con1" as argument for AutomateC when starting the process from the bot. Either set the callback port to 0 or set up a second connection.

I don't know how you guys have your set up, but in our environment we faced this issue.

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Espen
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

John__Carter — Tue, 26 May 2020 08:48:00 GMT

Try the Help, search for 'command line'. or look at the examples I linked you to. The command line API can be scripted and requires BP to be installed. There's also a HTTP API providing similar functionality to a 3rd party.

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John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:18:00 GMT

@John Carter - Thanks a lot for your response. Kindly suggest if HTTP API you are referring to is concept of running blue prism process as a web service?
With command line, if I have a script can I run it from a external application?

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

John__Carter — Thu, 28 May 2020 08:02:00 GMT

Search the Help, in there you'll see the API is not the same as exposing a process as a WS.

And yes the command line is intended to be run from a 3rd party.

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John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 07:27:00 GMT

@John Carter - kindly suggest if it will be possible for blue prism team to release a standard reusable business object that takes process, start up parameters and machine name as input and execute the process if resource is not busy and if busy may be throw appropriate exception. This might be quite useful to lot of users.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 02:13:00 GMT

@John Carter - Hi John, I tried some steps taking help from dynamic process execution guide and examples. It was quite helpful and gave me lots of information.
1) using command automatec /run "Process Name" /user "id" "Pass" /resource "machine name" - I was able run a process and get session ID
2) using command automatec /status "session ID" /user "id" "Pass" - I was able to get status of session ID

Few Questions that I still have are -
1) What is the use of DBname and port, i didn't used it anywhere in my command. Is it used when there are more than 1 DB connections and i want to run process from DB on a resource which is not set as default DB?
2) Before running actual process, I want to check if my resource PC is up (online) and not busy running another process, what command should I use to achieve this and what all will I have to pass to that command - machine name, credentials?
3) If my resource PC is offline on that remote machine, is it possible to first start resource PC on different machine like we do it on local machine as - Automate.exe /resourcepc /public
4) When working with login agent and scheduler, we run the login process of login agent before running the main process and run logout process after main process, so which AutomateC as well we will have to design same chain of process?

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:56:00 GMT

@John Carter , @AmiBarrett - Kindly suggest if there is a command available with automatec which we can use on CMD to check if a blue prism VM resource PC is online and not busy and if offline, we can bring it online? I tried looking for such command but was not able to find in help documents.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

AmiBarrett — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 17:04:00 GMT

That depends on what you mean by online. Do you mean that Automate.exe is running, or that Windows is up and running? If you mean Automate, you can use the /resourcestatus option with automatec.

You can also (technically) kill two birds with one stone, by using tasklist /s systemName /u domain\user /p password /FI automate.exe .

Edit: Forgot this bit -

As for starting a process remotely, the easiest way is to grab PSExec and invoke that. Alternatively, there are powershell options you can use.

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Ami Barrett
Sr Product Consultant
Blue Prism
Plano, TX
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 17:48:00 GMT

@AmiBarrett - Thanks a lot for your response, yes by online I mean automate.exe resource PC is up and running so that blue prism process can be executed on it. What i understand is you have suggested to run automatec /resourcestatus for last 1 minute and that will suggest if there is any ongoing session on it in progress to check if machine is busy. Resource status returns back response even if automate.exe resource PC is offline, just tried it.

To check if resource PC is online - you have suggested to use "tasklist /s systemName /u domain\user /p password /FI automate.exe" as there is no native command for the same

To start resource PC if offline, you have suggested to use PSExec and run "Automate.exe /resourcepc /public"

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

AmiBarrett — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 17:54:00 GMT

Calling automatec should only tell the instance local to that system to query the db for information on another remote system. I would be more concerned if there was not a response for an offline resource.

To be clear, the tasklist approach is a method to simultaneously verify if automate.exe is up, and if the VM is online. If you only need to verify the latter, you can also just use a ping.

The PSExec command should start Automate.exe, provided the VM is online and has a logged in session.

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Ami Barrett
Sr Product Consultant
Blue Prism
Plano, TX
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 18:53:00 GMT

@AmiBarrett - Thanks a lot for all your inputs, this gives lots of insight how backend things work. Just one last ques, when our VM is on login agent, i l believe automate.exe will be up and running, so we will use login process of login agent to login a machine on required ID / password, once completed then run main process on that machine. Currently this is how we run login and main process from scheduler today, only difference will be now it will run with CMD.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

AmiBarrett — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 18:58:00 GMT

That sounds correct, yes. Just bear in mind that it's going to shutdown Automate.exe and restart it again under a different session - it will briefly be inaccessible.

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Ami Barrett
Sr Product Consultant
Blue Prism
Plano, TX
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 19:04:00 GMT

@AmiBarrett - This is why when running with scheduler as well, we have kept a gap of 2-3 minutes after login process is completed and before we run the main process. We will do the same with CMD as well.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 06:46:00 GMT

@AmiBarrett - Just a quick question on same post, it seems 'automatec resourcestatus' command is not available in BP 6.4. Is there alternate command with which we can check the status of resource PC is busy or not on a machine. The intent is to check if there is a process already running on machine resource PC before invoking a process with automatec /run.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

ewilson — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 13:06:00 GMT

@Mayank Goyal you can query resource PC's directly through their HTTP interface. You can find out more about this interface from the Blue Prism Online Help

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Partner Integrations for Digital Exchange
Blue Prism
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RE: Running process on a bot from another bot

MayankGoyal2 — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 21:33:00 GMT

@ewilson - Thanks a lot for your response. I went through entire documentation and was able to get good understanding. kindly suggest if environment is on SSO, http://machinename:8181/user%20name%20admin&password%20MyPassword, what value should I provide for user name and password in that case. I have a central machine from which I want to check the status of a resource PC on different machines on environment with - http://machinename:8181/user%20name%20admin&password%20MyPassword&status.

The documentation just refers to localhost with user and password, it has no reference on remote machine with machinename and SSO.

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Mayank Goyal
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