Attended Bot

[KeerthanaJegann]

Hello

We have a new use case where we had to implement an attended bot.

In this scenario, the bot cannot login into the system. So, the user login into a portal, get an authentication code in her cell phone, type the code, and get into the portal. From there, the bot should continue the process.

So, I am just looking for a way if the bot can kick start after a particular trigger. Because the user will not login into the portal at fixed time. Cannot really guess the time. So how can the bot know if she logged in, so that as soon as she logs in, (there should be a trigger may be) then the bot should kick start the process.

Is attended automation in BP is possible in this use case? 

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Keerthana Jegannathan IPA Developer
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[devneetmohanty07]

Hi Keerthana,

This can be achieved using the Interact product suite from Blue Prism, where you can provide a manual handoff in between and then from there the process can get started.

However, it will need a separate licence to use Interact and I would recommend you to check about it in the official Blue Prism portal website.

There is a also a separate way to go around it which I have implemented as a POC in past if license would be an issue. Here, I used couple of custom business objects which were built using the Windows.Forms class from VB . NET to create dialog boxes and input forms as well. So technically, the run time resource will be paused until the user clicks on some button on the dialog boxes to actually close that pop up.

However, I won't say it is the recommended way officially but I have a video on the same of how the use case looks like: Attended Automation Using Blue Prism

Also, to know more on how you can create these objects do refer to the following link: Creating Message Boxes & Input Forms

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Hope it helps you and if it resolves you query please mark it as the best answer so that others having the same problem can track the answer easily

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Automation Consultant
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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[Rambo27]

Nice Solution Devneet Mohanty - Keerthana implement this interface its good for communicating without having control of console.  

Keerthana  - I have done similar thing for which there is some handoff in between needed or to trigger an scheduler . So we provided the access of VM with VDI for support access to operation team and then they can run and put input as and when they needed and get the results . Also we shared the folders wherein they can place or retrieve the summary things individually  and its been shared with all team across them. 

Happy  to help .

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Shikhar Mishra RPA Lead
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[ewilson]

Hello @KeerthanaJegan1,

Some interesting ideas have been presented. One thing I would like to clarify in your case is what do you mean by "Desktop Automation"? Your use case sounds like "Human in the Loop" scenario, but will this automation be running on the users desktop (i.e. "Desktop Attended Automation" or "Intelligent Desktop Automation") or will it be running on a resource in the data center?

FWIW - @JoshNoble1 wrote a great series a while back about implementing IDA with Blue Prism. You can find the first article in series here.

If this is more of an IDA solution, where the bot will be running on the users desktop, than you can have the user launch the bot and the first step the bot will do is open the browser for the user and direct it to the login portal. From that point, the bot simply waits the for the user to login. This could be in the form of a simple loop where the bot sleeps for a few seconds in between checking the current page displayed on the portal. If it's still the login page, the bot sleeps. If it's any other page, we assume the user logged in and the bot continues on with it's processing.

There are several options. It really comes down to understanding more about the use case.

Cheers,
​​​

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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[KeerthanaJegann]

Hello,

Just to give additional information about this scenario.

We are using BP Cloud platform. And our plan is to give user, the access to our prod machine where the process is going to run, so that she can vpn into the machine, open the chrome, launch the browser, gives the credential and logs in. So i am looking for a way, where as soon as she logs in, something triggers the bot, so that it can start the process.

The problem here is the bot cannot login into the system. It sends some authentication code to the registered phone, so we need some human to do this. Another problem here is the user is not sure of when she logs in, no fixed time. So scheduler is not a good candidate here.

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Keerthana Jegannathan IPA Developer
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[ewilson · Accepted solution]

@KeerthanaJegan1,

Ok, probably the simplest solution would be to create a batch script that either the user double-clicks on the desktop (after they login to the resource), or you could add it to the Startup folder for the user so it runs automatically when they login.​ The batch script would use the AutomateC.exe utility to launch the process which would bring up the browser and navigate to the login page. The user would then login and the process would be able to continue from there.

A simple AutomateC call would look like this:

automatec.exe /run [Process Name] /user [Username] [Password]​

If you use SSO with your BPC environment, you could replace the /user parameter with /sso and not have to worry about entering a username and password because the logged in user would be able to see those. If you're not using SSO, I would create a dedicated user account within BP with limited permissions to use for this.

If you really wanted to be fancy, you could create an entire Windows Forms applications with a neat GUI and all sorts of bells-and-whistles for the user to leverage when they login, but the same underlying logic would apply. Simply use AutomateC to kick off the Blue Prism process.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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[KeerthanaJegann]

Thank you Devneet, Sikhar and Eric. I really appreciate all your ideas, each one suitable for different scenarios.

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Keerthana Jegannathan IPA Developer
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