Dynamic login agent

[GyulaEgyed]

Hi!

Is there a method to modify the login agent to be dynamic? I mean, now we are waiting a fix period of time in seconds, after the login process runs before the actual process starts. By having more and more automated process that would a waste those fix waiting times.

I tried to modify login agent to check in the end of the process each 1 sec if the login happened. But once the login happens to Windows and listener is not yet started, the process terminates so it was not a succesful attempt from my side.

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Gyula

[bruce.liu]

Hi Gyula,

What you have been trying to achieve may not be possible.

As you would already know, Login Agent spawns its own special Blue Prism runtime. A Login Agent Windows service also monitors the user session state change of the OS. As soon as login is completed and user session is started, the service will attempt to shut down Login Agent runtime with no considerations on what is running there. This may explain the reason why you saw process termination recorded in Control Room.

Login Agent process change is not going to affect Login Agent behaviour, as it is driven by the compiled code behind the Login Agent Windows service.

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Bruce Liu
Senior Product Consultant, Professional Services
Blue Prism
Australia/Sydney
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[NicholasZejdlik]

This is probably not the best solution, but may beat the fixed waiting times. Have your login process create a batch file in the user startup folder to run automatec.exe /run "Process Name" (use /sso or /user to specify the login). Once the login is completed, the batch file will launch and your process will start. You should be able to run this in conjunction with starting the Blue Prism listener. I believe you can also have it start a schedule rather than run a specific process.

[GyulaEgyed]

@Nicholas Zejdlik thanks! Wouldn't be a problem that the process is started earlier than the listener is correctly booted up?
Is it a solution that you are using in a production environment?

[NicholasZejdlik]

Running a process via automatec.exe doesn't require a listener (unless you specify a resource via the /resource switch). So in my proposed solution, automatec.exe would be running the process directly so to speak, while the listener would remain in the background, I believe in an available state. I didn't dive too much into it, so I could be wrong.

I don't use this solution myself. The way I resolved this particular conundrum (and a lot of others) was to create a Windows service that effectively acts as a process controller. It monitors the robots and logs them in when it detects that they are logged off, as well as assigns work dynamically. I always found the Blue Prism scheduler to be a bit limiting, especially when you're running a lot of processes on the fly.