Process Triggering

[jpunthambaker]

Hi All, After going through the search results for 'triggering', I was disappointed to learn that there isn't any definitive answer on whether Blue Prism is able to trigger the execution of a process based on some type of signal. A signal in this case would be the existence of a file or folder, an email, or something similar. Would anybody be able to provide any insight on this topic? Thanks

[Ravindersaini]

Hi, Before you start your process,You can do a file check exist or check process exists and then trigger your main process based on the results.{Keep checking for Files/Mail} And if you know the time of arrival of mail/file than you can schedule the robots to run at that specific time. As far as i know there is no BP trigger to execute process based on some type of signal. Regards, Ravinder

[jpunthambaker]

Hi Ravinder, many thanks for the reply. When you say, ""..process exists and then trigger your main process based on the results."", are you referring to a mechanism through which you can trigger a process on-demand? Or would one add an item to a work queue and let a scheduled process perform the work at a later, pre-defined time. Thanks, Jay

[TomBlackburn1]

As far as I am aware, as you have found out, there isn't much documentation or advise on how to trigger a process based on an event. There are several ways of triggering a blue prism process, some of which are below: 1) Poll for the data (e.g. SQL records, reading a web application, polling the work queue, polling file exists, emails etc.) 2) Web Service - Can use in combination with the polling of the queue for a trigger data item in the work queue. Can also link in scheduler to start polling process once hourly and use session variables to end the polling after a certain timespan or actual time etc. 3) Batch Script - Using the automate command line, a person can then run the batch script directly, or you could link the remote calling of a batch script from a web interface maybe using PowerShell or some other means. 4) Inserting into Blue Prism database - Best results, most risky! Certainly not advised by Blue Prism. Create schedules on the fly essentially. I've used all methods before, depends on how much time you want to invest to build the solution and the risk you are willing to take. The problem what you obviously want to avoid is having a tying up a resources availability polling.

[Ravindersaini]

Hi Jay, Design you process in such a way that before your actual process starts,Check for the file which you are looking for. Use process Utility-File Management action File exists.So Before your process starts use this action to check for file and based on the result you can proceed with your process flow.If file does not exist then wait for sometime and then gain check for file. You can also add item to queue and schedule the robot to run at pre-defined time. Or apply the 1st logic with file exist and schedule it to run on pre-defined time. Regards, Ravinder

[BridgetKing]

The processes described above would need to run all day then, right?  Is there anyway that you can have a bot idle until the process was triggered and while it was idling, run another process?  For example, we have many different processes that are triggered by a user through access databases or web apps.  How would you set up these processes to run as soon as they are triggered?  Multiple processes may need to run at the same time at one point during the day.  Also, one process may only run 2 times one week, three times the next week, one time the next week and so on randomly depended on when a user imports a file or updates status in the db or app they are using.  The second process may run 10 times randomly each day.  The third process may run 3 times one day, 10 the next, then 25, then 5, etc.

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Bridget King
Business Systems Analyst
Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA
America/New_York
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[Walter.Koller]

I think there have been two topics mixed in this thread. One is about triggering a process (from events external of Blue Prism) and the other one is about semaphores (hand-shake mechanisms). Since the second topic depends on the actual implementation and integration scenario, I try to add some info about triggering process execution.

Blue Prism offers several ways to start a process. 

• One is of course the scheduler and manual start of process.
• Exposing processes and objects as web services
• Starting via CLI, command shell

Those interfaces can be called by external systems. 

An interesting approach for mail based execution was discussed here:
Trigger Process in Blue Prism when email arrives in Outlook

Per default the processes are executed as soon as they are triggered. Unfortunately there is no built-in queuing mechanism but could be implemented by creating a master process that manages requests and handles execution (eg via work queue).
With immediate execution there is no control if there is a free runtime resource available. If there is none free, the execution will fail. At least in case of exclusive process execution. Simultaneous processes could be run in background, in case only limited runtime resources are available.
Another topic is the number of available licenses. Licenses limit the number of parallel executed processes. If you have one license, only one process will run. If tried to start another process when the first one is still running, it will fail.

If possible, the execution should be planned to avoid issues with random peak times, going over the limits of your infrastructure.

Regards


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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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