Sending HTTP outgoing request through application server

[ManishRaw]

Hi Team,

We have a requirement where the BOTs need to call an API endpoint(Either through the HTTP VBO or Web API interface). Now for authentication the certificate handshake is needed and we need to create a certificate with all the BOT machine details in the SAN that will be calling the endpoint.

What I would like to know is there a native way in BP, that for the outgoing API calls BOT machine calls will be sent to BP server and then BP server will call the endpoint?

Advantages of the above:

1. We need to create one certificate with the details of BP server only.
2. Modification to the certificate is not needed in case the BOT machines are added/removed from the processing list

BP version: 6.10.5

@ewilson will request your valuable inputs here.

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Manish Rawat
Project Manager
Mercer
New Delhi
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[ewilson]

@Manish Rawat 

Probably the easiest way for you to get to what you've described above (i.e. a single server funneling all outbound requests) would likely involve putting an API gateway in the mix. Your Blue Prism digital workers would then make their requests to the API gateway and it would send them on to the final destination. 

Alternatively, you can have a single process that monitors a work queue for requests from other processes. When it receives a request from a digital worker, it makes the outbound call to whatever the destination server is. It would then receive the response and forward it on to the initiating digital worker.

Just keep in mind that what you're designing is essentially a bottleneck and single point of failure in the system unless you account for it with some amount of redundancy/failover.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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