Attended Automation

Attended Automation is a way to automate your remote computers by creating a trigger robot that reacts to an event on a remote device. The following steps help you set up your development and production environment to use robots with triggers.

Prerequisite: During robot development, set the Desktop automation service on the remote device to the Single User mode to be able to access the device from Design Studio.

1. Create a simple, direct connection Device mapping for your trigger robot.

2. Add the created mapping as a "Trigger reference" to the Required Devices in the Call Robot step using the Add Device dialog box.

3. Add Trigger Choice to your Robot.

4. Once the development is complete, open the Desktop automation service configuration on the remote device and perform the following:

   • Clear the Single User option and specify the Management Console where the robot is deployed.

   • Open the Windows tab and select Lock package.

After uploading a robot with a trigger to a Management Console, map the robot to users and labels in the Trigger mappings section. After that the Management Console provides a list of triggers to the Desktop Automation Service based on created mappings. When a trigger event is detected on a remote device, the Desktop Automation Service sends a notification to the Management Console and the robot performs some programmed steps. For example, you can program the robot to insert or extract some data when a certain application is opened. Use the Trigger Choice step to define triggers and actions that start when a certain event is detected.

For a more detailed procedure description, see Get Started with Attended Automation.

Don'ts for robots with triggers

• Do not add robots with triggers to schedules and do not start robots with triggers manually. The robot started by schedule or manually will wait forever (or some specified RoboServer timeout), because the trigger is never activated by any remote Desktop Automation Service.

• Do not add robots with triggers to Kapplets.

• Do not use Intelligent Screen Automation (ISA) in robots with triggers.

When configuring a Desktop Automation Service, you can use labels to distinguish the automation devices. For example, if a Desktop Automation Service is installed on a computer that is used by an active user and that should run attended robots to assist the user with manual tasks, you can add a respective label to such Desktop Automation Service, like "interactive." If the computer is not used actively and non-attended (usual) robots can run on it, you can add a label similar to "non-interactive."

Trigger mappings are used to assign users and labels to robots with trigger events in the Management Console.

Also, you can assign mappings, suspend and activate triggers in the Repository > Robots section in Management Console.

When a trigger event is detected, the robot might prevent the user from using the mouse and keyboard. To inform the user of the action performed by the robot, use the Notify step.

If triggers are suspended in a Management Console, the robot is not triggered by the remote Desktop Automation Service. Note that the refresh of trigger information runs during the connection to a remote device and then every minute. There might be a situation when a trigger is shown as suspended, but is still running in the Management Console. In this case, a trigger event may still be detected.