Configure Desktop Automation Service

Single User

Select for direct connection to the automation desktop from Design Studio or when using the RDP connection.

"singleUser"

Cleared (default)

Leave empty to automatically register the Desktop Automation Service with the specified Management Console.

For direct connection to the automation desktop, select the option and specify a token.*

Host name

"hostName"

Name or local IP address of the computer running the Desktop Automation Service.

If a computer has multiple names or IP addresses, specify the one that RoboServers and Design Studio contact this Desktop Automation Service with. That is, the host name or IP address must be reachable from RoboServers and Design Studio.

Command port

"commandPort"

49998 (default)

If the Desktop Automation Service is started without being manually configured, it uses the default configuration and listens on the default 49998 port.

Reassign this port to the automation desktop if necessary.

Stream port

"streamPort"

49999 (default)

This port is used to send data between Design Studio and Desktop Automation Service. If set to "0", the Desktop Automation Service selects a random port number.

You might need to reassign the stream port if there is a firewall between Design Studio and the automation desktop.

CA file

"caFile"

Empty (default)

You can communicate with the Management Console using SSL. If the default certificate in node.js is not used, you can specify a path to another certificate file using this parameter. Note that you need to have a root certificate for this to work. To save a root certificate in a file from a Google Chrome browser, do the following:

1. Right-click the lock icon in the address bar and click Certificate (valid).

2. On the Certificate Path tab, select the top most (root) certificate and click View Certificate.

3. On the Details tab, click Copy to File and then complete the wizard to export the root certificate as a base-64 encode X.509 certificate.

Now you can specify the path to the file with exported certificate.

Timeout

"commandTimeout"

This option specifies the timeout for command execution in seconds. A command is an instruction sent to automation desktop, such as click mouse button, open application, add a location found guard, and so forth. If a command cannot be completed in a specified time, the service sends a notification and execution of the robot stops.

Note that in case of a Guarded Choice step, this setting applies to invoking the guard in the workflow, but waiting for the guard to be satisfied is not bound to this timeout and can wait forever. Similar situation occurs when using the Move Mouse and Extract steps. The commands must be invoked on the device withing the timeout specified in this field, but the robot waits for up to 240 seconds for the commands to complete.

The command timeout for automating terminals or browsing websites in a Robot is set either on the Desktop Automation tab of the Design Studio Settings window for executing the workflow in Design Studio, or in the Automation Device section on the Security tab of the RoboServer Settings window for RoboServer execution.

Token on Single User tab

"token"

Empty (default)

If the Single User option is not selected, leave this option empty. If you use the direct connection to the automation desktop (Single User is selected), specify a token. It can be any token you define.

Certificates tab

"tlsServerConfig"

Kofax RPA provides TLS communication between automation desktop and RoboServer or Design Studio. The communication uses certificates for encrypting the communication. The following is a server.conf file code extract. For more information see Use TLS Communication.

  "tlsServerConfig": {
    "key": "kofax.remote.das.pem",
    "cert": "kofax.remote.das.cert.pem",
    "ca": "./serverCa"
  },

Windows tab

"automationnative"

• Use legacy Java-Access-Bridge

  In some situations, the Java Access Bridge does not work and it can help to switch to legacy mode. By default, the option is not selected.

• Installed packages

  Lists Desktop Automation Service packages installed on this computer. Starting from version 10.7.0, new version packages are installed automatically if the Lock package option below is not selected. The packages in ZIP files are installed to C:\ProgramData\Kofax RPA on the automated computer. The appropriate package is selected automatically depending on the RoboServer version. If you want to specify only one version package to be used, select Lock package and select one of the installed packages.

• Lock package

  When selected, you can choose a version package as the only one to work with. A RoboServer with a different version cannot connect to this service. By default, the option is not selected.

  Select this option or change the setting to true in the server.conf file to run robots with triggers.

• Map RFS share to drive letter

  The Windows drive that the Robot File System file share is available in. When the file share is mapped to a Windows drive, other Windows applications can also access this file share.

OCR tab

"ocrConfig"

Specifies one or more languages and an engine to perform an OCR operation. You can choose from Tesseract (default) and OmniPage OCR engines. To use the OmniPage engine, select Use Kofax OmniPage OCR (only for packages version 11.1 or later) on the OCR tab. Specify OCR languages in the Enabled OCR languages field. For example, to use the Japanese language, either replace eng (default) with jpn or, if you want to use more than one language, add jpn using the plus sign, such as eng+jpn.

For Tesseract, Kofax RPA installs only the English language. See Change Default OCR Language for Robot below for language installation instructions.

System tab

This tab helps you open the log file to examine any errors and shows the version and location of the service file. Using this tab, you can check whether Java Access Bridge is properly installed on the computer where the service is running. See Check Java Access Bridge for details.

If you need to restart your computer frequently, but you cannot use the automatic login feature of Windows, click the Configure Screen Lock on Startup button to enable the Desktop Automation Service to automatically create a session and lock the screen after the computer is restarted.

After clicking the button:

1. The system requests elevation. You may get an UAC elevation prompt. The elevation may require entering the credentials for another account that has administrative privileges.
2. You must provide the credentials of the user account used to log in and create a session after a computer restart. The user field in the credentials dialog is pre-filled with the currently logged in user. Note that it is not necessarily the user account that is used for the elevation.
3. A Task Scheduler, which will execute the Lock Screen a minute after the computer is (re)started, is created. This task is created under the folder Kofax/RPA.

To delete the lock on restart, go to the folder Kofax/RPA in the Task Scheduler and delete the task "Lock screen after boot."

MC Path

Connection protocol, name or IP address, port number, and path of the Management Console the device must register with. The format is as follows:

http://10.10.0.136:50080.

"hostName"

Name or IP address of the Management Console the device must register with.

"port"

Connection port of the specified Management Console.

"schema"

Connection protocol of the specified Management Console.

"path"

Empty (default)

The part of the path to the standalone Management Console after the port number. For example, if your Management Console is deployed on Tomcat at http://computer.domain.com:8080/ManagementConsole/, specify "/ManagementConsole/" in this parameter. Leave this parameter empty for the embedded Management Console installation.

User name

"user"

Empty (default)

User name to authenticate on the specified Management Console.

Password

"password"

Empty (default)

Password to authenticate on the specified Management Console.

Cluster

"cluster"

Production (default)

Cluster name on the specified Management Console.

Labels

"labels"

"label1,label2" (default)

Labels to distinguish the automation devices.

Ping interval (ms)

"pingInterval"

5000 (default)

Time interval for the Desktop Automation Service to ping the Management Console.

Use proxy to connect to Management Console

"useProxy"

Select this option for the Desktop Automation Service to use proxy when connecting to Management Console. All necessary parameters are specified in the following fields.

Under Linux, you can set up proxy parameters in the managementConsole section of the server.conf file.

    "useProxy": true,
    "proxyHostName": "proxyhost.com",
    "proxyPort": 9000,
    "proxyUserName": "username",
    "proxyPassword": "pwd"