Projects

This option is available for users with the following roles: Administrator, Project Administrator, KTA Client, VCS Service User, and RoboServer.

Use the Projects option on the Admin menu to configure and create projects for the Management Console.

Projects are a way to segment robots, types, snippets, resources, schedules, and other work assets. Robots have access only to types, snippets, and resources contained in the project they belong to. Names of robots, types, and other objects need to be distinct within a project.

By default, Management Console contains a single project called "Default project."

Change the way the information for each project is presented as follows:

  • Select the table columns to display for a project using the menu icon on the right.
  • Refresh the displayed information by clicking the refresh icon on the right.
  • Reset the custom column settings by clicking the reset icon on the right.
  • Select the number of items to display per page and navigate among pages by using the navigation menu in the bottom right corner.

By default, the following table columns are displayed for each project.

Column

Description

Name

Name of the project, which must be unique.

The project name is used as a foreign key in the log tables to determine who has permission to view the log files.

If you rename a project, all existing robot runs and robot messages belonging to the project must be updated to reflect the new name. Otherwise, they are not shown when the logs are filtered by project.

If Management Console is connected to the logging database when you rename a project, Management Console automatically renames the robot runs and message entries in the log database. However, if it is not connected or the connection is lost during the update, the administrator must manually run the following SQL to update the log tables.

UPDATE ROBOT_RUN SET projectName = '<newName>' where projectName = '<oldName>';
UPDATE ROBOT_MESSAGE SET projectName = '<newName>' where projectName = '<oldName>';

Where <oldName> is the old project name, and <newName> is the new project name.

Description

Description of the project.

Authenticate REST

Indicates if the authentication for REST/SOAP requests is enabled.

Optional Columns

Imported by

User name of the user who imported the project or restored it as part of a backup.

Imported at

Date when the project was imported or restored as part of a backup.

Permissions

Any configured project permissions for the project.

REST cluster

Cluster used to execute robots for the project when robots are invoked as REST services.

Create new project

  1. Log in to Management Console.

  2. Click the Admin menu, then select the Projects option.
  3. Click the plus sign in the upper left corner to create a new project.

    The "Add project" dialog box appears, with the Basic tab open as the default starting position.

  4. On the Basic pane, specify a name for the project and a description.

  5. Select the Permissions tab.

    1. Click the plus sign to add a permission.

    2. Type the project role and security group.

      For a description of project roles, see Users & groups.

    When deploying Management Console on a standalone web container, you can configure project permissions for users based on their group membership (such as LDAP groups). For more information, see the "Tomcat Management Console" section of "Project Permissions" in the Kofax RPA Administrator's Guide.

  6. Select the Services tab to configure the services.

    1. For Service Cluster, select from the list.

    2. For Use only Service Cluster in project, select or clear the check box.

      A service cluster runs the REST services in the current project. REST services always use the selected service cluster.

      • If you select this check box, you must select a Service Cluster for the project.

      • Management Console hides all other clusters and uses the selected service cluster for all schedules when generating code and running robots from the robot menu.

    3. For Authenticate REST/SOAP requests, select or clear the check box (enable or disable).

      By default, REST/SOAP services are protected by basic authentication.

      • When calling services directly from a browser using XMLHttpRequest, disable the authentication, because you would be exposing login credentials in the JavaScript source files.

      • When calling REST/SOAP services from a programming language like Java, Ruby, C#, and others, enable the authentication to protect the services, if you can store the credentials securely.

    4. For Access-Control-Allow-Origin, type a header for the client access to process a resource from another domain.

      Restrictions exist when calling a REST/SOAP service from a browser, unless the service is located on the same web server as the web page from which it is invoked.

      • If calling a REST/SOAP service from another domain, also known as Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), you must include an access control header.

      • If calling a REST/SOAP service in a cross-domain fashion, you must specify the domain from which the page that generated the request was loaded.

        Example: If a page on http://example.com contains a page with JavaScript that generates a request to a service located on http://kofax.com, then the service response from http://kofax.com must contain the header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.com" or else built-in security mechanisms in the browser prevent it from processing the cross-origin response.

      • You may use * as a wildcard, which means that any domain can invoke your REST/SOAP service in a cross-domain fashion.

  7. Select the Repository tab to configure repository access and synchronize objects.

    1. Click Enable configuration to activate the fields for configuring a repository.

      This option enables control over work objects in version control systems such as GitHub and GitLab. For a detailed example of using this option, see the Kofax RPA Best Practices Guide.

    2. In the URL field, provide the path to the repository.

      • To link directly to the repository, type the path to the repository.

        Example: https://gitrepos/example.git/

      • To use the Synchronizer with URLs that include a username and password, type the user name and password with the path to the repository.

        Example: https://username:password@gitlab.com/project_name/repo_name.git

        This URL entry bypasses the SSH Key Pair authentication method, which was previously the only way to synchronize with online repositories. For more information, see Start synchronization in the Kofax RPA Best Practices Guide.

    3. In the Branch field, type the name of the branch to use.

      Example: If you have a setup with two Management Consoles, one for production and one for development, you can configure a dedicated development branch.

    4. To make the repository the only source for object changes, select Read-only.

      We recommend that you select this option to avoid any changes to objects belonging to the synchronized project in the production Management Console.

      In the read-only mode, all the objects that the Management Console contains, are taken from the repository. Before starting synchronization, make sure that the objects you want to synchronize are empty in the Management Console. Otherwise, an error message appears.

      To delete the object contents, select the required object from the Objects to synchronize list and click Delete selected objects. Use caution when deleting the objects so that you do not loose important data.

    5. For the Objects to synchronize, select the objects to include in the synchronization.

  8. Click OK to save the changes.

Modify a project

  1. Log in to Management Console.

  2. Click the Admin menu, then select the Projects option.
  3. From the list of projects, select the one you want to modify.

    If you delete a project, all of the robots, types, snippets, resources, and schedules associated with it are deleted as well.
  4. To delete a project, select it and click the icon.

  5. To edit a project, from the context menu, select Edit.

    The "Edit project" dialog box appears, which contains the tabs and fields for editing the selected project.

  6. Edit the project as needed.

  7. Click OK to save the changes.