Develop robots

Attended automation is a way to add automated assistance to interactive user tasks. Create trigger robots that react to events on a remote device.

Add only a single Trigger Choice to a robot.

• 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 the programmed steps. For example, you can program the robot to insert or extract data when you open an application.

• Once the trigger starts the robot, the user cannot interact with the computer. Robot workflow and control is handed back to the user only after all robot steps are executed.

Build interactive robots with triggers as either standalone Robots or call them from within a Basic Engine Robot.

For more information about building robots for use with the Desktop Automation Service, see Get started.

Prerequisites

Many installation and configuration tasks are performed by an administrator or similar role. See Prerequisites.

Conditions and Limitations

• Requires Desktop Automation Service to authenticate with the Using Management Console option.

• Do not add robots with triggers to Kapplets.

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

• Do not add robots with triggers to schedules and do not start robots with triggers manually. A 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.

• When suspending triggers in Management Console, it may take about a minute until all remote Desktop Automation Services are notified. During that time a robot may still be triggered.

• When a trigger event is detected, the robot might prevent the user from using the mouse and keyboard. The user is automatically informed when the robot starts and finishes. To inform the user of the action performed by the robot, enclose any of the attended automation actions with Notify steps.

• Some applications are not supported in the Desktop Automation robot workflow when using the Freeze Tree step.

To create robots with trigger events

1. Create an automation device mapping for the remote device, using the same token as configured on the remote Desktop Automation Service.

   See Add automation device mapping. It should be a device mapping that is not based on the Management Console.

2. Open an existing robot or create a new one using one of the following options:

   • Create a Robot and add the device as Trigger.

   • Create a Robot and add a Call Robot step from within a Basic Engine Robot, then pass the device in as a Trigger Reference.

3. If not configured previously, in the Desktop Automation Service setup window on the automated computer, select Single User mode and specify a token to access the device from Design Studio.

4. Add a Trigger Choice step to define triggers and actions that start when an event is detected.

   We recommend creating all the necessary parts of the workflow first and adding the Trigger Choice step at the end of the robot build. This practice avoids having to switch back and forth between devices initiating the trigger.

   1. Select the Trigger Type (Application Opened, Hotkey, and so forth) and give it a name.

   2. Specify an application or a hotkey in the step.

      You can have more than one type of trigger in a Trigger Choice step.

      As shown in the following image, the workflow only progresses after the user has either opened notepad.exe or pressed the Shift+Ctrl+G key combination.

      

   During the robot development, the workflow only progresses if the trigger is initiated. The Trigger Choice step waits until the user has performed the specified trigger on the computer running the Desktop Automation Service.

5. To see the progress of the Trigger Choice step and mappings or to debug the steps while building your robot, perform the following actions.

   1. Run the robot.

   2. Switch to the desktop that runs the Desktop Automation Service and initiate the selected trigger.

   3. Switch back to the robot in Design Studio and see if the flow point passed the Trigger Choice step.

6. Deploy the robots.