Robotic automations can be used to automate the routine tasks which are repeated in a workflow. Pega robotics adds the ability to automate tasks using the user interface of existing applications. It can help speed up manual tasks by automating user actions.

Automations are created in Pega Robotic Studio. The latest version available is 8.0 and can be downloaded from PDN. The minimum requirements for running automations are PRPC 7.2.1 with Pega HFIX-29471 or PRPC 7.2.2.

There are two types of Pega robotic automations:

1. Desktop Automation (RDA)
2. Process Automation (RPA)

Pega Desktop Automation

Desktop automations are used to provide a unified desktop experience to users by integrating and automating desktop (or web applications) with Pega 7 applications. Desktop or web applications can be launched from flow actions and data can be transferred back and forth between the workflow and desktop applications.

Desktop automations can help reduce the redundant work that is required to copy and duplicate data in multiple applications. This can help reduce the time a CRM representative needs to spend with a customer on the phone and can also reduce data entry errors which can occur when entering the same data multiple times.

Legacy applications where APIs don’t exist or are not compatible with new Pega 7 applications can be integrated with the help of automations.

Pega Process Automation

Robotic Process automations are used for automating high-volume back-end repetitive work. Case assignments are routed to a robotic queue from where they are picked up by a robotic automation VM to perform the automations.

The working is similar to an agent but the processing is done by an automation instead of the Pega requestor processing the assignment. A new ‘type’ dropdown has been added in the work basket instance to specify a robotic automation work queue. If Robotic type is selected from the dropdown, two additional fields are displayed:

1. Maximum queue length: This value is used to specify the maximum number of assignments that should be in the queue at a given time.
2. Maximum automation execution time: The value is used to specify the maximum amount of time the VM is expected to take to run the automation.

Automation VM’s can be managed in Pega Robotic Automation Console. Robotic workbasket turns red when the number of assignments exceed the maximum queue length or the automation execution time. The automation console is packaged with a sample application and can be downloaded from the PDN link.

Installation and Configuration of Pega Robotic Studio

There are 2 installation options available:

1. Run time only installation
2. Pega Robotic Studio installation

The runtime client allows the users to run automations on a user’s desktop. The automation project can be loaded after launching the run time client and right clicking the run time icon in the task bar. During installation of the client enable RDA checkbox needs to be checked in order to enable the REST service (API) for handling automation requests from Pega 7 applications.

Pega Robotic Studio is built on top of Visual Studio. Robotic Studio is used for creating automations. The installation files and instructions can be found in Pega Robotic Automation Architect Essentials (8.0) course in Pega academy. The course also provides a sample application and step by step instructions on how to create an automation. Automations can also be invoked from a Pega application by running the debugger in robotic studio.

Both runtime and Robotic Studio have configuration files which need to be updated with Pega server base URL. At runtime, Config files are copied to the temp folder under C:/user/AppData/Roaming/OpenSpan. The files need to be updated or deleted from this folder every time the Config files are updated in order to pick up latest Config changes.

The installation and configuration instructions can be found here.

Creating a simple automation in Pega Robotic Studio

To create an automation, launch Pega Robotic Studio and create a new Pega Robotics Project (File>New). Enter a name for the project. For this example, we will create an automation for an insurance claim application. The automation will launch a website (smartystreets.com) and validate the address data entered by the user.

***Updated by moderator: Lochan to mark as discussion; tag as FAQ***