Unattended robots overview
Use Pega Robot Manager to process large volumes of work with unattended robots. Robot Manager uses Work Groups and assignment types to route the work to the robots. Assignment types correspond to the concept of Work Queues in Pega Platform™, and a Work Group contains one or more assignment types.
With Robot Manager, you can:
- Monitor the performance, health, and throughput of automation robots.
- Manage the life cycle of automation robots.
Manage Work Groups and assignment types
Before an unattended robot can run any automation, the robot must successfully register with Robot Manager. Administrative operators (also called registration operators) perform the robot registration process for an appropriate access role. During registration, you assign the robot to a default Work Group based on the configuration request of the robot or according to the configuration specified in decision tables in Dev Studio. Successful registration assigns the robot to the correct default Work Group with the appropriate access groups and roles.
Once you register and assign a default Work Group to your robots, organize them into work groups to meet your specific business objectives. For each Work Group, create assignment types that hold the work assignments for robots. For example, you manage inventory for a hardware store and create a Work Group of robots to place orders for products according to changing demand. The Work Group contains assignment types corresponding to the vendors from which you order your products. You can create assignment types within that Work Group corresponding to the various products available to order.
By organizing your robots into Work Groups and designating types of work into assignment types, you can perform various functions in Robot Manager, such as the following:
- Move robots between work groups
- Change the priority of pending Assignments
- Monitor the health of your Work Groups
- Re-process any failed Assignments
Manage robots
A robot is a remote computer that runs Robot Runtime on a Windows operating system. Install the Pega RPA Service as an intermediary between the runtime process and Robot Manager for robots designated as RPA Service-assisted. Each RPA Service-assisted robot has the intermediary RPA service installed on its machine.
All robots can be scheduled, started, stopped, terminated, and moved between work groups from the Robot Manager interface, including the Robots and Work Group landing pages. You can stop a stand-alone robot from the Robot Manager interface but cannot schedule, start, or terminate them.
The following figure two Work Groups in Pega Robot Manager, Inquiry WG and Service Request WG:
You can also use the Robots landing page to filter your robots by their status and Work Groups and manage them accordingly. The Robot Manager Portal displays a package icon next to the Robot ID. Hovering over it displays the package name, version, package type (either test or primary), and any environment overrides, as shown in the following figure. A purple robot icon means that the robot uses an associated package that has changed, and a restart is required.
In Robot Manager, you can start robots, stop robots, terminate robots, and move robots between Work Groups. For more information about managing robots, see Managing robots.
Robot Manager also uses auto-balancing to move robots dynamically between Work Groups to maximize robot efficiency to and help ensure that robotic work assignments finish processing within their Service-Level Agreement (SLA). Robot Manager monitors Work Groups and assignment types to determine which Work Groups require more robots to complete all their assignments on time and which Work Groups have more robots than required based on the SLA of open assignments and the Work Group priority.
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