Control Center

Introduction

The Control Center provides useful statistics about your digital workforce and orchestrates your robotic and business process management (BPM) operations. It displays information such as how many processes were automated in a certain period and how many resources and queues are deployed.

The page provides an overview of the different Control Center tabs, including:

Automation

You see the Automation page when you open the Control Center. This tab provides the list of automations in Production.

Figure 2.2.1.a: List of automations in production

Click on an Automation Name to get further statistics about the automation on the Automation Details page.

The Automation Details page consists of three views - Summary, Onboarding Request Information, and Onboarding Request Lifecycle.

The Summary view provides the Automation Steps details and Average Completion time of different steps.

Figure 2.2.1.b: Summary of details of the selected automation request

Users can click on each step in the Description column to see detailed information about that step. If that step is BPM or RPA, then users can see the detailed information about the BPM Process or RPA Process respectively. For AI related capabilities, there is no deep-dive navigation.

The Onboarding Request Information view provides the details of every stage of approval for automation.

Figure 2.2.1.c: Automation onboarding information

The Onboarding Request Lifecycle view provides the collective information of the automation request and will give information regarding all the approval stages.

Figure 2.2.1.d: Automation onboarding lifecycle

RPA

This tab provides useful statistics about the digital workforce and can be considered the orchestrator of your robotic process automation (RPA).

The RPA Module consists of five key views:

  1. Metrics
  2. Process
  3. Resource
  4. Queue
  5. Calendar

Metrics

This view shows the following insights:

  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - Count of total processes, resources, sessions, and work items.
  • Process Insights - Top exceptions and top time saved of RPA processes.
  • Sessions Analytics - Total number of sessions that have occurred on each quarter, month, and week.
  • Work Items - Total number of work items that have been processed each quarter, month, and week. This value can be compared against the total work items completed and deferred, as well as exceptions. This can be further drilled down at the process level.

Figure 2.2.2.1.a: Metrics

Process

The Process view provides a bird's eye view of all processes such as the Process Name, the Business Owner and Technical Owner, etc. This screen also allows the users to either start or schedule the Blue Prism, UiPath, and Appian RPA processes from Appian on a real-time basis.

Figure 2.2.2.2.a: List of processes in Blue Prism, UiPath, and Appian RPA

Users can click on the Process Name to get further statistics about the process.

The RPA Process Details page consists of three views - Summary, Audit Logs, and Start/Schedule Summary. The Summary view provides information pertaining to the process sessions, KPIs for sessions count, exception sessions, avg. session time, work item count, avg. work item time, etc.

Figure 2.2.2.2.b: Key statistics corresponding to a single process

Start and schedule an RPA process

Users can also start or schedule a process right from the process dashboard.

Figure 2.2.2.2.1.a: Start/schedule the RPA process user interface

The start and schedule action appears as shown above. Displayed at the top right is the list of inputs for which the user specifies the values. For the schedule, there is a section in the middle called Configure Scheduler where the user enters the start date, end date, time of schedule, and the days at which it needs to be scheduled.

There are two places where a user could start a process:

  1. Navigate to the Process tab.
  2. In the Action column, click Start or Schedule for the process.

Or

  1. Navigate to the Process tab.
  2. Click a process in the Process Name column.
  3. At the top right, there are related actions to start or schedule the process.

Users can navigate to the Start/Schedule Summary view:

Figure 2.2.2.2.1.b: Summary of RPA processes started/schedule from the Robotic Workforce Manager

This opens up the RPA schedule calendar against the selected process. The calendar shows the various times at which the process is scheduled to run during that month.

Figure 2.2.2.2.1.c: RPA schedule calendar

A table appears at the bottom of the page that shows the list of processes triggered by Appian (for the current day). The Start History table displays five columns: Started By, Started At, Inputs, Comments, and Status.

Figure 2.2.2.2.1.d: RPA start history

Audit Log

The Audit log gives information about the processes that are changed on the RPA vendor side.

Figure 2.2.2.2.2.a: Audit log

Resource

The Resource view provides an overview of all the resources (typically runtime machines) along with its current status (active, offline, etc). It also gives statistics about usage.

Figure 2.2.2.3.a: Resource utilization snapshot

Click a resource to see further information, such as a total number of sessions executed, the total number of processes executed, the percentage of utilization of the resource in a given period, etc. The percentage utilization of the resource may be an interesting metric for the operations, business, and the IT teams to plan capacity utilization. If utilization at runtime is high, then capacity may have to expand to accommodate future RPA automation requests.

In the Utilization Details table, you can see a breakdown of all the processes that have been executed on the resource in the given time period.

Figure 2.2.2.3.b: Resource record

Queue

This view provides details about the Blue Prism, UiPath, and Appian RPA queues. It provides basic information such as the name of the queue, the number of work items in the queue, the status of each work item (completed or pending, etc), the amount of time taken for each work item in the queue, etc.

Figure 2.2.2.4.a: List of queues

Click a queue to see further information about each item in the queue, such as the resource that executed the work item, the priority, the status of each work item, etc.

Figure 2.2.2.4.b: Breakdown of a queue

Queue status definitions

The Summary section of the Queue tab shows the number of queues in each status, as described here:

  • In Progress: At least one robot is currently processing the queue.
  • Pending: No robot has processed the queue yet.
  • Paused: A robot isn't processing the queue, but the queue isn't accepting new items.
  • Finished: All items in the queue have been processed, or the status has been manually set. Queues with this status won't be processed further, even if some items are pending.
  • Completed: All items in the queue have been processed and the queue is not expected to be processed again.
  • Reserved: A robot has claimed the queue and no other robot can access it.
  • Not in Use: The queue is not pending or expected to be processed again.

Calendar

The calendar gives the users the list of all the processes that have been scheduled in Appian as well as in Blue Prism, UiPath, and Appian RPA. You can also filter based on the process categories and the process names. Companies that work across different time zones can toggle between their timezone and the GMT for comparison. Apart from filters, the calendar uses icons to display the real-time status of the schedules.

Figure 2.2.2.5.a: Global calendar view

There are several icons which will be shown in the calendar:

Icon Description
user_guide_icon_1.png This is a process scheduled in Blue Prism, UiPath, Appian RPA itself.
user_guide_icon_2.png This is a process scheduled in Appian and waiting to be executed.
user_guide_icon_3.png This was a process scheduled in Appian and executed successfully.
user_guide_icon_4.png This was a process scheduled in Appian and the execution has failed.
* Will be appended to a Blue Prism, UiPath, Appian RPA schedule to indicate that the schedule runs every hour. The time listed here indicates the first occurrence of the schedule.
** Will be appended to a Blue Prism, UiPath, Appian RPA schedule to indicate that the schedule runs every minute. The time listed here indicates the first occurrence of the schedule.

BPM

The BPM tab provides a bird's eye view of the BPM process and information such as the process Name, Description, Instance Count, Percent Successful, Avg Processing Time, and Avg Task Time.

Figure 2.2.3.a: List of queues

Click a BPM process name to get further statistics about the process.

Figure 2.2.3.b: BPM process statistics

Exceptions

All robotic processes in production have exceptions that come up from robots and humans working together. The Exceptions tab can be used to track all work item exceptions, as well as resource and session alerts that come up within Blue Prism, UiPath, and Appian RPA processes.

The Exceptions tab provides the following benefits when alerts and exceptions occur:

  • View all exceptions in a centralized repository.
  • Automatically add exceptions to a case and have a holistic view.
  • Triage exceptions and assign them to a specific user.
  • View the history of the exceptions and any action items related to it.
  • View the number of open, in-progress, closed cases, etc., instead of dealing with cases ad-hoc.

If you're using Appian RPA, exceptions appear automatically in RWM only for robotic processes that take data from a queue as input.

Figure 2.2.4.a: List of tasks assigned to the user

Exception Types

Exceptions fall under either System Exceptions or Business Exceptions.

System Exceptions

There are 3 types of system exceptions:

  • Work item exceptions
  • Resource alerts
  • Session alerts

These are automated exceptions that originate from any available RPA vendor configured to work with your environment. These exceptions can include technical issues that a robotic process has encountered, or alerts that a resource has unexpectedly gone offline. These exceptions do not require additional configuration to receive in RWM.

Business Exceptions

Business exceptions are exceptions and alerts that result from the activities in Appian business processes used as part of automations occurring in the application. These business processes can be designed to capture the range of business relevant activities that fall outside of the capabilities of robotic processes, but are possible within Appian BPM. This includes pulling various users in the organization into the process for comments, reviews, approvals, reconciliation of inconsistent data, as well as automated activities and integrations with external systems. All of these BPM and RPA processes can be seamlessly connected to create an end-to-end automation workflow.

To see your Appian BPM processes appear in the business exceptions list, update expression rule RWM_UTIL_getAlertTasks with constants for your new process models, as well as any additional filters needed. Also update RWM_FORM_exceptionDetails to display the number of business exceptions that occur in the application.

Handling Exceptions

When an exception occurs:

  1. The exceptions that come up are added to a case and assigned to the user automatically, based on a routing table in Appian, which can found in Appian Designer. The object name for the decision table is RWM_caseManagementRoutingDetails. The format of the decision routing tables is as given in the below image.

    The last empty entry should not be removed as that's the condition at which the unmatched cases get assigned to the Exception Manager.

    Figure 2.2.4.b: Exceptions tasks auto assignment

    Figure 2.2.4.c: Work item exception information received by the user

  2. Work Item Exception: A user can look at the case details; add comments; edit the business data from Blue Prism, UiPath, and Appian RPA; reassign the case; and even resubmit the case back to the RPA vendor to continue the processing of that case.
  3. Resource/Session Alerts: Apart from exceptions, Resource and Session Alerts tasks can also be found here. These kinds of tasks are assigned to the RWM Exception Managers by default, whenever the status of a resource is changed from Active or Running to either Missing or Offline. An example is shown below.

    Figure 2.2.4.d: Resource alerts user interface

    Figure 2.2.4.e: Sessions alerts user interface

  4. Assign Cases: Exceptions created on the RPA vendor side by default are assigned to the Exception Manager if they do not have any assignee configured in the decision table as shown in Fig 2.2.4(b). The Exception Case Manager can select assignees from this screen. Assignees are then able to work on the exceptions.

    Figure 2.2.4.f: Assign cases

  5. Closed Exceptions: Click Closed Exceptions to see the exception and alerts that are closed.

    Figure 2.2.4.g: Closed exceptions

Open in Github Built: Fri, Mar 11, 2022 (04:59:07 PM)

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