Robotic Subprocesses
This content applies solely to Appian RPA, which must be purchased separately from the Appian base platform.

Overview

If your business uses common actions within a larger process, you might find it useful to create and integrate robotic subprocesses into your workflow development. Robotic subprocesses can be built to serve common purposes between multiple robotic processes, such as logging into an application, retrieving files and sending them to Appian, or scraping data.

This page describes what a robotic subprocess is, how it works, and how to use it in other robotic processes.

About robotic subprocesses

A robotic subprocess is any robotic process that's executed within the workflow of another robotic process. Any robotic process can be run as a robotic subprocess, and a robotic process can contain multiple robotic subprocesses. It can even contain a robotic subprocess that contains its own robotic subprocess. See Subprocess relationships to learn more about how the robotic processes relate to each other. Additionally, robotic subprocesses have some limitations.

Robotic subprocesses are recommended where common steps are performed. This enables developers to more easily collaborate, re-use, and design more modular automations.

rpa-subprocess

Robotic subprocesses operate in ways similar to subprocesses in Appian process models. However, there are some important differences:

  • The robotic process and any robotic subprocesses it contains are run on the same resource.
  • Like robotic processes, robotic subprocesses execute using the workflow definition when the execution was requested, not the latest definition if it's been updated after its execution request.
  • Robotic subprocesses are always executed synchronously with the parent process. Only after the subprocess concludes does the robotic process proceed to the next action in the main workflow.

You'll use the Execute robotic subprocess action to configure and launch a robotic subprocess from within a parent process. It specifies which robotic subprocess to call and indicates the data to be passed in and out of the subprocess.

Subprocess relationships

Throughout this page, the robotic subprocess may be referred to as the child robotic process, while the robotic process that calls the subprocess is referred to as the parent robotic process. These terms help show the relationship between the robotic processes.

You'll configure the parent robotic process to use the Execute robotic subprocess action to establish this relationship.

Because any robotic process can be used as a subprocess, it's possible to have multiple levels of subprocesses. For example, if process C is used as a subprocess in process B, process B can still be used as a subprocess in process A. Effectively, process A contains two subprocesses, but process C is two levels down. Keep this relationship in mind as you learn more about how subprocesses behave.

Represented visually, the levels would appear as:

  • Robotic process A (highest-level parent robotic process)
    • Robotic process B (child robotic process to process A, parent robotic process to process C)
      • Robotic process C (child robotic process to both robotic processes A and B)

Limitations

You can't import or export a robotic subprocess with its parent robotic process at this time. In order to deploy robotic processes that leverage subprocesses to another environment, you will need to export and import all robotic processes separately.

Configure a robotic subprocess action

The steps below describe how to set up a robotic subprocess.

  1. Create and save the robotic process you intend to use as a subprocess.

    The robotic subprocess should contain all of the components it needs to execute successfully and independently, such as variables and support files.

  2. Open the parent robotic process.
  3. Go to the Task tab of the robotic process configuration.
  4. In the Workflow area, add an action.
  5. In the Actions Palette, locate the Execute robotic subprocess action under Execution.
  6. Drag and drop the action to the appropriate spot in the workflow.
  7. With the action selected, click Edit under CONFIGURATION in the Configuration Pane.
  8. in the Robotic process menu, search for and select the robotic process you want to run as a subprocess. Only robotic processes you have access to will appear in this list, excluding the one you're currently editing.
  9. In the INPUT VARIABLES section, map a parent process variable to a subprocess parameter so that when the action is executed, data passes from the parent process to your subprocess.
  10. In the OUTPUT VARIABLES section, map desired subprocess variables to process variables in your parent process.
  11. Click SAVE.

Additional configuration details

When used as a subprocess, certain configurations of a robotic process may behave differently:

Setup and Clean up: Robotic subprocess' setup and clean up sections are always skipped during execution. Any setup or clean up activities that are needed for the main automation should be incorporated into the highest level robotic process' Setup and Clean up sections.

Environmental variables: Robotic processes will use their respective environmental variables. The parent process will use parent environmental variables, while the subprocess will use subprocess environmental variables.

Credentials: The parent process's permission tags will define which credentials are accessible during execution. If, in the subprocess, users select Any available credential, the robotic process will choose from the credential entries that are available to the parent robotic process. In the subprocess, if users select Specific credential but the credential is not available to the parent robotic process due to mismatched permission tags, an error will be logged. Credentials are not released until the clean up section of the parent process is run.

Workflow libraries: Workflow libraries are supported for subprocesses. If there are different versions of a workflow library being used between the parent robotic process and the subprocess, the higher version will automatically be used during execution.

Resource tags: The parent robotic process permission tags determine which resources are available for execution. The subprocess's permission tags don't need to match the execution resource's permission tags, as long as the parent process's tags match the resource's.

Use credentials in a robotic subprocess

To share credentials between the parent process and the child process, a reserved credential should be passed using a robotic process variable. This section describes the steps to achieve this.

First, create a robotic process variable of type Credential in the parent robotic process to store the credential. Note that this data type is unique to RPA and can't be used in expressions, casting, or referenced as a parameter in an Appian process model.

To reserve a credential:

  1. Go to the parent robotic process configuration.
  2. In the workflow, add the Reserve credential action under Execution.
  3. Configure the action to reserve the intended credential.
  4. Configure the OUTPUTS to save the reserved credential to the robotic process variable you created earlier. Select the variable in the Target field.
  5. Click SAVE CHANGES.

To pass the reserved credential to the robotic subprocess:

  1. Still in the parent robotic process configuration, select the Execute robotic subprocess action in the flow. If you haven't yet added this action, see above.
  2. In the INPUT VARIABLES section, map the parent process variable that contains the credential to the corresponding subprocess parameter. When the action is executed, the data passes from the parent process to your subprocess.
  3. Click SAVE.

To use the reserved credential in the robotic subprocess:

  1. Go to the child robotic process configuration.
  2. In the workflow, add the action appropriate to your use case: Interact with element (Browser), Interact with element (Windows Automation), or Type text (Keyboard).
  3. For the Selection method, choose Reserved credential.
  4. Select the variable that stores the reserved credential.
  5. Click SAVE CHANGES.

Possible errors

For input variables where you are evaluating an expression, if the value being passed to the child parameter does not match the data type of the variable, Appian will attempt to cast the data automatically. If the automatic casting is invalid, the robotic process will throw the following error in the log to indicate the type mismatch: Unknown error. Please contact administrator with the following message: Could not cast from <Variable Type> to <Variable Type 2>. Details: CastInvalid.

Execution behavior

When requesting an execution, the account that is running the automation needs to have access to the parent process and subprocesses through appropriate permission tags. For example, if a service account had a tag removed that also removed its access to the subprocess, the parent process would fail to execute with the following message: The robotic process or one of its dependents does not exist, has been deleted, or you do not have permission to access it.

Robotic subprocesses execute as part of the main parent's robotic process execution. Their definition is set at the time the robotic process execution was requested, and any changes to the subprocess afterwards will not be reflected in the pending execution. In Appian RPA, robotic subprocesses are run synchronously, meaning the parent process will wait for the subprocess actions to complete before resuming the rest of the workflow.

View execution details

The subprocess's execution log is contained in the parent process's log. Therefore, when a robotic process is run as a subprocess of another automation, that execution will not display in the subprocess' own execution log. However, when the robotic process is executed as an independent process, its execution will appear in its own execution log.

If you use the debugging tool, subprocesses will appear as an action group within the execution preview and can be interacted with like other action group, such as setting breakpoints and disabling actions.

Deployment

When a parent robotic process containing subprocesses is exported, the subprocess workflows and dependencies are not included in the ZIP file. In order to deploy to other environments, you will need to separately export the subprocess and its dependencies.

On import, the system checks for missing precedents, including references to robotic subprocesses. Therefore, it is recommended to import a robotic subprocess first, and then proceed importing the parent process.

Open in Github Built: Wed, Aug 17, 2022 (01:05:05 PM)

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