| This content applies solely to Appian RPA, which must be purchased separately from the Appian base platform. |
This page describes what's available in this release of Appian RPA. Some capabilities may not be available if you're using an older version of the Appian platform.
We made some changes to the terms we use in our RPA Console and RPA documentation to make things easier for everyone to understand. These terms are easier to understand because they're more common in the automation industry. Additionally, these terms more clearly indicate how and when to use RPA elements in your applications. This means you can learn about Appian RPA faster and new users can get started with Appian RPA more quickly.
You’ll notice that robotic processes are now called robotic tasks. As part of this change, robotic subprocesses are now called robotic subtasks. The way things work and what they mean has stayed the same.
We’ve also replaced the word resource with these two words: robot and host machine. This change separates the robot from its workspace which makes it easier to talk about these pieces separately. A robot is a digital worker that has two parts: a host machine and an agent. The host machine is a physical computer or a virtual machine on a cloud server where the robot does its tasks.
In the 8.7 release, we added the ability for Appian to sign in to your virtual machine (VM) on demand and automatically so it can execute a robotic task. With this release, Appian's automatic sign-in service can now bypass Windows interactive logon screens, enabling you to meet your automation needs without compromising security.
To do this, we added a checkbox called Skip interactive logon message to the configuration options. You can find the configuration options on the Robot detail page in the RPA console. When you mark the checkbox, Appian acknowledges and moves past the message when signing in to start a robotic task.
Appian RPA is a capability of the Appian platform. RPA is released independently from the rest of the platform, and the latest version is applied to your site upon restart. This means you get access to new features, bug fixes, and improvements faster and more easily.
All RPA versions are backwards compatible with the Appian platform, so you aren't required to upgrade Appian any sooner than you want to. However, RPA feature availability may rely on feature availability in Appian. Therefore, if you're using an older version of the Appian platform, Appian RPA may not be able to take advantage of those features. In these cases, you may not have access to some of the latest features prior to upgrading Appian. Your robotic tasks will continue to work with your current version of Appian.
We want to be clear when some of these features may require a more recent version of Appian. Where applicable, we'll note where certain features might not be available for older versions of Appian.
Appian regularly addresses bugs and other issues in RPA with hotfixes to the latest available version of RPA. For this reason, we encourage customers to plan to upgrade Appian RPA regularly to access these new features, bug fixes, and improvements faster.
You can use a particular version of Appian RPA until your site is restarted, at which point you'll be upgraded to the latest version. No matter what version of Appian RPA you're using, we encourage you to report issues so they can be addressed. Fixes and enhancements will be available in the latest available version of Appian RPA.
Appian RPA documentation is available for six months after the version release date. Refer to the table below to learn more about release dates and documentation availability.
| RPA Release | Release Date | Docs Removal Date |
|---|---|---|
| 9.1 | 12 May 2023 | 12 November 2023 |
| 9.0 | 31 March 2023 | 15 September 2023 |
| 8.9 | 17 February 2023 | 17 August 2023 |
| 8.8 | 20 January 2023 | 20 July 2023 |
| 8.7 | 9 December 2022 | 9 June 2023 |
| 8.6 | 28 October 2022 | 28 April 2023 |
| 8.5 | 16 September 2022 | 16 March 2023 |
| 8.4 | 5 August 2022 | 5 February 2023 |
| 8.3 | 22 June 2022 | 22 December 2022 |
| 8.2 | 13 May 2022 | 13 November 2022 |
| 8.1 | 1 April 2022 | 1 October 2022 |
| 8.0 | 9 February 2022 | 9 August 2022 |
| 7.14 | 21 January 2022 | 21 July 2022 |
| 7.13 | 10 December 2021 | 10 June 2022 |
| 7.12 | 29 October 2021 | 29 April 2022 |
| 7.11 | 16 September 2021 | 16 March 2022 |
| 7.10 | 6 August 2021 | 6 February 2022 |
| 7.9 | 24 June 2021 | 24 December 2021 |
| 7.8 | 20 May 2021 | 20 November 2021 |
| 7.7 | 16 April 2021 | 16 October 2021 |
| 7.6 | 5 March 2021 | 5 September 2021 |
| 7.5 | 22 January 2021 | 22 July 2021 |
| 7.4 | 15 November 2020 | 15 May 2021 |
You can see your site's RPA version in the About Appian dialog. Both designers and system administrators can access this dialog at any time from the navigation menu.
