The capabilities described on this page are included in Appian's standard capability tier. Usage limits may apply. |
This page contains some frequently asked questions and solutions for Appian RPA.
Additional FAQs are available for Java modules:
If you can't find the solution in the Appian RPA documentation, contact the Appian support team.
The Appian team will provide this information when setting up your Appian Cloud site. You can also open a support case to request this information.
Our recommendation is to use a computer with 8 GB of RAM. This recommendation is especially relevant where the development machine includes a virtual machine that acts as a robot.
See System Requirements for more information.
No. Every robot must have a unique agent executable file installed.
See Agents for more information.
We recommend creating robotic tasks using the latest available version of Appian RPA.
The new versions are backward-compatible, meaning you can use robotic tasks developed with previous Appian RPA versions.
Keep in mind that using previous versions will cause you to have fewer capabilities since Appian RPA is continuously evolving to facilitate the development of robotic tasks.
Events are triggered by the RPA console, robots, and robotic tasks. All events are aggregated in the RPA console and accessible by system administrators.
To take action for a specific event type, create an action in the RPA console and map it to the desired event type. Additional configuration is available based on the action and event.
For example, you can create an action to send an email to the system administrators when a robot is running out of disk space.
Appian RPA is not offered in the Appian Cloud high availability (HA) configuration at this time. However, Appian RPA's availability doesn't affect other features in the HA configuration.
Learn more about high availability in the Appian Cloud.
Appian RPA does not support headless browsers. Ensure you are using a browser that has a graphical user interface (GUI).
When the RPA agent starts and when robotic tasks are executed, different Java libraries are loaded into memory in the Java Virtual Machine. Because these libraries are reused across the robotic task executions, they are not flagged for garbage collection. Therefore the memory usage does not significantly decrease upon completion of robotic tasks.
To prevent the RPA agent going over its max amount of allocated memory, it's recommended to configure a restart when reaching a certain memory usage percentage. Refer to the question How can I take action on events in Appian RPA?
No, it is not possible to start the agent as a Windows service. It is recommended to configure the agent to start when Windows starts. See how in the next question.
Yes, it is possible to add AppianRPAagent.exe
to the start menu, so that when a session begins, the agent also starts.
Additionally, if you don't want Windows to ask for credentials, Windows can be configured with auto-logon. Read more information about this configuration.
Robotic tasks require a started and unlocked Windows session to operate correctly. You can allow Appian to unlock the Windows sessions in an automated way for the execution of robotic tasks.
When configured, the agent unlocks the local session when the execution of the robotic task is about to start, and locks back the session after the execution ends.
To configure this option:
For more information, see the Agent and Robot pages.
The execution of a robotic task requires both a host machine and a console connection. It is not possible to run robotic tasks without connectivity between the two.
Robotic tasks must be executed inside the RPA platform and framework. As such, a JUnit test framework is not a viable option to unit test robotic tasks.
However, Appian allows robotic task invocation through REST APIs. Invoking robotic tasks with APIs alongside tools like Postman can offer an automated test system.
These tests could use unusual inputs, so the robotic task could work in different modes, testing different cases.
This means that the host machine has the Shift Lock key activated, the numeric keyboard blocked, or a key is being pressed. Under these conditions, the console can't execute the robotic task on this host machine.
If a robotic task does not use the keyboard to enter data or does not move the mouse, the operating system does not register any user activity - even if the robotic task is performing calculation, reading files, etc. As such, the user's session may get locked during the execution.
To prevent the session from locking, it is recommended to use the method windows.antiScreenSaver()
when an operation can take several minutes to complete before the robotic task performs a key press or a mouse operation.
Confirm that the robot is set up properly. Two common problems are mismatched permissions or the agent isn't running and properly communicating with the Console. Take a look at the execution log to see where the execution failed. Next time you manually execute a robotic task, enable screenshots so you can see what's happening with the robot before and when the execution fails.
Confirm that your robotic task code uses the cleanUp() method to reset the robot's environment after an execution. If the robotic task doesn't clean up after itself, the next execution may encounter conditions it doesn't know how to handle and fail.
Many modern web browsers update automatically, which can cause a robotic task to fail if it's using an older version of the webdriver. You can manually update the web driver to solve the issue. Alternatively, add the webdriver as a support file in the robotic task configuration or as a global support file if more than one robotic task references it.
More on browser actions.
Robotic tasks do not have specific actions for PDF handling. However, external libraries such as PDFBox can be easily integrated into any robotic task.
Add the dependency in the pom.xml of the project to access the external libraries:
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<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
<artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
<version>1.8.10</artifact>
</dependency>
You could also use Appian's document extraction features.
Appian RPA uses TLSv1.2, which is the current standard.
Credentials must be updated in the console each time they are changed in the target application.
The message can't be changed.
We recommend that the execution trace has the necessary information to know what the robotic task was doing to help show why it failed. It is better that this information is kept in the trace so it can be consulted in the future as a reference and does not depend on the email notification.
You can upload a ZIP file and check the "Unzip on server" option (it is checked by default). After uploading a ZIP, the tree of support files will appear as a single file. If we refresh the page, the tree will reflect the real structure.
FAQs