The RWM application was deprecated with Appian 24.1. The application will no longer be updated or pre-installed for new Appian Cloud sites with Appian RPA enabled. RWM will be removed in a future release and we encourage customers to use the Operations Console to manage robots instead. |
Robotic Workforce Manager (RWM) is built on Appian's low-code platform and is as flexible as any application developed in Appian. In order to make sure your application remains scalable and aligns with best practices, this page guides you through some of the most common changes.
This guide intends to provide expert Appian designers with the best practices, guidelines, and recommendations for configuring RWM.
In the Control Center, on the Business Exceptions page, there is a sub-tab and statistics around business exceptions. Because business exceptions vary from organization to organization based on the Business Process Management (BPM) Appian processes created, the situations that generate business exceptions, as well as the content, can vary significantly. Thus, customization is necessary to display these exceptions.
RWM includes a business exception sub-process example described below to provide a standard process and case management interface. However, you aren't required to use this process for a business exception, as any process will work.
The following objects will be modified:
RWM_closedBusinessExceptions
RWM_FM_BusinessExceptionCollection
RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_NAME_LIST
To create a new business exception process:
RWM Business Exception Template
RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_NAME_TEMPL
RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_CASE_TITLE_TEMPL
RWM_FM_businessException
RWM_buttonLayoutForBusinessException
RWM_RD_businessException
RWM_PM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_CASE_MANAGEMENT
(populate this with process model duplicated from RWM Business Exception Template
)RWM_BUSINESS_EXCCEPTION_NAME_TEMPL
to RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_NAME_LIST
RWM Business Exception Initialization
process model as a subprocess call to an Appian process that encounters the business exception.businessExceptionId
: the unique identifier of the business exception case, which should be a foreign key to an ID of a separately created business exception tablebusinessExceptionName
: pass in the constant duplicated from RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_NAME_TEMPL
caseTitle
: pass in the constant duplicated from RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_CASE_TITLE_TEMPL
RWM_FM_businessException
, and update the section that contains text Custom Template
with your business exception's page contents. You can fetch necessary details using businessExceptionId
in the caseDetails
input.RWM_buttonLayoutForBusinessException
with your duplicate of it. Create local variables if extra values need to be stored from the previous step, and pass those into this this duplicate of RWM_buttonLayoutForBusinessException
.RWM Business Exception Template
, set as parameter process variables any variables that are needed from the duplicate of RWM_FM_businessException
.RWM_buttonLayoutForBusinessException
, update the process model constant in a!startProcess
with your constant duplicated from RWM_PM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_CASE_MANAGEMENT
, and input any values that are parameters of your duplicate of RWM Business Exception Template
.RWM_FM_BusinessExceptionCollection
with the interface duplicated from RWM_FM_businessException
in the bottom array, the third parameter of displayvalue
, passing in any relevant inputs, and the constant duplicated from RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_NAME_TEMP
in the top array, second parameter of displayvalue
.RWM_FM_businessException
in the duplicate of RWM_RD_businessException
.RWM_closedBusinessExceptions
with the interface duplicated from RWM_RD_businessException
in the bottom array, the third parameter of displayvalue
, passing in any relevant inputs, and the constant duplicated from RWM_BUSINESS_EXCEPTION_NAME_TEMP
in the top array, second parameter of displayvalue
.You have now created a custom business exception that is tailored to your organization's process and will appear in the exceptions report!
In the Automation Planner, Request New RPA Process is a process to request a new RPA automation. Using this feature, the requestor or a member of the CoE can track the specific automation request until the request is taken to production.
The below customizations are possible within the Automation Planner module:
The workflow of the RWM core application is illustrated below.
Rationale
Every organization has its own approval hierarchy to onboard any RPA process. The approval built in this application can be customized as per the Organization needs.
Given below are instructions on how to customize the workflow.
Refer to - Security and Role-Based Access which is fully configurable.
The process has the following statuses for each step in the workflow. These values are mentioned in the constant - RWM_VAL_PROCESS_STATUS and RWM Database - RWM_LOOKUP_STATUS table.
It has three steps:
Adding to status list constant
The status needs to be added in the constants RWM_VAL_PROCESS_STATUS and RWM_LOOKUP_STATUS.
Adding to status index constant
There is another set of constants which has the index of each status. Information is given below:
If any new approval should be introduced, one constant should be created with the index as value. And all the status constants after this new status needs to be updated with value+1.
This section explains at a high level how to add a new step in the workflow.
Refer to the section Adding Status.
The existing interface - RWM_DM_FORM_requestNewRPAProcess is common for the below stages as they have the same content for review:
The status field in the process input is the driving factor to show the feedback given by the previous approver. For the new stage, the comment section should be added and configured to conditionally shown based on the stage.
The Charts, Grids, and Dashboards that are part of the Control Center module can be customized in the RWM application.
While customizing, the following points need to be followed:
All the below content will be overwritten while upgrading the application to the newer version. To handle it, below suggestions can be followed:
These are all the general guidelines for items that should not be customized.
For general guidelines on customization please refer to Backward Compatible Design: Planning for Subsequent Deployments.
Customize the RWM application to support Oracle DB apart from MySQL cloud DB.
Customization Changes