Use the Pega Robotic Automation Importer component to automatically generate a versioned inventory of Robot Connector rules for use in your Pega Platform™ application. This functionality makes it easier to add robotic automations to your Pega applications to boost productivity and simplify configuration, because you do not have to manually enter the names of automations.

After an automation package is deployed from Pega Robot Studio, the Automation Importer component automatically performs the following tasks:

• Generates all related data and rule artifacts, and then describes the package and automations that the package contains
  Note: The generated data records include automation package, version, and configuration information, but these data records do not include deployment levels.
• Bundles all data and rule artifacts into a Pega Platform component
• Attaches the newly-created Pega Platform component to your development stack
• Builds and relays the archive to the Pega Robot Manager, if necessary. The component is migrated to a repository from the Pega development server. Pega Robot Manager pulls the component from the repository.

Through this process, the automation package is automatically relayed to your automation repository and to Pega Robot Manager.

Before you begin

• Ensure that you are using Pega Robot Manager 8.4.1 or later.
• Unlock your application rule to attach the Pega Robotic Automation Importer component to the development stack.
• Ensure that you have the pxPostPackageMetadata privilege that is required for package publishing. This privilege is included in the PegaRoboticAutomationImporter:PackagePublisher role that is provided by default with the Pega Robotic Automation Importer component.

Example

Each unique automation package results in a corresponding component. Each generated package component contains a single ruleset version (01-01-01), which includes automations across all versions of the package.

For example, consider the following scenario:

• Automation package Customer service contains two public automations.
• Automation package Customer service (version 1.0) is published to the Pega Platform development environment.
• The Robotic Automation Importer component reads the package metadata, and then generates the following instances:
  • Pega component CustomerService_<Unique Time Stamp>
  • Ruleset CustomerService_<Unique Time Stamp>:01-01-01
• The new ruleset contains two Connect Robot rules with the following keys:
  • Package name
  • Package version
  • Automation ID
• From Pega Robot Studio, a third public automation is added to the Customer service package.
• Automation package Customer service (version 2.0) is published to the Pega Platform development environment.
• The Robotic Automation Importer component reads the package metadata:
  • The existing ruleset CustomerService_<Unique Time Stamp> is re-opened.
  • The package contains the three public automations from version 2.0.

Known issues and fixes

Explore known issues and fixes for the Pega Robotic Automation Importer version 8.4.1.

SR-D60359: Automation Importer is locking files on Windows-based systems

This issue affected Windows-based systems only. After installing Pega Platform and Robot Manager, and deploying a subsequent automation solution (for example, version 1.5 after a successfully depoyed version 1.4), you could observe the following behavior:

• An error message is displayed in your application and is recorded in the application logs, for example, Package was successfully published to Pega Development Server, but it is not relayed to Robot Manager as per configuration on the Pega Development Server.
• Despite the error message, the package appeared in the Repository and in Robot Manager.

This issue has been fixed. After importing an automation solution, a message appears that indicates a successful deployment. The package that you deployed appears in the Repository and in Robot Manager.