Configuring a data page for sourcing from robotic desktop automation

After you configure your data type and your automation has been built, you can configure the data page to be sourced from a robotic desktop automation.

Before you begin: Before you configure a data page, in either App Studio or Dev Studio, create a data type. For more information, see Creating a new data type. Then, ingest the fields into Pega Robotic Automation Studio and build the automation logic for the robot to execute. For more information, see Configuration of Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA) with your Pega 7.2.1 application.

The automation is invoked only when the data page is requested from a browser; that is, the data page must be the source for a control in the user interface. The automation is not invoked if it is referred to by an activity or other rule running on the server.

  1. In Dev Studio, from the Data types explorer, expand the data type that you created in the previous task, and click the data page that you want to source from a RDA.
  2. In the Source field, click Robotic desktop automation.
  3. In the Robotic automation name field, select the robotic automation that was imported from the Pega Robotic Automation Studio.
  4. In the Timeout(s) field, enter the length of time that the data page should wait for automation to complete before timing out.
  5. In the Request data transform field, enter the request data transform to use to provide input data to the robot.
  6. In the Response data transform field, enter the response data transform to use to convert the results returned from the robot to the logical model used by the data page.
  7. Optional: To write data back to the application with which the robot is interacting, configure a save plan by performing the following actions:
    1. In the Data page definition section, in the Mode field, select Savable.
    2. In the Data save options section, in the Save type field, select Robotic desktop automation.
    3. In the Robotic automation name field, select the name of the automation that writes the data back to the application.
  8. Click Save.
Result: 

After the data page is configured, you can use it in your user interface. The most common way to do this is by using section include on a Section rule. You invoke the automation by selecting Use data page in the Page Context field and selecting data page. Select Defer load contents to allow extra time for the robot to fetch the data before rendering the user interface. For more information, see Harness and section forms - adding a section.

If you configure a save plan, configure the flow action that triggers the post processing that writes data back to the application. For more information, see Saving data in a data page as part of a flow action.