About Processes

A process represents the package version linked to a particular folder. When you deploy a new process, it becomes available for all the users that have access to that folder.

The Processes page enables you to deploy an uploaded package as a new process, manage previously created processes, keep all your processes up to date with the most recent package versions, and directly start a job using the desired process. This helps you distribute packages across all users and robots in your organization and execute processes faster, whether from the Processes or Jobs page.

In addition to executing processes from the Processes and Jobs pages you can also configure any process to automatically start when the Robot agent is launched. As an administrator, this enables you to be sure that necessary processes are launched without delay or failure from the machine user, for example to ensure adherence to company IT policies.

Note:

By default, any process can be edited while having associated running or pending jobs. Please take into account the following:

Running jobs associated to a modified process use the initial version of the process. The updated version is used for newly created jobs or at the next trigger of the same job.
Pending jobs associated to a modified process use the updated version.

Note that creating a process requires your user to have View permission on Packages, and View and Create permissions on Processes. You also need Create on Jobs to instantly start a job from the processes page. For deploying processes in classic folders, View on Environments is also required.

If the Main.xaml of your process has In, Out, or In/Out arguments, they are displayed on the Parameters tab of the View Processes window. In Orchestrator, they become input and output parameters.

In the aforementioned window you can view both input and output parameters, their name and type, and whether their value is inherited from the package or they have no default value. Last but not least, you can specify values for any input parameter. For more info on input and output parameters in Orchestrator, please visit this page.

Note: Default values provided for In arguments in Studio are not displayed in Orchestrator, at any level.

Activities used in Studio packages are stored in a NuGet feed that Orchestrator has access to. As a result, each time you deploy a package to an environment, the activities are also sent to the Robot machines that are part of that environment. This enables you to execute processes using those Robots, even when your connection to Orchestrator is down.

Process Types

This section describes existing process types according to how the automation requires and interacts with the user interface. The process type is configured in Studio on the Project Settings window, and illustrated accordingly in Orchestrator after publishing the project. There are two types of processes, according to the user interface requirements:

Background Process - Does not require a user interface, nor user intervention to get executed. For this reason you can execute multiple such jobs in unattended mode on the same user simultaneously. Each execution requires an Unattended/NonProduction license. Background processes run in Session 0 when started in unattended mode. Click here for details about background processes.
Requires User Interface - Requires user interface as the execution needs the UI to be generated, or the process contains interactive activities. You can only execute one such a process on a user at a time.

Note: The same user can execute multiple background processes and a singular process that requires UI at the same time.

Version Management

If a new version of a package is available in Orchestrator (you published a new version from Studio), it is indicated with the icon next to the process it is part of.

You may update processes to the latest available version individually, on the corresponding View Processes window, or you may update them in bulk, by selecting multiple of them and clicking the global Use Latest button.

If a package version associated with a process is no longer available in the configured NuGet repository, it is indicated with the icon.