Automation Cloud™ Robots - Serverless

This page explains what Serverless Automation Cloud Robots are and how to set them up.

Serverless Automation Cloud robots make it easy to run background automation without worrying about the necessary infrastructure. They provide you with complete freedom from provisioning, managing, maintaining, and scaling any underlying infrastructure. UiPath handles all the work behind the scenes so you don't have to deal with containers, virtual machines, or physical servers.

Executing Unattended Automations With Serverless Robots

Note:

Prerequisites

• A background, cross-platform automation project that has been published to Orchestrator and added to your folders. Learn more about background and foreground processes and process compatibility.
• Robot units available for the tenant.

Step 1. Enabling Unattended Automation on an Account

To run unattended automations with a specific account you need to first enable unattended automation on that account.

You can skip this step if you are using robot accounts since they come with unattended automation capabilities by default.

1. Go to Tenant > Manage access. A window is displayed listing all accounts in that tenant.
2. Click More Actions > Edit to enable unattended automation for an existing account or Assign Roles > User to reference a user account from Automation Cloud.
3. On the Robot setup tab (step 2), enable the toggle for the Unattended Robot.
   
   

   

   
   
4. Click Update to update an existing account or Create to add a new one.
   Note:

   • The Machine login credentials and Run only one job at a time settings do not apply to serverless robots.
   • The account used for execution and its association with roles allow for a certain level of access to resources. To ensure successful execution of the process, make sure the account has the necessary permissions to perform the operations required by the processes they will execute.

Step 2. Adding Serverless Robots to Your Tenant

To enable execution you need to create a serverless robot machine - a type of machine template used to add the serverless robots capability to your Orchestrator tenant.

1. Go to Tenant > Machines.
2. In the top right, click Add Machine and select Cloud Robot - Serverless.

   The Machine template page opens on the Machine step.

   
   

   

   
   
3. Fill in the Name field and, optionally, fill in the Description field for the machine template.
4. Optionally, under Tags, if you want to keep track of this machine object together with other resources, define tags.

   For detailed instructions, see Adding tags to machine objects.

   Note:

   Details about the robot unit requirements and the runtime type to use when running jobs are shown on the right.

   By default, the optimal machine size is selected automatically for each process. You can choose the size from the Advanced Settings tab for a process.

5. Optionally, along the top right, click Account-machine mappings to edit the settings.

   For details, see Configuring account-machine mappings.

6. Optionally, if you have a VPN gateway set up and want to use it for this template, along the top, click VPN Setup to edit the settings.
   1. Switch on the Enable VPN Integration toggle. The VPN settings are displayed.
   2. In the Address space field, add the reserved IP addresses you received from your network administrator, in CIDR notation with a mask of /16 or greater.
      Note: If the Address space field is not displayed, check that the VPN gateway for the tenant is successfully deployed.
7. Click Provision.

On the Machines page, a success message is displayed along the top and you can see your new template in the list.

Step 3. Giving Access to Folder Resources

In order to run unattended automations, both the account and the serverless robot machine template must have access to the process to be executed. To do this, you must add the account and machine object previously configured (steps 1 and 2) to the folder that contains the process.

• Adding the serverless robot machine template to a folder.

  
  

  

  
  

• Adding the user/robot account to a folder.

  
  

  

  
  

Step 4. Executing Unattended Automations: Manually

Orchestrator allows launching unattended jobs manually from the Jobs page or automatically triggered in a pre-planned manner via triggers.

Important: Each job is limited to 15 minutes. Jobs that take longer are terminated when they reach 15 minutes of execution time. Optimize your automation projects or split them into multiple workflows to avoid reaching the 15-minute limit.

1. Go to the folder that contains the processes, by selecting it in the sidebar menu.
2. In the context of the selected folder, go to Automations > Jobs. The Jobs page is displayed.
3. Click Start to start a new job.
4. From the Runtime license drop-down, select Cloud - Serverless or Cloud - Serverless Testing.
5. Click Start. A Command sent message is displayed and you can see the job in the list.

Step 4. Executing Unattended Automations: Automatically Triggered

1. Go to the folder that contains the processes, by choosing it from the sidebar menu.
2. In the context of the selected folder, go to Automations > Triggers. The Triggers page is displayed.
3. Click Add a new trigger to configure the mechanism for launching the jobs via triggers.
4. Configure the necessary fields.
5. On the Runtime license drop-down, select Cloud - Serverless or Cloud - Serverless Testing.
   Note:

   If you are on the Community licensing plan and you select the serverless runtime, the Set execution-based trigger disabling option is automatically enabled, with the following default values (the fields are read-only):

   • Disable when consecutive job execution fail count is set to 10.

   • Grace period on disabling the trigger (days) is set to 0.

6. Click Add. A Save successful message is displayed and you can see the trigger in the list. A job is launched according to your configuration. All jobs and their statuses are listed on the Jobs page.

Machine Sizes and Costs

To run processes using serverless robots, you must have the required amount of RUs (robot units) available for the tenant in which the process needs to run.

The amount of RUs that are consumed depends on:

• the type of environment - test environments have lower RU consumption than production environments;
• the size of the serverless robot machine;
• the number of minutes it takes to execute a job.

The following machine sizes are available:

Machine size	Testing RUs/minute 1	Production RUs/minute
Small (1GB)	0.5	1
Standard (2GB)	1	2
Medium (4GB)	2	4
Large (10 GB)	5	10

¹ You must be on the Enterprise, Pro, or Pro Trial licensing plan to use this feature.

Choosing the Machine Size

Because each process has particular needs, you set the machine size in the configuration of a process.

For any cross-platform process, the Cloud Robot - Serverless list is available on the Additional Settings tab when creating or editing a process.

The option is available for all cross-platform processes, which are candidates for being run using serverless robots, but the option has no effect unless it is executed by a serverless robot.

Automatic Machine Size Selection

All your cross-platform processes have the Cloud Robot - Serverless option set to Automatic by default. This setting selects the appropriate machine size for running the process using serverless robots.

The amount of robot units consumed to run the process is based on the machine size and the number of minutes it takes to run.

When automatically choosing the size, the criteria listed in the below table are evaluated in order. As soon as one criterion is satisfied, the corresponding machine size is chosen and the remaining criteria are not evaluated.

Order	Criterion	Machine size
1	Remote debugging job	Medium
2	Process depends on UI Automation OR Process depends on the UiPath Document Understanding activities	Standard
3	Other unattended process	Small

Regenerating Client Secrets

When using client credentials to connect your serverless robots to Orchestrator, the serverless machine template generates a client ID and client secret pair that authorizes the connection between that host machine and Orchestrator. If you feel that the secret key has been compromised, you can regenerate the client secret:

1. Go to Tenant > Machines.
2. At the right of the serverless machine template row, click More Actions and select Edit Machine.
3. On the Edit Machine - Serverless page, in the Client credentials section, click Regenerate.
   
   

   

   
   

What are my authentication settings.

Managing VPN Settings

You can edit the VPN setup for a Cloud Robot - Serverless template at any time, or disconnect the template from VPN.

Disconnecting a Template From VPN

1. Go to Tenant > Machines.
2. At the right of the serverless machine template row, click More Actions and select Edit Machine.

   The Edit Machine page opens on the Machine step.

3. Along the top, on the right, click the VPN Setup step.
4. Click Enable VPN integration to switch off the toggle.
   Important: If a machine needed to access resources inside your company network to execute a job, that job will fail.
5. Click Update in the bottom right to apply your changes.

Changing the Address Space

To change the address space used for a template, you must first disconnect the template from VPN, and then edit it to change the address space.

1. Go to Tenant > Machines.
2. At the right of the serverless machine template row, click More Actions and select Edit Machine.

   The Edit Machine page opens on the Machine step.

3. Along the top, on the right, click the VPN Setup step.
4. Switch off the Enable VPN integration toggle.
5. Click Update in the bottom right.

   Allow a few minutes to disconnect from VPN.

6. At the right of the serverless machine template row, click More Actions and select Edit Machine.
7. Along the top, on the right, click the VPN Setup step.

   If Disconnecting is displayed under the Address space field, remain on this page, but allow a few more minutes to finish disconnecting from VPN.

8. Switch on the Enable VPN Integration toggle.
9. Edit the Address space field as needed.
10. Click Update in the bottom right to apply your changes.

After you apply the change, serverless robots for this template attempt to reconnect to VPN according to the new settings.

Asking for a trial

To find out how you can request a free trial for Serverless Automation Cloud Robots, check Requesting a service trial page.

Live streaming and remote control

While a job is in progress, you can access the live stream of the robot running the automation. If troubleshooting or debugging is needed, you can take control of the execution using your own mouse and keyboard, without pausing the automation.

The live streaming and remote control features are available for Automation Cloud Robots (both Serverless and VM), Elastic Robots, and Windows Robots version 2023.4+.

To enable live streaming and remote control, see Enabling the features.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't I see serverless robots machine templates when starting a job?

Serverless robots can only run background, cross-platform automations, so make sure the process you are trying to execute was designed as a background, cross-platform process in Studio.

Can I debug processes remotely from Studio on serverless robots?

Yes. Make sure the serverless machine template is added to the folder or personal workspace where the process resides.

How many jobs can I run in parallel on serverless robots?

With a Community account, you can run up to three jobs concurrently per tenant. With an Enterprise account, you can run up to fifty jobs concurrently per tenant.

How many jobs can I run using serverless robots?

You are only limited by the amount of available robot units (RUs) for the tenant.

The number of jobs you can run depends on whether serverless robots run in a test environment or a production environment, how long your jobs take to run, and the size of the machine running the job. For example, in a production environment, a 1-minute job run on a Medium size robot (4 GB) consumes 4 RUs.

For more information, see Robot units: Consumption.

In which region are the serverless machines hosted?

All machines are created and hosted in the tenant region.

Organization administrators can see what the region is for a tenant in Tenant Settings (Admin > Tenants).

What activities and projects can serverless robots run?

All activities that are available for cross-platform projects can be run with serverless robots. This includes but is not limited to:

• Browser-based automations using the Chromium browser
• Integration Service activities
• API-based automations (Including HTTPS API calls that require using your own SSL certificates for authentication by downloading the certificates to the /tmp/certs filepath)
• Database activities that require Oracle, MySql, MSSQL & PostgreSQL ODBC drivers.

How can I authenticate Chromium-based automations using my client certificate?

Browser-based automations using the Chromium browser may require client certificate authentication.

To register the client certificate for Chromium authentication, use the following command:

register-client-cert -d domain -c path/to/certificate.p12 [-p password]

Where:

• -d - is the domain to access

• -c - is the path to the client certificate

• -p - is the certificate password

The script can be run using the Invoke Code activity, for example:

var process = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("register-client-cert", "-d client.badssl.com -c /tmp/home/badssl.com-client.p12 -p badssl.com"); process.WaitForExit(10000);

What are the list of IP addresses used for serverless robots?

We are unable to provide the list or range of IP addresses used in Serverless as they are dynamic.

Where can I find data downloaded through activities?

All data created or retrieved by activities is stored under /tmp/home/Downloads.