Working with robot tasks

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A process generally includes user tasks that require human intervention. If a user task contains repetitive steps, such as extracting and moving data between systems, consider automating the task by using a software robot, or bot. Use a robot task instead of a user task to implement the activity. A robot task is a task performed by a robot that is implemented in IBM® Robotic Process Automation (IBM RPA) with Automation Anywhere or in other robotic process automation tools. Each robot task has a specific interface that is implicitly defined by the data that is exposed to it.

About this task

If you manually play back a robot task, the user interface (UI) is generated using UI views. As a result, robot tasks are only supported when the process application has a dependency on the UI toolkit. If the UI toolkit is not in the dependency list and a robot task is manually launched, the task UI will not be generated and a runtime error will be displayed.

Procedure

  1. In Workflow Center, create a process app and open it in Process Designer.
  2. Create a process. An inline user task is automatically generated and is wired into the process.
  3. Add a robot task to the process by selecting one of the following options:
    • If you want to add a robot task as a new activity, expand Activity and select Robot Task, then add the robot task to the process and wire it up.
    •  V20.0.0.2  If you want to convert an existing task to a robot task, click the task on the diagram and then switch to General and select Robot Task activity type.
  4. In the process editor, switch to Variables, and create the required input, output, and private variables. These variables will be used to simultaneously create the interface and data map for the robot task.
  5. In the process diagram, select the robot task and then switch to the Data Mapping properties.
  6. Add input and output variables to the data mapping and define the interface by completing the following substeps:
    1. Beside the Input Mapping section, click the Add a new input icon (+) to add the input variables. This opens a list of the variables that you defined.
    2. In the list, select a variable. It is added under the Input Mapping section.
    3. If you need to add more variables to the input mapping, click the Add a new input icon (+) again. (You can delete any input variable from the mapping by clicking the X icon to the right of the variable name.)
    4. Beside the Output Mapping section, click the Add a new output icon (+) to add the output variables. This opens a list of the variables that you defined.
    5. In the list, select a variable. It is added under the Output Mapping section. (You can delete any output variable from the mapping by clicking the X icon to the right of the variable name.)
    6. If you need to add more variables to the output mapping, click the Add a new output icon (+) again.
    You can expose a process variable as an input, output, or both. Input variables will be generated as read-only fields in the generated UI for manual playback.
    Note: When you select a child parameter of a variable for an input or output mapping, the parameter is mapped to or from the ANY type. If the task implementation requires the actual data type, use a top-level variable instead of its properties in data mapping.

What to do next

When you have finished adding a robot task, you can manually test the robot task by playing it back. Information about how to manually play back a robot task is found in the topic "Manually playing back robot tasks".

If you use IBM RPA or the Automation Anywhere product, generate a bot definition for the robot task by following the instructions in the topic "Generating and downloading bot definitions". For more information about implementing the bot definition in IBM RPA, see the topic Implementing a robot task in the IBM RPA documentation.

To implement the robot task in a different RPA tool, follow the instructions in the IBM Business Automation Workflow topic "Implementing a robot task".