IBM Task Mining Agent

Overview

Task Mining Agent (TM Agent) collects the user interaction data and records actions such as clicks, selections, and keystrokes that you perform on the application user interface. TM agent then sends the recorded interactions to Task Mining Backend (TM Backend) to analyse and create the task analytics.

Prerequisites

Before you use the TM agent, the Administrator must add your profile and select the Agent enabled checkbox on the User Management page in the Process Mining application.

For more information on authorization procedures, see Users.

Recording the User Interactions Using TM Agent

Perform the following steps to record the user interactions using TM agent:

Log in to TM Agent using the IBM Process Mining credentials to open the Project Selector dialog box
In the Project Selector dialog box, select the required task mining project, and click the tick icon.

Agent project selector 2

Important: The following error message is displayed if there are no projects associated with the user:

No Task mining project error

On successful project selection, the TM agent opens with the following interface:

Task mining Agent interface

In the TM Agent interface, click Monitoring list configuration. The Monitoring List window opens.

Note: The monitoring list configuration identifies the applications or websites that are monitored and the possible web/application pages that are ignored.

Agent monitoring list

In the Monitoring List window, do one or more the following:
- Define list of applications or webpages that TM agent must record.
```
i. Open the application or webpage.
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  ii. In the Monitoring List window, click Pick & Choose for Application or URLs, press Ctrl, and then click the required application or website. The name of the application or webpage appears in the corresponding section
  - Block/ignore the pages of the selected application or webpage.
    
    i. In the Blocked Pages section, click Pick & Choose corresponding to the required interface.
    
    ii. Press Ctrl, and then click the webpages or pages of the application that you do not want to monitor. The name of the selected pages are displayed within the respective section.
    
    Important: Use page names to identify the blocked pages. TM agent allows the usage of wildcards to make the selection flexible.
  - Click Save and Exit to update the monitoring list locally. This process ensures that the monitoring list is valid only for the specific TM Agent and the user.
  - Click Save and Upload to update the monitoring list on the server.
  Tips:
  - Only a monitoring list manager has the permission to update the monitoring list on the server according to the profile segmentation defined in the administrator console.
  - All other TM Agents can inherit the latest version of the monitoring list from the server. To do so, in the TM agent window, click Latest Monitoring List, and then click Confirm.
  - An alert is displayed when an update is available on the server.
  - Before updating the monitoring list, the user can verify the changes from the previous version and decide whether or not to confirm the change.
In the TM agent interface, click the icon to modify the language of the TM Agent. The TM Agent supports the various languages such as, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, and Dutch. Ensure to restart the TM Agent to initialize the language change.
Click the icon to modify the selected project.
Click Start to start the recording process.
Click Stop to stop the recording.
Click Log Files to view the list of log files that the TM Agent generates on the local machine.

Important: The following table describes the description included in the header of the TM Agent: |Element | Values| Description| |------|-----|------------| |Web| Yes/No| A web browser (Edge/Chrome) is ready for recording.| |SAP| Yes/No| SAP is installed in the system and is ready for recording.| |Excel| Yes/No| Excel is installed in the system and is ready for recording.| |Spaces| 0 B(0 B)| The first value indicates the size of the recorded data. The value mentioned in parenthesis indicates the size of the compressed blocks in queue that needs to be sent to the server. In the automatic sending mode (or the default mode) the first value should not exceed 3 MB. When the first value reaches 3 MB, a block is compressed and queued. This changes the second value and the first value returns to 0. The blocks in the queue are transmitted to the server in the background. You must click Stop when the queue is 0 B. The message , "Registry sent to the server", appears and indicates that the last block in queue is send. Both values returns to 0 when you stop the registration .|

Agent compatibility

Apart from tracking the user interactions on the selected applications and webpages, the TM Agent also tracks actions and elements of the applications running on Windows. It tracks the copy and paste keystrokes independently from the application.

It also tracks actions and elements of the web applications when an Add-on is installed on the browser window.

Use the icons, Agent browser icons , on the Agent to install Add-ons.

The following table describes the user interactions that the TM agent automatically tracks if the application is running in the background:

Application Type	Application	Recording Type	Recorded Data	Limitation
Windows App	Windows general application (Such as, Outlook, Notepad, Calculator, and so on.)	Mouse actions such as click and double-click. Cut/copy/paste actions	Screen captures with relevant data	Does not track relevant data.
	SAP	Tracks only when the user installs the plugin. Dumps all data of the SAP page when a user performs certain actions such as changing a value, changing a tab, scrolling tables, actions on popups, saving changes, and so on.	Screen captures with relevant data. (Such as material, quantity, plant, delivery date, price, and so on.)	-
Office Suite	Microsoft Excel	Classical Windows events such as saving a file. Selection and modification of a cell. Mouse actions such as click and double-click. Cut/copy/paste actions (Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X) and screenshots.	Screen captures with relevant data (only when a parameter is changed). For example, the contextual data recorded during the call modification is represented as follows: In this case, the modified cell is E5. The TM agent records the actions along with the data in row 1 and row 5. In most cases, Row 1 represents the column heading, Row 5 represents a record, and E5 is a field.
Website/Chrome	Any website that opens on a Chrome browser	Tracks only when the user installs the plugin. Records the clicked element	Screen captures with relevant data (such as 'input', 'select', 'text area', 'span', 'a', and 'div').	-
Website/Edge	Any website that opens on an Edge browser	Tracks only when the user installs the plugin. Records the selected element.	Screen captures with relevant data	-
Website/Edge IE11 mode	Any website that opens on an Edge IE11 browser	Cut/copy/paste actions (Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X) and screenshots.	Screen captures with relevant data	Does not track relevant data.
Website/IE11	Any website that opens on a IE11 browser	Cut/copy/paste actions (Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X) and screenshots	Screen captures with relevant data.	Does not track relevant data.

For more information on TM compatibility, see IBM Task Mining Platform Matrix.

Advanced configurations

Set the advanced TM Agent configurations in the TaskMining.Agent.UI.exe.config (folder C:Files (x86)Mining) file.

AutoSend

Manage the following nodes of the .config file to set AutoSend:

<add key="IsEnabledCreateCopyOfZipFolder" value="true"/>
<add key="IsEnabledAutomaticZipAndSend" value="true"/>
<add key="AutomaticZipAndSendRollingThresholdInMb" value="3"/>

where "IsEnabledAutomaticZipAndSend" helps to send the data to the backend automatically whenever a dimension threshold is reached (recommended), "AutomaticZipAndSendRollingThresholdInMb" defines the threshold value in MB (Mega Bytes) for the AutoSend, and "IsEnabledCreateCopyOfZipFolder" stores the intermediate AutoSend in the local machine.