Configure RDP-based deployment for multi-user devices

When a bot is deployed for an unattended Bot Runner from the Control Room, the Control Room handles the unattended Bot Runner session through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) based bot deployment and executes the bot. RDP is used for multiple user devices.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you are logged in to the Control Room as the administrator.

Ensure the following requirements are completed:
  • Active Directory Domain Services are set up (Optional).
  • Remote Desktop Services (RDS) are set up on the machine ready to host multiple (RDS) bot runner sessions (Mandatory).
  • Active Directory/Local users are created (Mandatory).
  • Users are provided access to RDS (Mandatory).

When registering your device, you can register it as a multi-user device.

Procedure

  1. Change device type to multiple users.
    1. Navigate to Manage > Devices.
    2. Hover over the actions menu (three vertical ellipses) located to the right of the device name and click the Edit device icon.
    3. Under Deployment tab, change the Device type to Multiple users.
    4. Enter a value for the Concurrent sessions supported field.
      The maximum number of allowed concurrent sessions depends on your device license type and the hardware configuration. For example, consider that concurrent sessions is set to 10 and each bot requires 4 GB RAM for execution. If your system RAM is lower than this value, the bot execution might fail.

      Also, if the maximum number of sessions allowed in your device is 10 and the multi-user device is set as the default device for 3 Bot Creator users and 2 attended Bot Runner users, then the value for the concurrent sessions supported will be 5. Therefore, at a time, only 5 bots can be deployed concurrently by the unattended Bot Runner users. So ensure that your hardware and device license type support the number of sessions you set.

    5. Click Save changes.
  2. Set the RDP screen resolution.
    This ensures your automation runs seamlessly during RDP-based deployment, even if the resolution of the screen varies between the Bot Runner and Control Room.

    You can set it in the following ways:

  3. Configure the RDP settings.
    1. Click Administration > Settings > Devices.
    2. In the RDP settings for multiple user devices option, click Edit.
    3. Enter a value in the Port field.
      Note: Use the default port 3389 for RDP-based bot deployments.
    4. Enter the RDP session timeout value.
      For RDP based deployments, the Bot Agent on the target device tries to create a self RDP session. RDP session timeout is the maximum time the Bot Agent waits to establish this RDP session, before the connection times out.

      The default session timeout value is 60 seconds.

    5. Click Save changes.
  4. By default clipboard data is shared across RDP sessions. Follow the below steps to prevent sharing of clipboard data across multi-user RDP sessions:
    1. Click Administration > Settings > Devices.
    2. Edit the Advanced options field.
    3. In the RDP command options field, enter -clipboard.
      RDP command options provides various RDP-based commands. For example, ports-related commands.
    4. Click Save changes.
For more information about troubleshooting black screen and lock screen images, see

Next steps

  1. Create users in the Control Room.

    These users can be unattended Bot Runners, Attended Bot Runners, or Bot Creators. You can select the multi-user option when you register the device for the first time. See Create a user.

  2. Associate the correct device and session login credentials based on the Active Directory users that you create before configuring the multi-user device settings.

    You can register an Active Directory user one time as an admin user and the sessions are created when you deploy bots. You do not have to create an RDP session on the Bot Runners server and register the device under an Active Directory user name and user credentials.

  3. Deploy the bots on parallel sessions.
    Note: If the multi-user device per sessions count provided is less than the actual bot deployment, then the additional bot deployments are queued until the current deployments are in progress.