Automations enable you to perform complex business tasks swiftly and securely. If any of the scheduled automations fail or encounter an issue, identifying the errors can impact the productivity. Recording an automation can help you review and resolve any errors that might have caused any runtime failure.

Note: Functionality to record an automation execution requires the Enterprise Platform license. For more information about supported version for this feature, see Enterprise Platform.

If you have the Enterprise Platform license, the record automation execution functionality is enabled by default for On-Premises users.

Overview

Organizations can have multiple automations managing various tasks on a daily basis, and it can get difficult to monitor each and every one of them constantly. When you update Bot Agent to the latest version, all the automations that are initiated in the Control Room are recorded by default.

Although administrators can delete any of the unimportant recordings to free up the storage space on database, they can select one of the following preferences for recording automation executions:
Note: The option that an administrator selects will be the default selection for all other users in the Run Task Bot and Schedule Task Bot screens. However, users can change these settings while deploying the automation.

Run automation from public workspace | Schedule an automation

  • Only failed executions: Recording will be stored only when the automation execution fails.
  • All bot executions: Recording is stored irrespective of whether the execution is successful or failed.
Automation recordings are efficiently managed and uploaded to the Control Room through the following enhanced capabilities:
  • Retry pending uploads after device restart

    If the Bot Agent device restarted during an upload, any pending recordings that were not successfully uploaded are automatically retried soon after the device restarts and connects to the Control Room. This ensures that none of the important execution data is lost and reduces the need for manual intervention.

  • Failed uploads are deleted after three days

    Recordings that failed to be uploaded from the Bot Agent device to the Control Room are automatically deleted after three days. This automated cleanup frees up space on the local storage that ensures a clean and efficient file system is always maintained on the device.

Note: Automation recordings are only uploaded to the corresponding Control Room. Therefore, when you switch a Bot Agent device from one Control Room to another, recordings that were pending an upload into the first Control Room will not resume until you switch the device back to that Control Room.

Considerations

When recording automation, keep in mind that recordings might be impacted in the following cases:
  • Automation recording can impact the system performance such as CPU usage, RAM performance, storage and so on based on the type of Bot execution recording option that is selected.
    Consider a scenario where there are 15 Control Room users who can execute automations. Bot Agent is installed on a system that has the following hardware configurations:
    • RAM - 64 GB
    • Processor Cores - 8
    • Total storage - 200 GB
    When these 15 users executed the automations concurrently that lasted for 36 minutes across three different settings of the Bot execution recording feature, there was an impact on the available hardware resources.
    • Disabled: The average CPU usage was 12% and RAM usage was 14%. Also 77% of the total storage space was available.
    • Only failed executions: Enabling this feature increased the resource usage moderately. The execution duration extended by 16%, and there was a notable increase in CPU usage by up to 21% and RAM usage by up to 22%. Additionally, available storage space decreased by up to 16%.
    • All bot executions: Enabling this feature resulted in a significant increase in resource usage. The execution duration was extended by up to 38% and CPU usage increased by up to 60%, while RAM usage increased by 22%. The available storage space was considerably reduced by up to 48%.
  • A total of 100 MB of storage space is available for automation recordings.
  • CPU overhead for encoding the last 5 minutes of automation recording might impact the execution time of the next automation if the execution time and the scheduled frequency are less than 5 minutes.
  • Automation recording might fail for deployments that are based on multi-user sessions (for example, with 5 user session system with back-to-back deployment).
  • While the automation encoding or uploading is in progress and the associated user session is closed or logged-off, the automation recording might fail.
  • When the device is in locked state or the device window is in minimized state, the automation recording might fail.

    The screen capture command might also fail in such instants and the automation must be executed again.

  • The duration for retaining the recordings depend on the default or custom values set in the Storage details field. The recorded files will be auto-deleted when the duration of the stored recording exceeds the value set in the Storage details field.

    For example, if you have set the timeline as 10 days, the recordings older than 10 days will be auto-deleted.

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