Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI Agents link up with external tools and resources. You can connect AI Agents from various frameworks and platforms to Automation Anywhere automations.

Using MCP, an AI Agent can:
  • Get data from third-party systems.
  • Make decisions using company data.
  • Run and discover automations from the Control Room.
Supported Input and Output Variable Data Types
  • From MCP Inbound for Task bots and API Tasks:
    • Input: String, Number, Boolean, List, Dictionary, DateTime, and Record
    • Output: String, Number, Boolean, List, Dictionary, DateTime, and Record
  • From MCP Inbound for processes:
    • Input: String, Number, Boolean, List, Dictionary, and DateTime
    • Output: No data types are supported for process output.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have set up the following:

  • Control Room repository permissions.
  • An MCP client: For example, Microsoft Copilot, ENTKB (Enterprise KB), or another MCP-compatible agent that can register an external MCP server and use tools. Each MCP client might support different MCP features, allowing for varying levels of integration with MCP servers. For a comprehensive list of supported MCP clients and latest features, click Feature support matrix.

Procedure

  1. Sign in to the Control Room.
  2. Navigate to AI->Agent connections. From the Agent connections page, you can view the list of agent connections and tools.

    Agent add

  3. To add a new agent connection, you can either:
    • At the top right of the page, click + Add-> Inbound tool.
    • At the right of the page (above the table), click the Create icon.
  4. From the Add inbound tool page, click Browse to search for the automation from a list of folders and files.
  5. Click to select the automation you want and then click Choose.
  6. After you select the automation, the Tool name and Description fields are automatically populated with content from VSS. If the description is not available, then it will be fetched from the repository; however, if there is no description in the repository, then it will be blank. Both fields are required.
    • Tool name (Required): Rename to something AI-friendly and make it easier for the third-party AI Agent to understand. The name must be unique across all Agent connections. It must be between 1-128 characters and only contain letters (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9), underscore (_), hyphen (-), or dot (.). No spaces or special characters are allowed.
    • Description (Required): Keep it clear and action-oriented (what it does, key inputs or outputs).
  7. Click Add.
  8. Your new inbound tool now appears in the Agent connections table with a connection status of Enabled.
    Note:

    If an automation is updated or deleted, then you must update or delete the agent connection manually.