Automation Workspace v.30 release

Review what's new and changed, and the fixes and limitations in Automation Workspace for the v.30 release.

Note: Information about package updates (such as what's new, changed, fixes, and limitations) is available on package-specific pages. To access these pages, navigate to Package updates overview > <package-name> updates.

For a consolidated list of packages updated in this release, see Packages updated in v.30.

What's new

Control Room, devices, and Bot Agent
New permissions for roles

The following new roles have been added:

  • Administration
    • View Settings: Allows users to view all the settings in the Control Room. However, users cannot edit the settings.
    • Manage Settings: Allows users to edit the settings in the Control Room.
    • View and manage compliance reports: You can grant permissions to users to view, create, and download compliance reports for users.
  • OAuth connections
    • View connections: Allows users to view the configured OAuth connections and their attributes.
    • Manage connections: Allows users to create, edit, and delete OAuth connections.
  • Global values

    View and manage global values: Allows users to view, create, edit, and delete global values.

  • Devices

    View all bot runner users: Allows users to view and add all run-as-users (unattended Bot Runner users) when creating a role, running bots, or scheduling bots.

  • Bots
    • Download exported files: Allows users to download exported bot files.
    • Restore from git: Allows users to restore bots and files from Git.

Feature permissions for a role
Windows Server 2022 is now supported for On-Premises installation

You can now successfully install the Windows Server 2022 edition (with all the existing functionalities) on the Automation 360 On-Premises Control Room.

Operating system, environment, and platform supported for Control Room | Bot Agent device requirements
Integrate CyberArk properties in bot automation (Service Cloud case ID: 01852428)

You can enter the property set in credential attributes using the CyberArk properties to integrate the attributes in the bot automation. For example, if you want to use a username in the format domain\username where the domain is stored in the CyberArk property called Address and the username is stored in the CyberArk property called UserName, you can then enter the property set in the format $Address$\$UserName$ in the credential attribute and use this attribute in the bot automation. The domain and username values in this property set will be replaced with the corresponding values from the secret response.

Create locker | Create credential
Select Control Room services to run at startup in Linux environment

You can optimize application process utilization on your device by selecting the Control Room services that you want to run automatically at startup during the On-Premises installation in a Linux environment.

Additionally, you can use this option to disable the dependent services. For example, Automation Co-Pilot uses the storage service. By disabling the storage service, you are also effectively disabling Automation Co-Pilot.

Installing Control Room on Linux
Easily reference team or group with User group variable type

You can use the new User group variable type to reference a team or a role inside a process and share it across different environments without having to edit the process.

Global values | Create a global value
Automatically purge audit log entries on On-Premises deployments

Configure your Control Room settings to automatically purge (delete) audit log entries that are older than a specified period. By default, audit logs older than 15 months are automatically deleted for new On-Premises deployments. This feature is disabled when you update from a previous release to v.30 or later releases. For example to save storage space, you can automatically delete audit log entries for a limited period or delete any historical audit log entries.

Configure Settings | Audit events list
French language support for notifications

As a Control Room administrator, you can now set French as a secondary language for notifications and view information in your local language. With this enhancement, the Control Room sends all notification emails (instant and email reports) in both primary (English) and secondary (French) languages.

Manage languages for notifications
API key expiry information to manage your automations seamlessly (Service Cloud case ID: 01904811, 01960297)

To run your automation seamlessly, you can use the API key expiry information to renew the API key before it expires.

Create API key generation role | Manage Control Room users
Notifications for your Document Automation license consumption

If you have enabled notifications, you will receive a notification for your Document Automation license consumption when the following criteria are met:

  • When 90% of your licenses are consumed
  • When 95% of your licenses are consumed
  • When 99% of your licenses are consumed
  • When 100% of your licenses are consumed

You can use this feature to plan for additional licenses.

Understanding licenses in Document Automation
Import intermediate certificates in Control Room installed on Linux

You can import intermediate certificates when you install the Control Room on Linux.

Intermediate certificates | Installing Control Room on Linux
Audit log events for OAuth connections

The following audit log events are logged for OAuth connections:

  • Bulk delete OAuth connection
  • Create OAuth connection
  • Delete OAuth connection
  • Update OAuth connection

Audit events list
Automation Command Center for Pro and Citizen Developers

Automation Command Center (ACC) is now available for Pro and Citizen Developers. As a key component of automation lifecycle management, Pro and Citizen Developers now have a personalized and centralized view to quickly access their automations. Additionally, help is available with direct links to other developer resources, such as Pathfinder Community and Automation Anywhere University.

ACC home page for Pro and Citizen Developers
Code analysis visibility enhancements in Bot editor
The following enhancements have been added to code analysis to improve the visibility of code quality in the Bot editor for Pro and Citizen Developers.
  • A new indicator for the flow and list canvas views shows which command actions have code analysis violations, enabling Pro and Citizen Developers to quickly see and correct violations in their automations. Code quality is enhanced when developers can easily determine violations and adhere to best practices when they are developing automations.
  • A new code analysis policy option on the Bot editor drop-down menu (access from the three vertical ellipses in the upper right of the Bot editor) allows the developer to view the code analysis policy that is applicable to the automation file. This assists the developer because they can see all applicable best practice rules without needing to leave the Bot editor and to view the policy in the Policy Manager page.

Checking out code analysis results | Task Bots
Packages, actions, and Bot editor
Accelerate and simplify the development of automation using templates
Automation 360 provides templates that you can use to build new automations quickly. These templates contain prebuilt automation code structures that you can select based on your business processes. Prebuilt code structures reduce errors and enforce coding best practices. Using predefined templates, Citizen Developers can jumpstart creating automations for their business use cases, and professional developers can develop more complex business cases. Additionally, developers can perform various operations:
  • Manage templates (check-in, check-out, save, edit, and delete)
  • Review version history, dependencies, and references
  • Import and export templates
  • Access private and public workspaces in the Control Room

Templates
Packages displayed in sorted order in Bot editor

When you use the actions menu (vertical ellipsis at the top-right) to select Packages in the Bot editor, packages now display in sorted order, making it easier to identify them. Packages are sorted on the Name field instead of the Short name field.
Packages sorted alphabetically within Bot editor (Service Cloud case ID: 01766378)
For easier navigation, professional developers can quickly find packages and actions that are now sorted alphabetically at the following places in the Bot editor:
  • Actions pane
  • When you use the actions menu (vertical ellipsis at the top-right) to select Packages, the list of used and available packages displays alphabetically.
  • When you use an If, Else if, Loop, or Wait for condition in a bot, the conditions and the iterators display alphabetically.
Use Microsoft 365 Outlook as trigger to start a bot

You can use Microsoft 365 Outlook as a trigger to start a bot when you send or receive emails.

Add Microsoft 365 Outlook trigger
Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 supported (Service Cloud Case ID: 01952966)

Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 is now supported in email trigger. Therefore, you can select EWS Server > Exchange Server 2013 for any of the Exchange Server (2013, 2016 or 2019) versions.

Using Email Trigger in Trigger loop Handle
New Legacy Loop behavior option

For bots that were created using the Loop action in Automation 360 v.26 or earlier releases, you can now enable the Legacy Loop behavior option from the Administration > Settings to iterate the loop based on the specified value. When you enable this option and either increment or decrement the variable value in the end condition, loop iterations will not vary dynamically based on the new value generated.

Configure Settings
Debug enhancements
  • To follow the standard Debug convention across different integrated development environments, the Debugger tool has been renamed to Debug.
  • When you start debugging, in the Bot editor, you can now see a header bar below the bot name that displays the name of the bot being debugged. The header bar displays Now debugging and the bot name afterward. For example: Now debugging: MSGBot5
  • When you start debugging a bot, the Actions panel on the left side of the Bot editor automatically collapses. This helps in providing more horizontal area to view the actions added in the Bot editor while debugging.
    Note: Once the debugging stops, the Actions panel expands again.
Building and running bots
Auto-purge setting in workload management (Service Cloud case ID: 01978674)

You can now delete the completed or successful work items automatically. You can set the number of days of when to automatically delete the processed work items thereby freeing up Control Room space to process more work items (non-completed).

Purge work items | View queue details

Automatically purge exported work items (Service Cloud case ID: 01288234, 01972944, 01755832, 00910693, 00802309, 01948250, 01981477)

The Control Room automatically deletes exported zip files which are older than 30 days freeing up valuable Control Room space. When you export a bot or work item, these exported zip files are available on the Historical activity page as download links (which require a lot of Control Room space to store).

Export bots

Change scheduled activity ownership

You can change or transfer the ownership of a scheduled activity to any other Control Room user.

Change ownership of scheduled activity
API Tasks for creating automations

You can now create API Task automations in Automation 360 Cloud. API Tasks interact with an application directly via API. These API Tasks run on Cloud devices to provide better latency and faster processing time.

API Task is a new feature in v.30 and has limited availability in the United States (US East, US West, and US Sandbox) regions. To enable this feature, contact your customer support manager (CSM).
APIs and integrations
Manage activity API

Use the new /v3/activity/manage API to stop, pause, or resume an execution by specifying the execution ID.

Bot Execution Orchestrator API V3

What's changed

Control Room, devices, and Bot Agent
Administer lockers

You can grant permissions to roles to view all lockers and edit some of the locker settings. For example, users can change the owner of a locker.

Feature permissions for a role
Enhancement to system-defined roles

You can create your own roles based on your organizational requirements instead of using system-defined roles. You are no longer restricted to using the system-defined roles.

System roles | Feature permissions for a role
Enhanced session time-out setting (Service Cloud case ID: 00658277, 00755230, 00658277, 01258466, 01961046, 01964607)

You can now set the session time-out value based on your requirements to one of the following values: 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, or 7 days. Users are automatically signed out from the Control Room browser session after the specified minutes of inactivity.

Configure Settings
Workload management roles and permissions (Service Cloud case ID: 01945003, 01979884, 02005334)

You no longer need to use system-defined administrator roles with Workload management roles and permissions. You can create custom roles with limited or no access to administrative permissions while adhering to your organization's security policies. As part of this enhancement, the View and manage my queues and SLA calculator permissions are removed.

Feature permissions for a role | Workload permissions
Change in Document Automation license name

The Classifier (Number of pages) license is renamed to Document Classifier (Number of pages).

Understanding licenses in Document Automation | Manage licenses
Disabled package alert

If you have used an action from a package that is disabled or you no longer have access to, an alert is displayed on the bot editor screen.

Packages
Enhanced device roles and permissions

You no longer need to use system-defined administrator roles to manage device pools. You can create custom roles with limited or no access to administrative permissions while adhering to your organization's security policies. Users with the custom role containing the Administer ALL device pools permission can now manage device pools.
Configure Legal Disclaimer timeout (Service Cloud case ID: 01968771, 01964881)

Administrators can now configure Legal Disclaimer timeout screen. Therefore, RDP-based deployment sessions will now retry device access based on this configured setting.

Configure RDP-based deployment for multi-user devices

Fixes

This fix applies to bots and files created in Build 19688. For your existing bots (created in previous builds), perform the workaround provided in Workaround for checkout and export issue.

When a bot or any of its parent directories share the same name, you can now perform the check-in, check-out, bulk check-in, bulk check-out, import, and export operations without any encountering errors.

Previously, some of these operations resulted in errors.

Service Cloud case ID: 02085658, 02086676, 02087581, 02087873, 02087885, 02088908, 02087706
In Build 19596 and later, the scheduler functionality is now optimized to include improved query performance for identifying the next set of schedules and minimizing database deadlocks when the database restarts or the Control Room is updated.

Previously, due to these database deadlocks, the schedules misfired, and the schedule activity page failed to load.

Service Cloud case ID: 01922240, 1972854, 01947419, 01947801, 01948163, 01950059, 01955783, 01970533, 01998902, 01998908, 01998922, 01998932
When you check out a bot with a dependent bot in another folder and you do not have access to that dependent bot folder, an appropriate error message is now displayed for the check-out failure.

Previously, bot check out was not completed, and no success or failure messaged was displayed.

Service Cloud case ID: 02090103

In a window variable, when you select a browser window with its title as case-insensitive, add the same variable to the watched variables list in the Debugger, and invoke the debugger, the Case sensitive option for the browser title remains deselected.

Previously, when the debugger was invoked, the Case sensitive option was selected by default.

An expression or property related to a specific type of variable in an action is now displayed in the drop-down list. Previously, the last property or expression in the list was hidden.

When you use two separate loop or If actions, one with a VBScript condition and the other with a JavaScript condition, respectively, and run the bot, the bot now runs successfully.

Service Cloud case ID: 01954473

When you update your Control Room version to Automation 360 v.30 with Bot Agent at v.28 build 21.240.20182, the actions now successfully recognize the window titles even if capital letters were used in window variables with Case sensitive option disabled.

Service Cloud case ID: 01994346

A bot no longer encounters an error when you view Dictionary type variables in debug mode.

Service Cloud case ID: 01994177, 01986284, 01986574
Schedules now run correctly during the Daylight Saving Time (DST) time zone.

Previously, weekly schedules ran every minute, resulting in multiple triggers during DST, and in turn impacted the actual schedules.

Service Cloud case ID: 01961418, 1961463, 1961447, 1961464, 1961221, 1961111, 01961464, 01961471, 01961517, 01961418, 01961119, 01961236, 01963106, 01961071
When the number of schedules listed on the Scheduled activity page is less (for example, 5 or 6 schedules), the Scheduled tab no longer shows a query timeout error message.

Previously, the Scheduled tab displayed the following error message: An unexpected problem occurred.

When you disable a package, the Update -Package Version page (Administration > Bot Update > Update Bots > Package version) no longer shows an error message. Additionally, you can check out the process and process document in private mode.

Previously, when you disabled a package, the Update -Package Version page showed an error message during check out.

The issue regarding missing packages in the Control Room is now fixed. For more information, see A360 | Packages missing from the Control Room

Service Cloud case ID: 01992801
When you configure auto-login settings and select the Reuse an existing session, if available option, the bot is now deployed through an existing session, and the connected device is no longer logged off.
You will see correct start and end timestamps for bot failures on the Historical activity page.

Previously, the timestamps were displayed incorrectly in such scenarios.

Service Cloud case ID: 01925919
You will no longer view the Unlock locked bots and Set production version of bots permissions in your Control Room instances that are using the Single sign-on (SSO) or Active Directory authentication.

Previously, you were able to view these permissions in such Control Room instances.

Service Cloud case ID: 01952796
When your server repository path (be it on file system or network drive) is unreachable, the version history remains intact and is no longer deleted.

Previously, if the repository path was unreachable, the version history was force deleted.

Service Cloud case ID: 01963136, 01991452, 01992999, 01996226
You can now import bots and packages from the Bot Store with the Bot StoreBot Store import feature successfully.

Previously, the import failed and remained in the In progress status in the Bot Store downloads page.

Service Cloud case ID: 02001442, 02002465, 02000881
For schedules without a device pool, when one or more active run-as user devices are unavailable or disconnected, the bot deployment fails for all the run-as users in the schedule. In such a scenario, you will only see a detailed error message.

Previously, you were seeing two error messages: generic and detailed.
When you add a Work Item to the WLM queue which is already in a running state, the Work Item is processed immediately.

Previously, the Work Item took longer time (10-15 minutes) to be processed.

Service Cloud case ID: 02001406, 02001459
If you have SSO enabled and when you sign out of the Control Room, you will no longer see a message about duplicate sign in.

Previously, a message was displayed that a duplicate sign in was detected.

Service Cloud case ID: 01954039
The license expiry timestamp shows proper translations for Japanese users.

Previously, the timestamp displayed improper translations.

Service Cloud case ID: 01963189, 02076565
When you create a Workload management (WLM) automation, the corresponding audit log displays the correct Started On timestamp.

Previously, Unix timestamp was displayed.

Service Cloud case ID: 01964914
The bots now run successfully and are no longer queued when they are deployed on the default device of an unattended Bot Runner user.

Service Cloud Case ID: 01985724, 01985720, 01985778, 01994082, 01994111, 01994155
The Current action status on the In progress activity page displays the correct status after updating to the latest release.

Previously, the Current action status displayed incorrect information.

Service Cloud case ID: 01996522

You can now create and assign a code analysis policy even it does not contain any rules within it.

Previously, policy creation would fail with an error.

When you schedule multiple bots for deployment, bot deploys successfully without any issue.

Previously, sometimes bot deployment failed with null pointer exception while retrieving the login settings of the user.

Service Cloud case ID: 01975690, 01989463
You can now successfully connect to Oracle Database with SSL certificate in the Linux environment.

Previously, connection to Oracle Database with SSL certificate would fail with an error.
You will now be able to add locker managers and participants when creating a locker.

Previously, you were unable to add locker managers and participants when creating a locker.

Service Cloud case ID: 02004160
For Automation 360 On-Premises, if there are many (more than 500) bots deployed in one of the device when there are multiple devices connected to a Control Room, bot deployments across other devices are no longer blocked. This issue was resolved for Automation 360 Cloud deployments in v.28 release.

Service Cloud case ID: 01791784, 01950118, 01904686, 01795862, 01945357, 01941048

Limitations

In previous Automation 360v.30 builds (earlier than Build 19688), if your bots or any of its parent directories share the same name, you might encounter an error when you perform check-in, check-out, bulk check-in, bulk check-out, import, or export operations.
Workaround:
  1. Check out the earlier version of the bot.

    For example, consider the Claims processing bot that has 3 versions. If you encountered error in version 3 of the bot, check out version 2.

  2. Edit the bot for your required changes.
  3. Check in the bot.

This workaround is for bots created in Automation 360v.30 previous builds. This issue is fixed for bots created in Build 19688 (see Fix for a check out and export issue).

When you rename a bot in the Bot editor and then start debugging, the updated bot name might not display in the header bar.

Workaround: Close the Bot editor and then open it again.

When a user with view and manage settings permissions edits the remote Git repository integration settings, an insufficient privileges error is displayed. However, the user can still edit the remote Git integration settings.

When you use the bulk package update feature to update the package version in bots, you might see errors in some actions used in the bot. However, the bot executes successfully even with these errors when deployed from Control Room or as an attended or unattended Bot Runner.

Workaround: Revert back the package version for the bots which show errors and update the package manually.

Service Cloud case ID: 01984578, 01991720, 01983265, 01994192, 02048170, 01990994, 01992484
The total notification count is displayed incorrectly in the alert summary report, that is the total notification count does not match the sum of attention needed and information notification counts.
The alert summary report displays incorrect start and end date and time.
In an On-Premises Windows environment, when you install the Control Room with any database with SSL certificate, the installation fails with an error if the keytool finds duplicate alias in the cacerts file.
Workaround:
  1. List all the aliases using the keytool.
  2. Find the duplicate aliases.
  3. Delete the duplicate aliases using keytool command.
  4. Install the Control Room.
If you attempt to check out a bot for the second time that includes an additional file such as an image file that is added after the initial check-in, the check-out operation fails. This occurs because correct path is not parsed during check out.
When you use the Run bot with queue option to deploy workitems, some of the workitems are intermittently deployed on the same Bot Runner machine.

Service Cloud Case ID: 02091091, 02089812, 02095841, 02096125, 02103340, 02103959
Limitations from previous releases
While running a bot in debug mode, the bot will fail if the variable size is greater than 3 MB. An error message appears with the information that a variable has exceeded the 3 MB limit.

Updates to the interface

See the following video for the updates in the interface for Automation 360 v.30 release:

The Purge older than 15 months option is introduced to automatically delete audit log entries that are older than 15 months.

Automatically purge audit log entries on On-Premises deployments
The API Key details field displays the Expiration information to indicate the date and time when the API key expires. Use this information to renew the API key so that you can run your automation seamlessly.

API key expiry information to manage your automations seamlessly
The FTP/SFTP Session name field has been renamed to Create FTP/SFTP session.

New capabilities added to FTP/SFTP package

Enable the Legacy Loop behavior option from the Administration > Settings to iterate the loop based on the specified value.

Enable legacy loop behavior action
Create an OAuth connection and store it in the Control Room. You can use this OAuth connection for the Apigee, Genesys, Rest Web Services, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and SharePoint packages.

Packages updated in v.30
Code analysis visibility enhancements in the Bot editor.

Code analysis visibility enhancements