About device pools

Device pools are a logical grouping of devices or similar unattended Bot Runner machines on which you can run your workload management automations or scheduled unattended automations. For example, you can group the devices (system-wide type) of a specific department or unit and create a device pool.

Overview

You can use a device pool to restrict bot deployments to a specific set of devices that are available from your Control Room instance and take advantage of any device available in a device pool because any device in the device pool can run the bot.

You can also use a device pool to process work items from workload management queues. Workload management distributes work items across various devices in a device pool. This distribution of work items ensures efficient bot processing through optimal usage of devices and Automation 360 licenses. Device pools can contain different types of devices, such as single-user devices or muti-user devices.

You can share the device pool between multiple automations such as workload management, Run bot, and Schedule bot, thus improving the device utilization.

How a device pool works

When you deploy an unattended bot to a device pool at run time, system identifies the available devices from the pool. System starts with first device from the pool, if the first device is busy, it checks for next device and then the bot is automatically sent to the available device from the list of system-wide devices. As the other bots are deployed, they can run concurrently on the other devices in the device pool. By dynamically allocating devices when bots are deployed, bot deployments are executed quickly and efficiently.

High availability (HA) in device pools

Device pools provide built-in High Availability (HA) for the Bot Runner machines if your unattended license is free to use. You are not tied to a single Bot Runner machine, so if your Bot Runner machine is unavailable for any reason and your unattended license is free for deployment, your automation is not affected. The scheduled automation will automatically run on the next available Bot Runner machine, thereby providing high availability.

Nota: Consider the following points when working with user credentials:

Only one user credential can be attached to a licensed user.
If all devices in a device pool are domain integrated and Active Directory users have access to all devices, licensed users can login to any device by using attached user credentials.
For more information about running bots in device pool, see Considerations for running a bot.

Managing device pools

As a device pool administrator, you can create, edit, and view all device pools that can be used for scheduling automations and workload management.

As a device pool owner or consumer, you can view only those device pools of which you are the owner or consumer. Only users with the AAE_Queue Admin and AAE_Pool Admin role can perform device management tasks.

Nota: You have to create device pools to view those in the list.

To easily access your device pool, you can search by a device pool name.

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