Agent Concept in Pega BPM Tool

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1.    What is an Agent?
An agent is an internal background process operating on the server that runs activities on a periodic basis.
Agents route work according to the rules in our application.
Agents also perform system tasks such as sending e-mail notifications about assignments and outgoing correspondence, generating updated indexes for the full-text search feature, synchronizing caches across nodes in a multiple node system, and so on.

2.    How do we create an Agent?
New - >SysAdmin -> Agents
Rule Set name is the Agent name
       Agent is instance of Rule-Agent-Quiee.

3.    Do we need to create Agent Schedule?
No. Agent schedules cannot be created manually.
The Agent Manager on our Process Commander system generate at least one agent schedule instance for each agents rule.
By default, the Agent Manager checks for new or updated agents rule once every ten minutes.
After we create an agents rule, the Agent Manager generates one Agent Schedule instance for each node running on your Process Commander system the next time it checks for new agents rules.

4.    Do we need to migrate Agent Schedule to other environment?
No

5.    What are the Agent running time intervals?
Each agent activity runs individually on its own interval schedule, as a separate requestor thread.
§  Periodic — The agent runs the activity and then "sleeps" for the number of seconds entered in the Interval column.
§  Recurring — The agent runs the activity based on a specified calendar schedule (for example, every Monday at 5:00 P.M.).

6.    What are the Agent Running modes?
Queue mode indicates whether the agent uses the agent queue capability to process items from the agent queue. This feature allows the agent to temporarily skip over items that fail — for example, because a needed resource is locked — and try again later to process the item later.
§  Standard — Specifies that this agent processes items from an agent queue and that it relies on the system to provide object locking and other transactional support.
§  Advanced — Specifies that this agent uses custom queuing
§  Legacy — specifies that this is an agent that was created in a version prior to V5.4 and has not yet been updated. This option is not available for agents created in V5.4 or later.

7.    What is the use of referring Access Group in Agents?
Agent activity calls another activity. This called activity may not appear in agent rule set. So setup of the Rule set list and Roles by providing Access group in security Tab.
Select the access group to use for the legacy and advanced agents listed in this rule. This field is ignored for agents with a type of Standard.

8.    How do we Troubleshoot or Trace an Agent?
1.    < env name="agent/enable" value="true" />
Verify above tag in prconfig file. Value of the above tag is true or false.
2.    In Agent Schedule, schedule tab verify the check box Enable this agent is Checked or Not. And also verify the Enabled? Check box is checked or Not.
3.    Same thing also check in Agents Rule.

    In Tracer we can trace the particular operator or particular Agent.
    In prsysmgmt portal, In Agent Management select the particular Agent and Delay the Agent and then run the Tracer.
   We can use the Agent Management link in the System Management Application to monitor and control agent processing.
   Agent runs on different nodes, select the particular node and run the Tracer.


9.    What are the Agents for SLA and Correspondence?
The agents in the Pega-ProCom RuleSet process e-mail, service level rules, and assignments, archive work objects, and so on.
    The agents in this rule provide the following types of processing:
§ Processing service level events and escalation
§ Applying a flow action to assignments in bulk
§ Sending out e-mail correspondence
§ Archiving and purging work objects, attachments, and history
§ Retrieving PDF files from the PegaDISTRIBUTION Manager
§ Running tests defined through the optional Automatic Testing facility
§ Checking incoming e-mail
The activity System-Queue-ServiceLevel.ProcessEvents supports service level processing for both assignments and work objects.
The activity Data-Corr-.Send supports outgoing e-mail if your system contains one or more Email Account data instances with a second key part of Notify.


10. Who will create Data-Agent-Queue?
The Agent Manager is a master agent that gathers and caches the agent configuration information set for our system when Process Commander starts. Then, at a regularly scheduled interval, it determines whether any new agents rules were created during the last period. If there are new agents rules, the Agent Manager adds them to its list of agents and generates agent schedule data instances for them for each node.

11. What are the Standard Agents?
our system includes three standard agents rules. Because these agents rules are in locked RuleSets, we cannot modify them. To change the configuration settings for the agents listed in these rules, update the agent schedules generated from the agents rule.
Pega-IntSvcs,
Five agents in the Pega-IntSvcs RuleSet process queued service and connector requests and perform maintenance for PegaDISTRIBUTION MANAGER (formerly called Correspondence Output Server, or COS).
   
      Pega-ProCom,
The agents in the Pega-ProCom RuleSet process e-mail, service level rules, and assignments, archive work objects, and so on. The agents in this rule provide the following types of processing:

• Processing service level events and escalation
• Applying a flow action to assignments in bulk
• Sending out e-mail correspondence
• Archiving and purging work objects, attachments, and history
• Retrieving PDF files from the PegaDISTRIBUTION Manager
• Checking incoming e-mail (deprecated in V5.3)

    Pega-RULES
The agents in the Pega-RULES RuleSet perform general system housecleaning and periodic processing. The agents in this rule provide the following processing:
§ System cleaner
§ System Pulse
§ System Indexer§ Rule Usage Snapshot
§ Static Content Cleaner
§ System Work Indexer

12. What is the use of Data-Agent-Queue?
When you need to modify the behavior of an agent listed in an agents rule in a locked RuleSet (any of the standard Process Commander agents rules, for example) you do so by editing one or more of the generated agent schedule instances.