Quick Start with Pega Robotic Automation

Robotic automations can be used to automate the routine tasks which are repeated in a workflow. Pega robotics adds the ability to automate tasks using the user interface of existing applications. It can help speed up manual tasks by automating user actions.

Automations are created in Pega Robotic Studio. The latest version available is 8.0 and can be downloaded from PDN. The minimum requirements for running automations are PRPC 7.2.1 with Pega HFIX-29471 or PRPC 7.2.2.
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There are two types of Pega robotic automations:

1. Desktop Automation (RDA)
2. Process Automation (RPA)

Pega Desktop Automation
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Desktop automations are used to provide a unified desktop experience to users by integrating and automating desktop (or web applications) with Pega 7 applications. Desktop or web applications can be launched from flow actions and data can be transferred back and forth between the workflow and desktop applications.
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Desktop automations can help reduce the redundant work that is required to copy and duplicate data in multiple applications. This can help reduce the time a CRM representative needs to spend with a customer on the phone and can also reduce data entry errors which can occur when entering the same data multiple times.

Legacy applications where APIs don’t exist or are not compatible with new Pega 7 applications can be integrated with the help of automations.

Pega Process Automation

Process automations are used for automating high-volume back-end repetitive work. Case assignments are routed to a robotic queue from where they are picked up by a robotic automation VM to perform the automations.
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The working is similar to an agent but the processing is done by an automation instead of the Pega requestor processing the assignment. A new ‘type’ dropdown has been added in the work basket instance to specify a robotic automation work queue. If Robotic type is selected from the dropdown, two additional fields are displayed:

1. Maximum queue length: This value is used to specify the maximum number of assignments that should be in the queue at a given time.
2. Maximum automation execution time: The value is used to specify the maximum amount of time the VM is expected to take to run the automation.

Automation VM’s can be managed in Pega Robotic Automation Console. Robotic workbasket turns red when the number of assignments exceed the maximum queue length or the automation execution time. The automation console is packaged with a sample application and can be downloaded from the PDN link.