All New Action Center for Business Users - Now in Community Preview

Action Center has been pivotal in expanding the range of business processes that could be automated through RPA. Out-of-the-box integrations with our AI and process mining offerings have introduced infinite process automation opportunities using Action Center with seamless human-Robot hand-offs during an automation execution.

:sparkler: We are excited to announce the public preview of a brand new Action Center application with a complete makeover tailored for business users, as simple as using an email.

:rocket: We are not stopping there but watch out this space for more cool features added to Action Center in coming weeks as we work towards our vision to make Action Center, the hub for all business user interactions with un-attended Robots, be it triggering an automation with business input or handling any actionable tasks.

This offering will be a cloud first preview available on Automation Cloud.

Unveiling the new look here :tada:

  • The most relevant actions presented for business users in the cloud portal home page. Users to take quick actions by navigating directly from portal home.

  • Navigate to Actions from the left rail directly in to an intuitive, self-explanatory actions inbox, categorized based on status and a side-by-side view of form with the actions list. Users will be auto navigated to the next action in the list.

  • And of-course with all the options for bulk assignment, search, sort and filter

  • “My Actions” and “Manage Actions” focused views for only those users who have administrator permissions in certain folders. Admin operations like assign to another user or re-assign an action happens from “Manage Actions” view

  • Actions forms became much richer with dynamic drop-downs, cascaded drop-downs, storage bucket-based images and JSON logic-based forms rendering.

How to enable this new service from Automation Cloud :pushpin:

  • Sign up for community cloud account if you have not done this already
  • Go to ‘Admin’ > Tenants > ‘Edit Services’
  • Check ‘Actions’ and proceed to SAVE without any additional license implications
  • You are ready to take actions now

How to provide access to users :closed_lock_with_key:

  • While inviting users to an account, add them to ‘Automation User’ group. Existing users could be edited to be part of ‘Automation User’ group (cloud account > admin > users)
  • Access control for users are managed within the corresponding Orchestrator tenant. Actions portal will display tasks for a user as per permissions/roles assigned in a corresponding Orchestrator folder.
  • Use Orchestrator modern folder concepts to containerize actions (to restrict view of actions to different sets of users) : Modern Folders
  • Refer to ‘Form Action’ section here

What will happen to Actions within Orchestrator? :hourglass:

We will continue to support Orchestrator Actions for a period, they will not be removed soon. Most importantly, all the actions created in earlier releases will start reflecting in the new interface automatically.

Features in pipeline for preview :chart_with_upwards_trend:

image

Not explored UiPath Action Center yet? :mag_right:

You are definitely missing some action here…
We released Human-In-The-Loop capability as part of our platform release 19.10 onwards to bring in seamless human-robot collaboration in un-attended scenarios UiPath Action Center

Usecase Demo Video : Invoice Processing with Action Center
Get started today !

Guides and Resources :books:

How to build Orchestration Process (Long running workflow) from studio to inject human actions Orchestration Process
How does long running workflows reflect in Orchestrator About Jobs
Academy Course on Orchestration Process https://academy.uipath.com/DirectLaunch?cid=WX%2FbrCa73UM_&io=tgpwv6P5Xm0_&md=IS2TIgXikDA_
Sample snippets Open studio > project > snippets > Orchestration

Example Workflows :chart:

  • Sample workflow to demonstrate injection of human actions based on type of document and wait for both actions before completing the process execution InvoiceAndClaimProcessing_with_Actions.zip (1.7 MB)
    Add [nuget.org] https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json to the package feed to resolve dependencies

  • Sample workflow to demonstrate all type of forms controls supported FormTests.zip (76.5 KB)

  • Storage bucket based images workflow to demonstrate rendering of high resolution images within action forms without bundling them in base64 encoded format Storage_Sample.zip (148.9 KB)

  • Create storage bucket with name ‘ActionsTest’

  • Provide folder level permissions to Actions user ( Storage Bucket[view], Storage File[view] )

  • Provide folder level permissions to Robot user ( Storage Bucket [View, Edit], Storage File[View, Create] )

  • <fieldkey>_storage to be used in <HTML Element> control in the form https://docs.uipath.com/activities/docs/create-form-task#section-storage

  • Dynamic drop-down based workflow to send data from workflow to be populated in Actions and define dependencies between two drop-downs DynamicDropdowns (1).zip (14.9 KB)

  • Developer Info : Use a suffix (<fieldkey>_ dropdown) as the argument name(field key) containing list of values in the ‘form data’ collection and bind the same <field key> to the drop-down list control in the forms designer.

  • To get the user selected entry back to workflow, add argument name with just the <field key> and direction (IN/OUT or OUT). Default value assigned to <field key> will be the default selection in the drop down.

:handshake: We look forward for your feedback and valuable suggestions to make Action Center more impactful for our customers and drive the best value out of RPA implementations with true process automation

22 Likes

super :grinning:,when we will except action center in community preview

1 Like

great

1 Like

This is amazing… When would this feature will be available in Community Preview? :smiley:

3 Likes

OMG :sunglasses: :sunglasses: much new releases
lot of homeworks :sweat_smile: :stuck_out_tongue:
Lets start testing … :yum:

1 Like

Hi everyone, we are excited to see the interest. We are pushing ourselves to get this enabled in community preview as early as next week. Fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, if you have not explored Action Center (with in Orchestrator) yet, we hope the samples provided ( and Orchestration process academy course added) would be a great start.
Everything you build on the workflows with persistence activity pack will work as-is against the new actions app directly accessible in the automation cloud – as they work against the same back-end services.

4 Likes

hopefully part of 20.10 release

2 Likes

Very excited on this one. This is a crucial missing component for many cases we have automated in the past.

2 Likes

Hi Everyone,
We are excited to announce that the new action center app is now available for all community accounts in preview now :tada:.
As mentioned in the blog, please enable the service in your community tenants by navigating to Admin > Tenants > Edit Services > check ‘Actions’ and go ahead to save without any license changes.
Get started with the new business user experience through our new app today!

Thanks…

2 Likes

Hi @Liji

I was testing this feature and it looks great. I ran some of the examples you have attached here, and I can see the tasks. But, I also have a Document Understanding process, that actually uses the “Create Document Validation Action” to create the task in Action Center.

Only thing I see is that, when that activity is used and the task is created, the New Actions platform is not allowing me to view, and even assign the task to any user. But the example you have given here shows the form and gives some options to interact with. See the screenshots below.

Sample provided:

The action created by Create Document Validation Action activity


These tasks can only be handled through the Orchestrator. Even I assign it to myself in Orchestrator, still the Actions platform doesn’t show me the preview, or even provide any controls.

May I know how to handle this?

Hi @Lahiru.Fernando , Thanks for the feedback.
we are currently integrating Document Validation Action in to new actions app, this is work in progress ( and mentioned in the features in pipeline where we will have both Doc validation and Doc classification light-up in the new interface soon)

2 Likes

@Liji
Awesome… Thank you so much… Hoping to see that feature soon!!

In the meantime, I would also like to have some control over the buttons. Because right now, I see buttons, but not working as shown in the screenshot. As in the first image I attached, I would like to have the button enabled as well, along with the Self assign option on the top :slight_smile:

Hi @Lahiru.Fernando , are you referring to self-assign is not enabled in case of bulk actions? Are you not seeing the self-assign enabled even after checking one or more actions (of type form

)

2 Likes

HI @Liji

It is kind of weird scenario. But considering your point of not having the support yet for Create Validation Action for documents, I think it should be the reason. but anyway, let me show you.

If I select a task that is created by that create validation task the button is disabled

But, for the other tasks, unless the checkbox is selected, it is disabled. see below
Check the task is clicked, but not checked. I thin this has to have the button as enabled.

And when the task is selected, and checked

Hi @Lahiru.Fernando ,
This is a bulk assignment option, if for single assignments user can just do assign to self per action (either from details or from three dots menu in the actions list itself).
For bulk assignment, button gets enabled if at least one action is selected. you are right, w.r.t document validation action, once we start supporting them, even they could be bulk assigned from this interface.

2 Likes

Awesome… Thank you very much for the clarifications :slight_smile:
Will explore the feature more, and surely reach out to you again.

UiPath Action center is an amazing feature:

Check this out:

1 Like

@Liji… Would this portal be available in GA release? When would this be available for enterprise edition?