Front Office Robot and Back Office Robot - Updated Info 2017.1.* Onwards

Hello Guys

From 2017.1.* Onward

To better convey the relationship between Robots, humans and Orchestrator, the following changes have occurred to them:

The Front Office Robot has been renamed to Attended. It cannot run under a locked screen and it cannot be started from Orchestrator. This type of Robot is triggered by a user and runs only under human supervision.

The Back Office Robot has been renamed to Unattended. It can be started from Orchestrator and can run under a locked screen without human supervision.

The DevTest Robot has been renamed to Free. It has all the features of the Unattended Robot, but it cannot be used in production environments.

If youā€™re updating Robot information in Orchestrator, you no longer need to restart the UiPath Robot service. Itā€™s all done automagically!

For more information about the differences between Robots, please

Regardsā€¦!!
Aksh

9 Likes

Is there any difference in the work flow activites avaliable to Front office bot / Attended and un attended bot ?

Noā€¦!!

The activities are the same.

You use Studio for development Purpose and then you choose how to run your workflow - with user assistance(FOR/Attended) or BOR/Unattended with Orchestrator

1 Like

Could unattended robot be standalone without Orchestrator?

that would be studio ce.

Does that mean that if I want to use unattended robot, I must have an Orchestrator? An unattended robot cannot run without Orchestrator?

You can use Unattended Robot without Orchestrator, but you would have to use it the same way you would use the Attended one, except for the fact that it can run under locked screen(run it manually, lock the screen and it will continue to run).

Connecting the Robot to Orchestrator will offer:

  • a centralized location from which to deploy automation projects to Robots
  • an easier and centralized point for the management and monitoring of multiple Robots
  • the scheduled execution of automation processes on Robots
  • the management of queues and transactions
  • centralized Robot logging to SQL and/or ElasticSearch
2 Likes

I am confused, could you please help me here.

As per my understanding a robot becomes attended robot or unattended robot when we connect it to Orchestrator and specify the type, right ?. So when you say we can run unattended robot without Orchestrator how is a that possible ? If we donā€™t have Orchestrator or if the robot is not connected to the Orchestrator how does the robot is identified as unattended robot when there is no difference in the workflow activities for FOR / BOR? When we run a robot not connected to Orchestrator is it possible to run it under locked the screen. If so does that mean we donā€™t need Orchestrator and Orchestrator license to run an unattended robot ?.

Thanks

Hi Bejoy ,

True. And you can see the how many Robots of each type you have left in Orchestrator Settings - License.

If the Robot is not connected to Orchestrator, you still have to license it locally: Robot - Licensing a Robot. If you have Unattended license key, it will know to ā€œbehaveā€ as Unattended.

It can run under locked screen(if itā€™s licensed locally as Unattended), but you will first have to be logged in to the Robot machine, run your process manually, then lock your screen. If you license and run through Orchestrator you wonā€™t need to have access to the Robot machine and you can run your process(Start a Job) from anywhere.

2 Likes

Thanks for the perfect explanation. I was not aware of activating robots license without connecting to Orchestrator thatā€™s what caused the confusion for me. Also thanks for clarifying that it is possible to run an unattended Robot without connecting to Orchestrator (I understand it involves some initial manual tasks) .

Pardon my curiosity, I need one more clarification.
If I need to run the robot in the same system where i have my studio (without connecting to Orchestrator), do i need to have separate license for that Robot on top of the Studio license,
Thanks.

Youā€™re welcome, Iā€™m glad itā€™s clear for you now.

No, if you license Studio locally, the Robot will take the same license when you run a project.

Thanks for the Quick Response. Appreciate that. Cheers. :+1:

Based on all the documents and discussion, I am able to conclude on the this table. Feel Free to suggest if any changes.

Details Attended Unattended Free
Old Name Front Office Back Office DevTest
Work Under Locked Screen No Yes Yes
Can be managed from Orchestrator No Yes Yes
Human Supervision Required Yes No No
Can Run in production Environment? N/A Yes No
Working Style One-by-One Batch-mode Batch-mode
Working Capacity Only when triggered by human 24/7/365 Development & Test Only
Remote Access via various platform No Yes Yes
Reporting, Scheduling and monitoring No Yes Yes
Location Users Desk Cloud or within office premise Cloud or within office premise
Trigger Triggered by Human Central Hub Central Hub
Action Triggers Details Triggered by specific events, actions, or commands an employee engages within a specific workflow. Scheduler, Manual Trigger from Orchestrator Scheduler, Manual Trigger from Orchestrator
When to use? Used when human decision is required Used when No Human Intervention is required To Develope and Test the projects
Orchestrator Orchestrator cannot be integrated Orchestrator can be integrated Orchestrator can be integrated (Seperate orchestrator is required for DevTest)
Need of Studio Studio is required for develpment Studio is required for develpment Studio is required for develpment
High Density Feature No Yes Yes
Execution of same automation at multiple robots No Yes (It Uses Queues to divide the work between Robots) Yes (It Uses Queues to divide the work between Robots)
Credential storage Windows Credential manager Windows Credential manager and Assets from Orchestrator Windows Credential manager and Assets from Orchestrator
Management of queues and transactions No Yes Yes
7 Likes

Superb, thank you

Thatā€™s splendid that you built this kind of thing.

Would have comment regarding the FO part.

Remote Access via various platform/Location : Technically you could have your front office robot running inside a VM container waiting to be trigger by the user, so I am tempted to say yes. However, you are right that most of the time it will run on user Desktop.

Orchestrator/Reporting/Monitoring/Management of queues and transactions: A FO bot can add, even consume queue items and reports its status via queue items, which is often omited when considering its usage. They also can generate logs so can be monitored via Orchestrator and Kibana for example

When to use?: You could also automate totally rule based tasks but justifying user inputs - once again mostly you are right, from front office we look in general for handling what back office/unattended cannot handle, decision based tasks.

Credential storage: A front office Robot should be able to query assets from Orchestrator too.

To sum up, FO can be connected to Orchestrator but their process execution cannot be triggered from there. Most of the other features remain available. Let me know if you see any approximation in my comment, I cannot pretend having as much experience in FO as I have in BO :slight_smile:

Cheers

5 Likes

Your info is correct Florent. Waiting for Mustahher to update his table.

Thank you both!

2 Likes

Hello everyone,
The feature comparison table says that the Unattended robots location can be ā€˜Cloud or within Office Premiseā€™. Is it true that I can setup UiPath robot in Cloud? So far I read heard and read that UiPath Orchestrator can be set up cloud.

Can anyone share documents to do the same?

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

We are planning to install Unattended Robot on one PC, and store it in a secure location for security reasons. And, install Studio on a different PC and the Developer will build workflows and deploy it to the Robot on that PC remotely. We are planning to buy only one robot at this point. For this purpose, would we also need to buy the Orchestrator to be able to deploy our automation projects (We do not have multiple robots)?
Also, please enlighten me on how can we deploy our projects from one PC to another one which is stored remotely somewhere. (We do not want anyone to monitor it and it will stay ON all the time.)

Thanks

1 Like

Hello @kpanse110 thanks for your inquiry,

1 you donā€™t need to buy orchestrator but you can definetly get benefits having orchestrator.

2 deployment, uipath comes integrated with vsts.

3 stay on, this will require reporting coming from the robot in order for you to be aware that is on all day.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Hi Guys,
I couldnā€™t find the option Dev Test(Free) in my orchestrator login.
Please adviceOrchestrator%20option