Production Server Issue - MS outlook 2016 - Get Outlook Mail Messages: The operation has timed out

In Development machine we are able to read emails from outlook but when we run same RPA workflow on Production Server , while reading email we re getting an Error as Get Outlook Mail Messages: The operation has timed out.

As a primary solution - we already implemented below steps :

  1. Increased TimeoutMS property till 5 min
  2. Used Retry Scope activity for Get Outlook Mail Messages with interval of 3 seconds 5 times.
  3. MS Outlook 2016 already has Programmatic Access on Production Server
  4. Upgraded UiPath.Mail.Activities = 2.0.11
  5. Reduced Number of Top Email Count = 30

Please note : RPA workflow is working fine to read outlook emails from Development server, only issue we are getting after deployment this RPA Workflow into Production Server.

Your help would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
Regards
Vitthal

Have you considered using Microsoft 365? It’s a much better way to interact with a mailbox. Outlook becomes irrelevant.

@vitthal7620,

Check for these possible reasons of the issue.

  1. If the issue happens on an unattended bot, it could be that the Outlook profile has not been set up. Login to the Robot machine as the Robot user and open Outlook. This will verify that it is set up.
  2. If the Robot is running on a high-density machine, it could be that the server was set up to use User Disk Profiles. To check this login to the machine as the Robot account and go to “C:\Users”. If two profile folders exist for the user and one is mounted as a volume, this is probably the issue.
  • To get more info about User Disk Profiles, see Easier User Data Management With User Profile Disks In Windows
  • Speak to the admin about disabling this feature. The robot’s RDP connection is entirely local. It uses a loopback connection and does not pass through a connection broker. This means that when the Robot executes, the User Disk Profile does not get loaded. Most likely this configuration is not needed by the Robot. After the User Disk Profile is removed, verify with the admin that the relevant registry keys were cleaned up. Also, restart the Robot service. If this feature cannot be disabled, open a ticket with UiPath.

On Production server, we have only Generic Robot Account , organization doesn’t provide us Office 365 license for Generic user account, hence we are using only MS Office 2016 version on production server.

Thank you so much Ashok for your quick response, i will check User Disk Profile configuration and keep you posted ASAP.

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We have many robot accounts (what you call generic user accounts) and they are not on 365 either. What we did was create one mailbox for all automations to use, and that mailbox is on 365 and all the robot accounts have access to that mailbox via 365.

Hi @ashokkarale : I just checked on RPA Production machine - Outlook profile already setup and we are able to open MS outlook 2016 manually with bot account. And I also checked under : “C:\Users” , we have only one generic Robot profile folder created on server. So we don’t have multiple profile folder exist on RPA production server. Since i have already tried given solution but unfortunately it couldn’t resolved issue yet. Hence i have opened UiPath Technical Support Ticket awaiting for their response too.

Hi @postwick : Thank you for your quick response. Unfortunately due to data security concern - we can’t create one common mailbox for all Robot account, since for RPA we have confidential information shared on emails so for each Robot account we have different mailbox in MS Office 2016.

So your security department would rather emails with sensitive data spread across multiple mailboxes instead of just one?

Hi @postwick : No its not like that, for each RPA we have different end users / process owner and they don’t wish to send emails on common mailbox, hence for each RPA we have dedicated outlook account and access is given to only specific robot account to read email.

@vitthal7620,

Ok. Till that you can try this approach.

Add Start Process activity to open Outlook before your Get Outlook Mail Message Make sure there is delay of at least 10 seconds, this will ensure latest emails will be synced

You can also set Outlook as startup app on your server which will make sure Outlook is open whenever bot will create a session.

@vitthal7620

As per error looks like outlook is not opwned before interqcting might be an issue

Try to open outlook wait for it to completely load or open and then proceed with the next steps

Cheers

@ashokkarale : Thank you Ashok. i have used start process activity to start outlook 2016. Now its launching outlook before reading emails and it resolved issue in prod server.

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