First want to thank all contributors to this great forum. I got almost all answers with limited search.
Here are my requests and questions
0. The difference between Unattended and attended is not explicitly clear in terms of implementations. I have gone thru this forum and was able gather differences here and there but not able to get a full picture from an implementation point of view. It would greatly help if someone can tabulate all the differences and post here.
Questions
If I have a workflow that involves getting data from websites, updating them in spreadsheet then emailing them. Can this be implemented as unattended?
If above scenario involves ocr then can we still do it?
Does the Uirobot.exe that come with install serve both as attended as well as unattended?
Is there a separate install for unattended? If it is the same then how to start it as unattended?
How do we monitor the unattended without orchestration?
I am assuming an unattended robot can run only one wf at a time
Welcome to the UiPath Community. I’m glad you found most of your answers here.
I’ll try to be as clear as possible with your questions:
Yes, it can.
Yes, you still can.
The Robot’s ability to act as Attended or Unattended is given by the licensing, not setup. So short answer is yes.
It’s the same. After installation you have to license it as you want. You start it as Unattended through Orchestrator.
I think you can see the local logs This is the purpose of Orchestrator, to be able to manage the creation, monitoring, and deployment of resources in your environment.
Any type of Robot can only run one process at a time.
Thank you. Your response did clarify many questions for me. As a follow up to it…
I am in the process of recommending a solution for doing a pilot with a client… It is little early for the client to spend money for the orchestration… hence looking to suggest the client to buy license just for a single robot and pilot it with the package we deploy first. Then scale it up and take it to other departments along with orchestration.
With that little background here are few more questions. Will help me decide which license to buy (attended and unattended as the price difference is huge between them.
Should the unattended robot have a dedicated machine (server or desktop) ?
Can it installed in the desktop and run in the background while the user is using? Will it get interfered?
When the unattended robot is executing will remoting (rdp session) to the machine cause any interference with the execution because of mouse or keyboard usage.
In attended robot when it is running I see that using mouse or keyboard does cause some interference.
In the trial version how can we run and test out unattended version if both robot are the same and only differ by license. Should we ask for a separate trial license key for unattended?
I can speak from experience, but have not used Attended Robots to know if the license actually limits its use or not. Unattended, on the other hand, can be used attended and unattended.
I will answer your questions of what I know here:
It’s not required but recommended. Windows client only allows 1 logon session at a time, so ideally you want to have Windows Server Environment and activate the Remote Licensing to allow more than 2 logon sessions at the same time. So, if you use a Windows client machine only 1 user can be logged at one time. (However, there are unsupported workarounds to allow more than 1)
Also, UiPath uses alot of memory so if it isn’t a dedicated machine, users could experience performance issues. I believe you will need atleast 16mb of RAM but more than that would be helpful for a high density of jobs, especially if it is planned to use the machine with Studio as well (which will most likely happen to test and troubleshoot jobs before deploying into production)
It technically can run in the background with its “Simulate Click/Type” and “SendWindowsMessages” and “hidden” options, however its use case doesn’t really allow it to run in the background. This is because many actions require windows to be active and not every application can work as hidden in UiPath. For that reason, my answer is no it can’t run in the background. Though, it can be programmed in a way that atleast the user can’t mess it up, like testing if fields have the correct text before moving on, et cetera, except it’s still not a sure thing depending on what the job is trying to do. I did play with Autohotkey to disable the mouse and keyboard but abandoned it cause it became a pain when jobs failed, but that’s also an option.
When you RDP into a session being used for a job, it gets interfered by mouse and keyboard just like Attended. Also, once you are in that RDP session, you can’t minimize or close it because it stops the job. I have not seen a fix for that issue yet. EDIT: you can just select another window on your computer to bring it out of focus and the job will continue to run in the RDP window (I do this a lot to monitor it) while you can do other things.
I can’t answer you about a trial testing period for Unattended so you might need to ask UiPath on that one. It’s been over a year since we started, but we tested the Unattended model initially and I personally installed Orchestrator to see how it all worked to make sure it “can” work before we purchased all our additional Robot licenses.
Lastly, each machine and user id has its own set of settings, so just because a job works on one user/robot/machine, does not mean it works on another. It’s a learning process, but much of that will go away with experience.
Even though there are challenges, it still works very well for us provided the jobs are programmed with good structure and error handling, because when they are not, many inconsistencies occur.
So to clarify.
If I buy an unattended robot and have OCR activities in my workflow. WIll it be able to run without me having to have the window open? It will run on a server, but I dont want to manually open the window.
There is a learning curve, but we use Image and OCR activities successfully on a Windows 2012 and Windows 2012 R2 server “unattended” and with Orchestrator. I personally have gotten all of our jobs working as unattended, but like I said, there is a learning curve for consistent results and reliability.
Okay. Thank you very much. I only wanted to know if it was possible to not have RDP open. And so it seems. Since UIPath is installed locally on the server. RDP is only for access.
Would it be possible to solve it with Launch Interactive Workflow as well?
I use Launch Interactive a lot, because I have good experience with it, but we are finding that the screen size when run unattended still runs at a really small size, meaning the window size will be small which could affect your process if you don’t scroll the window sometimes. But it’s still working for us. (I have not had a chance to try changing resolution in the UiPath.Settings file which has a parameter for width and height).
Like I said, it’s still working for us even when the screen size used during “unattended” is smaller.
I have a small question with robots, we are planning to use “Attended Bot” for automation. And I need to know, Is there any possibility to change “Attendnt Bot” to “Unattended Bot”. Is there any migration process required?
As far as I know, “Attended” vs “Unattended” is just the license or label. There’s no real difference between the two when it comes to a functioning robot. Essentially, you are just giving it a label based on your license model and what kind of process you are running, and changing it between the two will not change how your process runs.
1.If I have a workflow that involves getting data from websites, updating them in spreadsheet then emailing them. Can this be implemented as unattended?
Yes
2.If above scenario involves ocr then can we still do it?
Yes
3.Does the Uirobot.exe that come with install serve both as attended as well as unattended?
As far as I understand, this depends on you licens.
4.Is there a separate install for unattended? If it is the same then how to start it as unattended?
As far as I understand, this depends on you licens. I therefore think it is the same installation.
5.How do we monitor the unattended without orchestration?
You can see in Orchstrator, the scheduled robots/processes, their runs and status of runs under “Jobs”
6.I am assuming an unattended robot can run only one wf at a time
Yes, that is my understanding.
an unattended robot will receive it’s updates automatically (pushed), attended robots need to pull updates. Also if you run a robot as an attended the machine policies can cause the machine to go to a lock screen or screen saver which can interfere with some activities. The unattended robot logs into the machine and keeps it from timing out while it is running it’s processes.
You also cannot schedule the attended robot from the orchestrator.
Using an unattended robot will also allow you to start it from the mobile app, hope this helps.
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