Assistants and user interactions
Attended vs. unattended robots
Some processes are well suited to be executed by a robot without any human intervention. Humans will only, for example, receive a final report or come to help in case of errors.
In other cases, the robot needs input or decisions from human actors at specific points of the process. For example:
- A human operator chooses or uploads a file with source data.
- A human operator chooses among alternative paths.
- A human operator needs to check and confirm potentially destructive/irreversible operations
In all of these cases, the best solution is to set up an attended robot.
In Robocorp, we call attended robots Assistants.
How it works
On the code level, we suggest using the RPA.Assistant library which allows you to add a UI to your robots easily. On a technical level, the library will present operating system specific dialogs to the user.
The next step is to upload the robot to Control Room, and add it as an assistant. The end-users will then be able to trigger the robot and interact with it through the Robocorp Assistant installed on their machines.
Examples
- Assistant template
- Configurable Google Images search robot: A simple example that allows the user to choose a search keyword for Google Images.
- Providing an Excel file with data to fill a form in a web application: An example showing how to allow users to upload files as a data source in an attended robot.