Seamless automation with server side triggers
In the past few years UiPath has been steadily adding new features to its vast enterprise automation platform such as end-to-end automation governance hub, AI-powered tools for identifying repetitive and manual tasks and cloud first capabilities. To our humble opinion 🐸, the only feature that was missing was the possibility to easily trigger robotic processes straight from an event. Other process automation platforms like Microsoft Power Automate, had this feature already from the start. Now, it was time for our Romanian automation unicorn, UiPath, to answer the needs of RPA engineers with Service-Side Triggers 💪🏻💥.
Early stages of Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Triggers were not reactive, meaning that a robot (unattended bot) would pick up a case, for example retrieve all unopened mails in the mailbox, at a pre-configured time. This is often in big contrast with the expectations of business users. Starting the process only after a scheduled event, led often to a "bad reaction timing" of the robot.
An example would be that a virtual bot starts his process every day at 3PM. The robot finishes its process by 4PM and a new request (e.g., a mail, sent by a business user) would coming in at 5PM, the request would only be handled the following day.
Next step in UiPath RPA
A partial solution came in 2020, when UiPath introduced Queue Triggers. Instead of scheduling robotic processes to start at a certain time, robots could now be triggered when a new case was added to the robot's queue. A big step in the right direction, but still not the ideal solution. Filling the robot's queue was still an issue. We saw two main solutions for doing this. First option: a process would need to run 24/7 to act as a listener that adds queue cases reactive based. To run this process an additional UiPath license would be needed, which is costly. Second option: using the UiPath Orchestrator API (Application Programming Interface) items can be added straight to the queue. However, this requires an extra (often custom) API implementation which requires specific knowledge and a solution outside the UiPath platform that listens for cases to come in and adds them subsequently to the queue.
Next generation of process automation with UiPath
In 2021 UiPath came with a new concept, Server-Side Triggers 💥, that solves all current problems stated above. UiPath describes this trigger as "a seamless combination between world-class UI and API automation, allowing both capabilities to be centrally accessed within the same integration design environment." In other words, they improved their API trigger service by creating pre-build connections with an easy configurable user inteface. This connected feature allows you to start your processes by configuring an event such as data updates, insertions or added data, and deletions.
We love to see this kind of evolutions as we are convinced that event-based triggers are the way to go for more end-to-end process automation. We are constantly looking for new and better ways to bring world class process automations to our customers. Are you also curious to see which connectors UiPath will release next? Don't hesitate if you have questions about attended/unattended automations, you know where to find us 🐸💪🏻.
