Process job states in RPA Hub

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated October 2, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Process Job States in RPA Hub

    A process job in RPA Hub represents the execution of a bot process on a robot. Understanding the various states of a process job helps in managing and troubleshooting RPA workflows effectively.

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    Key Features

    • Running: Indicates that a bot process is currently being executed by a robot.
    • Canceled: Reflects that a bot process execution was manually canceled. If a new bot process with force start is triggered, the current one is marked as Canceled.
    • Success: Signifies that the bot process completed successfully.
    • Failed: Indicates that the bot process execution has failed to complete.
    • Skipped: Occurs when a bot process cannot execute due to conflicts with existing processes, such as priority settings or robot unresponsiveness.
    • Abandoned: Marks a process job that was executing but not completed when a new process job was initiated.

    Key Outcomes

    By monitoring process job states, ServiceNow customers can efficiently manage bot workflows, understand execution outcomes, and troubleshoot issues related to process execution and robot responsiveness.

    A process job represents the execution of a bot process on a robot.

    Table 1. Process job state scenarios
    State Scenario
    Running When a bot process is being executed by a robot, the status of the process job is updated to Running.
    Canceled When a bot process execution is canceled manually, the process job status is updated to Canceled.

    If Bot process 1 is already executing, and Bot process 2 with force start enabled is triggered, then the process job status of Bot process 1 is updated to Canceled, and the process job status of Bot process 2 is updated to Running.
    Success After a bot process is executed successfully by a robot, the process job status is updated to Success.
    Failed When a bot process execution fails to complete, the process job status is updated to Failed.
    Skipped Consider the following scenarios when more than one bot processes are triggered for the same unattended robot:
    • If Bot process 1 is already executing and Bot process 2 with force start disabled is triggered, then the process job status of Bot process 2 is updated to Skipped.
    • If two bot processes, BP1 and BP2, are scheduled to run on the same robot at the same time and BP2 has lower priority (higher priority order number), then the process job status of BP2 is updated to Skipped.
    • If two bot processes, BP1 and BP2, with the same priority order are scheduled to run on the same robot at the same time, then only one of the bot process would be selected randomly for running and the process job status of the other one is updated to Skipped.
    • If Bot process 1 is triggered and robot is waiting to login, and in the mean time Bot process 2 is triggered, then process job status of Bot process 2 is updated to Skipped.
    • The Start process action is invoked for Bot process 1. Until the execution starts, if other bot processes are triggered then the process jobs of all other start process requests are updated to Skipped.
    • When a robot comes back to responsive state, it will start to receive start process requests that were triggered when the robot was in the unresponsive state. The latest request which falls under the configured threshold is updated to Running and all the older requests are updated to Skipped.
    Abandoned
    • For any robot type, if a bot process was previously executing and the process job status was not updated to Completed, and a new process job is created, then the status of the previously executing process job is updated to Abandoned.
    • When a process job is running, the robot state is moved from Busy state to any other state.

      For example, when a process job is executing locally in the robot machine, a robot may fail to update RPA Hub with its heartbeat call due to network failure, certificate authentication failure, machine user profile corruption, and so on.

      In all such scenarios, when the robot calls the RPA Hub after an interruption, and then updates its status from Busy or Disconnected to Available, then the status of the last known process job is changed to Abandoned.