Using the robot calendar for RPA Hub

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Using the robot calendar for RPA Hub

    The robot calendar in RPA Hub is designed to help ServiceNow customers efficiently view, create, and manage schedules for unattended robots and bot processes. It provides a unified, interactive interface to handle robot scheduling across multiple time zones, enabling better planning and utilization of robots.

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    This feature is applicable exclusively to unattended robots and unattended bot processes, delivering improved visibility into robot availability and capacity planning.

    Key Features

    • Robot Calendar Access: Accessible via the workspace from either a robot or bot process page, using the Robot Calendar button. Access requires specific roles such as rpareleasemanager, rpabusinessuser, rpadeveloper, rpasupportuser, or rpaadmin.
    • Calendar Views: Supports day, week, and month views to visualize bot process schedules differentiated by unique colors when multiple processes are associated with a robot.
    • Scheduling Management: Create, edit, and delete schedules directly on the calendar. The Preview button helps identify scheduling conflicts before finalizing.
    • Scheduled Maintenance Tracking: Scheduled maintenance (SM) days are visible on the calendar, allowing release managers and admins to assess and manage automation impacts by accepting or rejecting SM event cards.
    • Event Duration Plotting: The calendar visually blocks time slots based on the Runtime Threshold (Mins) specified on the bot process form and corresponding system property, indicating busy periods for robots.

    Practical Benefits and Outcomes

    • Enable comprehensive scheduling for unattended robots, improving operational efficiency and reducing scheduling conflicts.
    • Facilitate robot capacity planning with a clear visual overview of schedules and robot availability across time zones.
    • Optimize robot utilization by avoiding overlaps and accounting for scheduled maintenance windows.
    • Empower RPA release managers and admins to proactively manage automation schedules and maintenance impacts.

    You can use the robot calendar in RPA Hub to view and create the schedule for the unattended robots. It’s a simple, efficient, and interactive way to work with robots and schedules. By using the calendar, you can manage and plan a robot's schedule in a single view.

    Note:

    Robot calendar is applicable for unattended robots and unattended bot processes only.

    Robot calendar overview

    By using the robot calendar in RPA Hub, you get the following benefits:
    • Manage robots with multiple schedules across different time zones.
    • Create and manage robot schedules.
    • Check the robot availability, avoid potential conflicts, and schedule a run for the bot process.​
    • Perform robot capacity planning with better visibility and rich visual plotting in a single view.
    • Optimize the robot utilization and avoid any potential issues related to scheduled maintenance windows.

    Robot Calendar button

    You can view the calendar from either a robot or a bot process in the workspace. If the robot is associated with a bot process that has active, inactive, or no schedules, you can view the Robot Calendar button.

    The following roles are required to view the Robot Calendar button:
    • sn_rpa_fdn.rpa_release_manager
    • sn_rpa_fdn.rpa_business_user
    • sn_rpa_fdn.rpa_developer
    • sn_rpa_fdn.rpa_support_user
    • sn_rpa_fdn.rpa_admin
    The following example shows the robot landing page with the Robot Calendar button, when accessed from a robot.
    Figure 1. Robot landing page with the Robot Calendar button
    Robot landing page with the Robot Calendar button.
    On the ribbon of the robot calendar, you can see the robot type, life cycle stage status, robot state, machine name, the associated bot processes, and the associated robot pool name.
    Figure 2. Example: Snapshot of the robot calendar ribbon
    Example: Snapshot of the robot calendar ribbon.

    You can view the calendar from a bot process in the workspace, by selecting the Show Robot Calendar button. In the Select the robot to view the calendar dialog box, you can select a robot from the Robot list. Then, select Continue.

    The following example shows the robot calendar when accessed from a bot process.
    Figure 3. Robot Calendar from a bot process
    Snapshot of a robot calendar when accessed from a bot process.

    Robot calendar landing page

    On the landing page of the robot calendar, you can view the events of the bot processes. The schedules are for different interval types such as minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. For more information about viewing the robot events, see View robot events in RPA Hub. However, you can't see the past events on the robot calendar.

    You can view the robot calendar by the day, week, or month.
    Figure 4. Robot calendar views - day, week, and month
    Robot calendar views - day, week, and month

    If the robot is associated with multiple bot processes, events of each bot process is differentiated with unique color.

    Week view

    The following example shows the week view of the landing page of the robot calendar, with two bot processes. The week view starts from Sunday to Saturday.

    Figure 5. Week view of the landing page of the robot calendar
    Week view of the landing page of the robot calendar.

    Month view

    The following example shows the month view of the landing page of the robot calendar.

    Figure 6. Month view of the landing page of the robot calendar
    Month view of the landing page of the robot calendar.

    Manage schedules

    You can create a schedule on the Robot Calendar tab in RPA Hub to execute unattended robots. You can also identify any conflicts in the schedule by selecting the Preview button. For more information, see Create a schedule on the robot calendar.

    You can edit a robot schedule to resolve any scheduling conflicts or to modify the details on the schedule form. You can also delete an existing robot schedule that you no longer need. For more information, see Edit a robot schedule in RPA Hub and Delete a robot schedule in RPA Hub.

    Scheduled maintenance days

    You can track scheduled maintenance (SM) days on the robot calendar to manage your future automations. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) release managers and RPA admins have visibility to the potential impacts of current or future automation executions to take an appropriate call to action, such as, either accepting or rejecting an associated SM event card on the robot calendar.

    For more information, see Scheduled maintenance days in RPA Hub and Manage scheduled maintenance days in RPA Hub.

    Plotting event duration

    The value in the Runtime Threshold (Mins) field on the bot process form and the configuration in the related sn_rpa_fdn.process.runtime_threshold system property are used for plotting the event duration in the robot calendar. Based on value in the Runtime Threshold (Mins) field, the robot calendar shows as busy. For example, if this value is set to 60 (that is 1 hour), then in the robot calendar of this robot, it is displayed as blocked for that one hour.

    For more information about the bot process form, see Bot Process form in RPA Hub.

    For more information about the system property, see Configure RPA Hub properties.