Changes moving from IRPA to SPA

If you have been using SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (IRPA) before and are now switching to SAP Process Automation (SPA), there are some user interface and usability changes that I want to make you aware of in this short blog post. I follow a step-by-step approach, from how I setup my Desktop Agent with SPA to running the first bot.

General information on SPA

SPA general help pages: SAP Process Automation – SAP Help Portal

SPA “Using SPA” help pages: Using SAP Process Automation – SAP Help Portal

Registering the Desktop Agent

1. Open “Settings” Menu
2. Open “Agents List”
3. Click on “Register New Agent”, copy the link there and insert it into your Desktop Agent (“…” or “More Actions” menu -> “Tenants” -> “Add” -> Choose name and insert copied link under “Domain”, save and then “Activate” this newly added tenant
4. If SPA is correctly added as tenant in the Desktop Agent, your Desktop Agent should show up in this list

Registering the Desktop Agent with SPA

Deploying a bot

Under “Lobby”, all imported bot projects can be found. Before a project can be run, it needs to be deployed. To deploy a bot, open a bot project by clicking on its list entry.

1. Open the “Lobby”
2. Click on bot list entry in the lobby, here via example of the “Excel Report Refresh bot”. A new tab with the Application Development interface will open.
   1. (a) If the green “Deployed” info shows up, the bot is already deployed, skip “Deploying a bot”.
   2. (b) If bot has not been deployed, click on “Deploy”. The “Deploy a bot” window will open.
   3. In the “Deploy a bot” window, you can just deploy the bot and create a trigger later (I will show how to), or you can directly create a trigger when deploying the bot. Click on “Confirm” and then “Deploy” to deploy the bot. You can close the Application Development tab afterwards and return to the SPA Lobby.

Lobby

SPA Lobby

Bot Application Development

SPA Application Development

Deploy a bot window

Deploying a bot

Adding a trigger to a deployed bot

1. Open the “Monitor” tab
2. Open “Manage/Automations”. Here, triggers can be added for all bots that have been deployed.
3. Clicking on “Add Trigger” will open a new window
   1. Select the deployed bot package for which you want to create a trigger
   2. Click on next -> The following trigger creation windows will be known to you from iRPA. After filling them as before, add the trigger.
4. The trigger will appear in the trigger list and can be run from there using the “…” menu and “Run Now” as before. However, I was not able to immediately run it as no agent was connected – see next point.

Manage Automations

Adding new trigger

Creating a trigger

Adding agent to the Agents Management

In SPA, no environments are available at the time of writing like in IRPA that agents have to be added to. You can interpret your whole SPA tenant as one environment currently. The agent needs to be added to “Agent Management” to execute triggers.

1. Open “Settings”
2. Open “Agents/Agent Management”
3. Click on “Add Agent” and add your agent.
4. Your agent should appear in this list now.

After that, I was able to start the previously created trigger and the job was running on my machine via the registered agent.

Agents Management

Agents Management

Be aware!

As there are currently no environments in SPA, triggers will execute on all registered agents. To make triggers only work for a specific set of agents, you can employ “Agent Attributes”.

Agent Attributes

Via agent attributes, triggers or bots can be defined to run on a particular set of agents depending on their set attributes. Follow below example:

To add attributes for agents, they first need to be defined. To define attributes:

1. Open “Settings”
2. Open “Agents/ Agent Attributes”
3. Click on “Create Attribute” and define one. Here, I defined the attribute “Felix Test Attribute”, chose to have a “predefined” one that can only take the values “Felix” or “Not Felix”. Via those values, I will now define my Desktop Agent as belonging to “Felix” and defining the trigger I created earlier to only run for Desktop Agents with the attribute “Felix.
   Tipp: Use a more general, free attribute like “user” where every user can enter their name for their own machine.
4. To set the attribute for my agent
   1. Open “Settings”
   2. Open “Agents/ Agents List”
   3. Click on “…” of your agent and choose “Manage Attributes”. In the new window, I chose my attribute I defined earlier, “Felix Test Attribute” and set its value to “Felix”.
5. Defining the trigger to only run on Desktop Agents with specific attributes
   1. Go back to the trigger menu by opening “Monitor”
   2. Open “Manage/ Automations”
   3. Choose your trigger from the list
   4. Open its menu via “…” and click “Edit”
6. Trigger menu settings
   1. Open the submenu “Distribution”
   2. Choose “Agents matching attributes”
   3. Select the attribute and value that will determine on which agents this trigger will run
   4. Update the trigger.

Now, this trigger is set to only start the bot on Desktop Agents that have the attribute “Felix Test Attribute” set to “Felix. The trigger in the list should now show that one agent matches the attribute description. (see last screenshot)

Defining agent attributes

Defining the agent attribute

Setting attributes for my agent

Assigning the attribute to my agent

Assigning the attribute to my agent 2

Defining trigger to only run on Desktop Agents with specific attributes

Editing the trigger

Trigger menu settings

Trigger attribute settings

Trigger attribute matching agent attribute

Trigger matching one agent