After familiarizing yourself with all Requirements, this section will dive deeper into the components involved in RPA Orchestration and how you should set them up. If your setup is already prepared, jump ahead to Orchestrating RPA Bots

RPA Vendor Credentials

To orchestrate RPA bots, we will connect the Camunda Platform Workflow Engine to your RPA vendor via the Camunda RPA Bridge. This component will require configuration parameters to connect to your RPA vendor.

UiPath

The Camunda RPA Orchestration works with the UiPath Orchestrator in either the Cloud or On-Premises (v2019 or v2020.4) distribution. For testing purposes, we recommend using the cloud version.

To prepare the setup of the RPA Bridge, please

• Open the ‘Admin’ view of the UiPath Orchestrator Portal
• Open the ‘API Access’ overlay for your tenant (you might need to expand the tenant with the arrow next to it)
• Copy the values for
  • User Key
  • Organization ID
  • Tenant Name
  • Client ID

Furthermore, the API of UiPath Orchestrator requires a parameter called organization-unit-id. In short, this id relates to one specific folder in UiPath Orchestrator that contains the RPA bots you want to orchestrate. In order to obtain it, visit your Orchestrator instance, select the folder you want to work with, and fetch the id from the URL’s fid parameter.

You can read more about this id and how to obtain it in the UiPath documentation on Building API Requests. Feel free to also visit the UiPath Forum for further help.

Automation Anywhere

The RPA Bridge integrates with Automation 360 (formerly A2019).

To prepare the setup of the RPA Bridge, please

• Create or choose a user with a bot runner license (bots available to this user can be orchestrated in Camunda and the user will be used to run bots)
• Remember the password of that user or alternatively create an API key and write that down

Camunda Platform Run

Unless you already have a running Camunda Platform 7.14 or later installation, please

• Download Camunda Run (Enterprise)

You will be asked for a username and password that you have obtained together with your Enterprise license key.

Once you have downloaded Camunda Run, please

• Unzip the archive
• Launch the platform by executing

# Windows
start.bat

# Mac OS or Linux
./start.sh

Learn more about Installing Camunda Platform.

Camunda RPA Bridge

In order to install the RPA Bridge, please:

• Download the RPA Bridge
• Unzip the archive
• Add your Enterprise license key into a file called license.txt in the same folder as the application.yml file.

Edit the config file application.yml:

• In general, lines starting with a # are comments and will not be considered by the Bridge.
• license-file: Remove the comment character. The property value should be file:///${user.dir}/license.txt.
• camunda-api: Adjust the URL and credentials to your Camunda Platform instance if necessary.

UiPath Cloud

Edit the config file application.yml:

• add # to the beginning of each line under automation-anywhere-api, so it is not considered by the Bridge
• under the uipath-api element, adjust the following
  • url: set to https://platform.uipath.com/
  • account-name: the Organization ID from the API Access overlay
  • tenant-name: the Tenant Name from the API Access overlay
  • folder-path: adjust to the name of the folder you want to work with, in case you do NOT want to work with a folder called “Default”
  • organization-unit-id: see above how to retrieve your organization unit id
  • under the authentication element, adjust the following
    • type: set to cloud
    • auth-url: switch to https://account.uipath.com/oauth/token
    • user: the Client ID from the API Access overlay
    • key: the User Key from the API Access overlay
  • status-update-method: set to polling
  • webhook: add # to the beginning of each line under webhook, so it is not considered by the Bridge

UiPath On-Premises

Edit the config file application.yml:

• Add # to the beginning of each line under automation-anywhere-api, so it is not considered by the Bridge.
• Please follow the instructions in the config file related to UiPath On-Premises.
• For a quick start, we recommend using polling for the status-update-method.

Automation Anywhere

Edit the config file application.yml:

• Add # to the beginning of each line under uipath-api, so it is not considered by the Bridge
• Under the automation-anywhere-api element, adjust the following:
  • url: set to the base URL of your Automation Anywhere Controlroom instance
  • user: the name of the user with bot runner permissions, this user is starting the bots in your Automation Anywhere instance
  • password: the user’s password
  • If you want to use an API key instead, put a # in front of password, remove the one in front of api-key, and add your API key to that property

Logging configuration

We recommend enabling simple logging by adding this as the last line to application.yml:

logging.level.org.camunda.bpm.rpa.bridge.externaltask: DEBUG

Launch the RPA Bridge

Use the following command to launch the Bridge

java -jar camunda-bpm-rpa-bridge.jar

You should see a log message like

External Task Listener started ----

For troubleshooting, you can switch to extensive logging by adding this as the last line to application.yml:

logging.level.org.camunda.bpm.rpa.bridge: DEBUG

Learn more about configuring the RPA Bridge.

Cawemo Catalog

When you are using Cawemo SaaS, please open the settings page and verify in the “Details” section that your Enterprise license is active.

In order to use Cawemo On-Premises (version 1.6 or later), please follow this on-premises installation guide.

After logging into Cawemo:

• Open the settings page.
• Create an API Key with the name “RPA Orchestration”.
• Save the key hash for later use in the Camunda Modeler.
• Open the “User ID / Organization ID” panel to retrieve your User ID (which is not your email address).

Camunda Modeler

Please use the Camunda Modeler version 4.7 or later. In case you don’t have it yet, you can download the latest version of Camunda Modeler.

• Download version 3.0 or later of the Cloud Connect plugin for Camunda Modeler
• Extract the archive and move it to the plugins folder

# Windows
%APPDATA%\camunda-modeler\plugins

# Mac OS
~/Library/Application Support/camunda-modeler/plugins

# Linux
~/.config/camunda-modeler/plugins

• Restart the Modeler and verify that the Plugins menu contains an entry “Cloud Connect”.
• Open the configuration of the Cloud Connect plugin via the menu.
• Add the following settings:
  • User ID: from the Cawemo settings page
  • API Key: from the Cawemo settings page
  • Sync Catalog Projects: set to enabled
• Save the configuration dialog.

In the upper right corner of the Modeler window you should see “Connected to Cawemo”, indicating a successful connection.

Learn more about connecting Camunda Modeler with Cawemo.