Help Centre › Building Processes
An application is one real system your processes work in, such as Salesforce, SAP, a supplier portal or an Excel workbook. Its page brings together everything that touches that system: the processes and steps that use it, when it is down, what the bots reported about it, and how runs moved through its screens.
Use it when one system causes trouble for several processes at once. You fix it in one place instead of process by process.
1. Find your applications
Go to Library › Applications. Automize finds most applications by scanning your processes: a connector, the website a browser step is on, a desktop window, SAP, a terminal host, a database server, an Office app or a program a step starts.
- A new one shows as a suggestion, Found by the scan. Click Promote to keep it, or Dismiss.
- Scan processes for new applications runs the scan now.
- If two applications are really the same system, open one and choose Merge another application into this one…. This needs admin rights, because the other one goes to the trash.
2. Which steps belong to it
Match signals are the rules that decide which steps belong to the system. Add a match signal, choose its Type, and give the Value, for example invoices.example.com for a website or PRD for an SAP system. A signal can also be tied to an Environment.
The processes that use it lists every process with a step on the system, how many steps, how it last ran, and whether it is Held or Free to run. Which steps shows the steps in one process.
For a website, a browser step is only counted when the scan can tell it is on this site. If every browser step in a process works on this system, switch on All browser steps here are on this system for that process.
3. When it is unavailable
Many systems go offline at set times, for example every night for a backup. Tell Automize once, on the application, and every process that uses it waits. Nobody has to switch triggers off and on.
Add a window and fill in:
- Name, Repeats and Timezone.
- Goes offline at and Comes back at, and On these days.
- From and Until, for a window that only applies for a while.
- Stop starting work early by: minutes before the window when no new run starts. Leave it blank and Automize works it out from how long the processes really take, so a run is not cut off halfway.
- Reason: shown to whoever asks why their process is not running.
Before a window, the processes stop starting work and hold it. After the window they start again by themselves. A held process shows Held while … is unavailable on its page.
If the system goes down without warning, click It is down right now and choose when it is Expected back in. Its processes are held until then. Click It is back when it returns early.
4. What the bots reported
This section shows the last 30 days: sign-ins that were refused, times the system stopped working on a machine, runs stuck on it, and runs that failed on a step that drives it. Repeats are shown as one row.
Failures the system did not cause, such as a machine losing runs or Automize refusing to hand over a password, are listed apart under Not counted here, because this system was not the cause.
5. How the runs moved
Built from the steps the bots report, this shows what the runs really did on the system in the last 30 days:
- Time lost to steps that fail and carry on: time spent waiting for something that never came.
- Where runs stopped.
- Slowest when they work: the slowest screens.
- Screens the runs moved between, and the Pop-ups the runs met.
- The runs stopped taking a usual route: moves that happened often before the last 7 days and not once since. The system may have changed its screens, so check the steps around them before they fail.
6. Pop-up answers for every process
This section lists the pop-ups the system raised in your processes, and how each process answers them: Press a button, or Stop the run.
When one process has the right answer, click Use for every process. Every process on this system then gives that answer. A process's own answer always wins. If the process you shared from later answers differently, or no longer answers it, the page tells you; share again or Stop sharing.
A pop-up's title can name a record, so it shows as Hidden to people who may not see client data.
7. When its screens change
For a connector, Automize records the system's interface by itself and notices when it changes. For a website, desktop or file system, choose Mark the interface changed after an update. The application then shows Interface changed, and The processes that use it tells you which processes to test before they fail.
8. Skills
Skills are step sequences proven against this system that you can drop into new processes. See Snippets and App Skills.
9. Details
Owner, vendor and other details… holds the owner, vendor, version and website, how much it matters when it is down (Criticality), and who to call (When it is down, call). Credentials lists what its steps sign in with. Who changed what shows every change to the application.