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Publishing a Process on Server

What does it mean to publish a process to OpenBots Server?

Publishing a process to OpenBots Server, on the surface, is a very simple process that involves creating a process in OpenBots Studio and the using the Publish Project button to upload the project to Server. When a project from Studio is published, as long as an OpenBots Agent is connected, its information will be sent to the All Processes tab in OpenBots Server as a .nupkg (NuGet) file that can be downloaded from Server onto any computer. This published process file will then be able to be run locally on any machines with an agent connected to Server.

The process will also be saved within a new Published folder that is stored in the OpenBots Studio project folder alongside the folder that contains the Main.json and project.config files. This Published folder acts as the default location that all published projects/.nupkg files will be stored in unless otherwise specified when publishing the project. All .nupkg files contain the packaged version of the project that was published. This file can then be uploaded and published to Server manually if Agent is not installed or connected. This is done by clicking the Add Automation button in the Automations tab.

But why publish a process at all?

The answer to this question is very simple. When a project is published to Server, it is added to the list of available processes that can be scheduled to run remotely using the Schedules tab (which will be discussed in a separate guide). Publishing a process also allows for the versioning of completed automations. This is done automatically by adding a version number to the name of the process when it is published to Server and to the file name itself when it is added to the Published folder. If a published process is scheduled to run, then it will be added to the Jobs tab and it can be run remotely from there. This will also be discussed in a separate guide.

What are the steps to publish a project?

As mentioned above, the steps to publish a project to Server is incredibly simple. But first, there has to be a project to publish. Feel free to open any previous projects created in OpenBots Studio or even create one yourself by following the OpenBots Studio How-To guides. For right now, the content of the project itself is not important. Once the project has been opened, then the publishing process can begin.

Step 1: In OpenBots Studio, open the project that needs to be published. Then navigate to the File Actions button located in the top-left corner. Click the button and select the Publish Project button. This will open a new window.

Step 2: In the window that appears, input the name of the author, the version of the project that is being published, and the description of the project itself. This information will not be viewable within Server, but will be viewable within the .nupkg file itself. The Local Path field specifies in which folder the .nupkg file will be saved. By default, the Published folder will be created. The ‘Location’ dropdown will allow the user to specify if the automation should be published to the Server or if only the .nupkg should be generated in the specified Local Path. An Agent connection with the Server is necessary to utilize the ‘Local and Server’ option. Finally, click the OK button and the project will be published to Server. The .nupkg will also be generated.

• If the version number is not changed each time that the process is published, then the newly generated .nupkg file will overwrite the previous file.

Step 3: Next, navigate to Server and click the ‘Automations’ tab. In this tab, the processes that have been published by fellow team members can be viewed and edited. By clicking on the eye icon in the ‘Jobs’ column, users can even view the number of times that the published process has run as well as the status of each execution. The processes can even be deleted if necessary.

Note that the Process Name will be determined by the name of the project in OpenBots Studio and will have a version number appended to it as well. This version number is determined by the number of times the process has been published.

At this point, the process has been fully published and can be utilized by OpenBots Server. This means that the process can now be scheduled to run whenever necessary using the Schedules tab in combination with the Jobs tab. Feel free to check out the Scheduling a Process to Run guide to learn more about both Jobs and Scheduling. This marks the end of the tutorial.

Publishing a Process on Server

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