This is a discussion topic for the original post at Beyond Python RPA: Orchestrate any automation with BotCity Maestro - BotCity | Python RPA | Blog
You may already have different types of automation running in production. And suddenly, you know of a tool, like BotCity Maestro, that can help you manage and orchestrate your automation. And your thoughts go to this question, “Do I need to develop all my bots with Python RPA?”.
You can put those thoughts aside! Understand in this article how you can run any bot in BotCity Maestro and orchestrate the executions and not need to rebuild anything with Python.
What types of automation can I run?
Any executable or automation file you already have and can pass during setup, the command to run. That is, files of the type:
- bash or bat;
- executables generated from projects in various programming languages, such as C#, Java, Visual Basic, VBA, Ruby, and Go, among many others;
- automation executables that you have on other platforms and tools for building automation, even low-code ones;
- among many other possibilities.
Another example: if you have automation developed with Selenium, there is another way to reuse what you already have and use our orchestrator to manage what you are running in production. See in this article how to do this.
How does it work?
It was already possible to run automations built in Python, Java and JavaScript inside our tool, right? In the “easy deploy” step, for example, you only had to choose which technologies you used in your automation.
But now you can run and orchestrate any bot or command by selecting the “Command” option from the technologies available in our orchestrator.
You can do the “easy deploy” as usual by accessing this option from the left side menu in BotCity Maestro. After that, in the center of the screen, you will have access to the first settings of the deployment. In the first step, add the name of the automation.
Important: the name of the automation must have the same name as the file you will deploy. In our example, the file is called “DemoCommand.sh”. Therefore we name the automation “DemoCommand”.
On the next screen, you need to add the file for your automation. In the example below, we are using a .sh type file, meaning it’s a bash file.
After uploading the file, you will choose the “Command” option in the “What is the bot technology?” item. The name will be already filled in as the version. But you can adjust if necessary or if they are new releases that you are deploying.
In the item “What is the command to run?” is where you should put the command line that you would type if you were running it manually on your computer.
Important: Take advantage of the ease and flexibility to add the configurable parameters of your command if needed.
Below is an example of how you could capture these parameters in a bash file that we are using for demonstration purposes. The parameters are the elements that you type after “.sh” and are separated by a space. Add the following to your code:
SERVER=$1
TASKID=$2
TOKEN=$3You can test via command line with echo to validate:
echo "Server: $SERVER | TaskID: $TASKID | Token: $TOKENThe third step is to add the runner on which your automation should run. Remember that you can use one that has been created before, or you can create a new one for this automation.
And finally, click “deploy” to finish the process. After that, you can create tasks, schedule them, and keep track of all the management of your bots in the same easy and smooth way you already do with your other automations.
Besides the interface, can I interact via API with BotCity Maestro?
Yes. You can use the available APIs. Whether it is to make “easy deploy”, create automation and tasks and interact with them, add alerts and error and log settings according to your process needs, and much more.
To better understand how to use the APIs, go to our documentation for all the guidelines on how to do this and which APIs are available. Please take the opportunity to explore the features available in our orchestrator and get the best out of our platform, fulfilling the needs of your automated processes.
I don’t have an account yet, can I try it out?
You can click here and create your community account, which means that you can test some of the features, like the command feature, for free. And please take the opportunity to get to know our community, ask your questions, and exchange experiences and knowledge with others.
Remember to always bring your feedback. And if you develop some automation to test the functionality, feel free to contribute to the community by making your bot open source and available in this repository.