Robot studio calling an API integration on the pega platform

General
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1

Hi,

We’re developing a group of small robot task automations belongs to same business unit. We decided to integrate all the APIs on pega platform instead of calling them directly from robot studio. This is first time we’re using this approach and we need help from you to build it in best possible way. Below are some of questions which I’m currently working on.

  1. APIs are configured on Pega platform, ex: in Data pages. Now robot studio need to call that data page from automation. How to do that? are there any other ways to configure APIs on pega platform if not data pages, like: activity, bi-directional communication through case, etc. which are easy to call from robot studio.
  2. Explain how to capture/read the API responses from Pega platform to robot studio after calling the data page or activity or any other alternate? and make further validations on robot studio with the response and send it as the input to next API call from robot studio to Pega platform.
  3. How second API on the platform could pick up input from robot studio?

Please also let us know if there are any better approaches otherthan what we’re currently working on. Looking forward to hear from you. Thanks!

BR/Rajesh

2

@RajeshS17304030

  1. The RobotActivity component is designed to be a means to invoke an attended or unattended Robotic automations from your platform. Using this component, your bots exchange data with your case through the fields you’ve exposed as properties on the component. This is simplest as the bot doesn’t need to call any APIs directly. You can pass it all of the data it needs through the case, and it can pass back all the data it acquires to other fields on the case. If your use case is attended, then each user would need to have Pega Robotics Runtime installed and configured on their machine and be triggering Robotic activities from their Pega case. If unattended, your cases would be sent to a work queue for processing. If you need to call other Pega APIs that you’ve exposed in your Pega application from Pega Robotics, there are two components to do this; the REST Client and Robot Manager REST Client. The former is for implementations where your bot is calling a REST API not associated with your Pega instance. The latter is for implementations where your bots are managed by Robot Manager and your APIs are available from that application. You can also write your own C# component to handle your REST calls if you prefer or use a C# script to do so.
  2. The APIs typically return JSON, so you’d use the JSONUtils component to work with the JSON. If you have an example of JSON you’d like to work with, please provide it and I can generate a sample for you. We do have an example of API usage in the installation folder for both 22.1 and R25. In R25, one of the great new features is the ability to access these directly from the Studio menu, however in 22.1, you can copy the projects out to your preferred directory, extract them, and open them as you would any other project. Please check out the StarWarsAPI project as it is a great example of how to use the JSON Utils and the REST Client. The JSON Utils typically is used by chaining results together. You’d make one call to select a list of nodes and then pass that to another JSONUtils to select the desired node from that node. Again, if you have specific JSON and need help parsing it, please provide it here and I will create an example.
  3. I am not sure I understand what you are looking for here. Please elaborate.
3

Thank you @ThomasSasnett

Thanks for your suggestions on Robot Studio and API integration.
Here’s a quick overview of our setup, current issues, and open questions:

:white_check_mark: Implementation Plan (Need Validation)

  • We’re using a case lifecycle approach:

    1. Queue for Robot triggers automation.

    2. Robot writes data to case properties.

    3. Pega Platform reads data from case, calls external API, updates the case.

    4. Robot resumes with updated data.

:right_arrow: Is this the best practice for such automation?

:gear: Setup Info

  • Installed: Pega Robot Studio vR25

:warning: Deployment Issues#### 1. Resolved:

  • Error: “Blank repository in app settings.”

  • :white_check_mark: Fixed using Pega AI Buddy.

2. Ongoing:

  • Error: “Can’t install PegaSynchronizationEngine with Robot Studio.”

  • :brain: AI Buddy: Can’t install both on same machine unless using common installer (which I don’t have).

:red_question_mark: vR25 Changes – Need Clarification

  1. Has the deployment process changed in vR25?

  2. Any updates in Robot Runtime installation or RuntimeConfig.xml?

  3. What replaces the Package Server base URL in RuntimeConfig.xml, since the PS concept is now removed?

Screenshot 2025-07-07 203153.png
Screenshot 2025-07-07 203153.png682×457 15.4 KB

4

@RajeshS17304030

Implementation Plan - Is this for attended or unattended bots?

As for installing the synch engine with Studio, you should not do that. If you want to use the Synch engine, install Runtime. Since the installations are relatively quick, if you have only one machine to use for testing, then I would uninstall and re-install between testing. Actual testing though should be done using a setup that mirrors production (so they’d not have Studio installed).

R25 -

  1. No
  2. I do not believe there are any material differences in installation. There are perhaps minor differences, but to my knowledge no. You should use the R25 PegaRuntimeConfig.xml, but they are functionally the same and the v22 would work.
  3. PackageServer is no longer supported. If you are connected to Pega Robot Manager, packages will be retrieved from the repository you have configured within Pega Robot Manager. There is no longer a setting to specify a PackageServer URL since it is not supported.
5

Thank you @ThomasSasnett

  1. The above implementation plan is designed for unattended automation, where few steps would be executed by robot and few API calls will be triggered by Pega platform and both read and write back to the case.
  2. After Robot runtime installation, we ran into a different issue again. Now The queue has pending cases, robot showing green (online) - ready for the assignment, but it is not picking up the work. When I signed out of the machine, it shows stopped, that means it is communicating with the machine. How to fix this issue. We’re in a urgent need, can you please let us know if suspect some issue here. Thank you!

BR

/Rajesh

6

@RajeshS17304030

  1. Unattended Bots are not intended to wait for responses. If you need to send results back to the case for further processing, it is a good idea to have the bot complete its assignment so it can be available for other work. Once the case has resumed, then it can send a new work item to a different bot to process the results.

  2. Is your work queue started? If you have work in the queue and the bot is ready for work, then it is likely your work queue is stopped.

7

Thank you @ThomasSasnett

  1. We would definitely think about your suggestion, thank you!
  2. Here I’m attaching the picture. machine 1 is online only when I keep it open and not picking-up the work. machine 2 is off and throws error - Runtime cannot be started with no package loaded.

Screenshot 2025-07-09 155207.png
Screenshot 2025-07-09 155207.png1261×737 32.4 KB

8

@RajeshS17304030

Machine 1 seems OK. I am not sure what is happening without looking at the machine. This might be more appropriate for a support request as they can look at your environment with you.

As for machine 2, it must be configured differently than Machine 1. I would make sure you have copied all of the configuration files from Machine 1 to it. Since it shows off, I wonder if your RPA Service isn’t running.

9

@RajeshS17304030 One thing I would start with is to check the RPAService log (%ProgramData%\Pegasystems\RPAService\RPAService.Log) and see if there is anything indicating a failure to communicate. If that is working, I would then check your RuntimeLog. There might be an indication in there about it failing to register or communicate. You’ll want to make sure all log categories are set to DEBUG for both logs to get the most information. If you do need to adjust either the PegaRuntimeConfig.xml or the RPAService.config (to set all the log categories to level 4), be sure to restart the RPAService and/or Runtime.

10

Thank you @ThomasSasnett

Progress Update:
We identified that Robot Manager was initially configured at the Enterprise-level application instead of the specific application level, which prevented it from picking up queued work. This misconfiguration has now been corrected, and the robot is successfully picking up work from the correct application context.

Issue & Follow-up:
However, after picking up the work, all test cases failed, which triggered the defined failure threshold and caused the robot machine to go offline. Despite multiple recovery attempts—including restarting the machine and manually launching Robot Runtime—the machine has not come back online.

I’m attaching the relevant logs for your review.
Could you please review and share your insights on:

  • What might be causing the machine to remain offline even after manual intervention?

  • Any additional configurations we should verify?

  • Should we consider redeploying the runtime or re-registering the machine?

Looking forward to your expert suggestions.

Machine-1_PegaRobotRuntime.txt (291 KB)

Machine-1_PegaPackageDownloader.txt (29.5 KB)

11

@RajeshS17304030I believe deleting the operator records and restarting the bot would allow it to get work, but with consecutive errors, it might just need to wait for the elapsed time before it can resume work. This is one where having access to your environment would help. Is it still offline today? If so, I would try deleting the operator records and then rebooting the bot machine. This will cause it to re-register. If that fails to get work, I would check the RPA Service logs and see if there are any indicators there. If not, I suggest a support request for this issue as we can probably resolve it once we see the entirety of your configuration.

12

Thank you @ThomasSasnett

We were able to bring it online with the exactly same steps as suggested. Some of your previous answered community threads also helped us to solve. Thank you so much!

I believe we can close this ticket for now. But in the coming weeks we have key implementations infront of us which we never done before, so I’m sure I would come back with some more questions atleast.

Thank you once again, have a nice evening and weekend!

BR\Rajesh

13

@RajeshS17304030 Thank you for the kind words. I am here to help.