Interact controller

The Interact controller is a Business Object that has been produced by Blue Prism Cloud to simplify the interaction between Interact and Blue Prism Design Studio.

Configuration

The Business Object utilizes Environmental Variables to control its operation, it requires a Collection as an input along with the submission ID (Request ID) to identify the Interact submission that it will be updating. There are no outputs from the Interact Controller though there is exception handling should an error occur during processing.

There are four Environmental Variables that need to be established to operate the Interact Controller:

  • EV-Interact-API-Key;
  • EV-Interact-API-Username;
  • EV-Interact-API-Password; and
  • EV-Interact-API-URL.

The first three of these Environmental Variables are obtained when the API is set up within Interact. The image below shows the API that has been established for our example process.

The same API can be used by multiple processes. Though it is recommended that a separate API is used for each digital worker.

The last Environmental Variable the ‘EV-Interact-API-URL’ is the URL used to access the Interact Web Server. The Environmental Variables are set in the System area of Blue Prism as illustrated below.

Data Items are then set changing the exposure to the ‘Environment’ setting and selecting the appropriate Environment Variable from the dropdown.

Operation

The Interact Controller has three distinct sections detailed below but in summary are:

  • Get Bearer Token Header;
  • Get Process Submission by Request ID; and
  • Update Process Submission by Request ID.

Bearer Token

The API connection is used to get bearer authentication from Interact. Bearer authentication is an HTTP authentication scheme that involves security tokens called bearer tokens. The name “bearer authentication” can be understood as “give access to the bearer of this token.” The Bearer Token is a cryptic string, usually generated by the server in response to a login request This Bearer Token is then used as authorization to retrieve and update information in Interact.

Note: The Bearer Token has a limited time span, which is 15 minutes. If the retrieval and update doesn’t complete within this period, a new Bearer Token will be required.

Get Process Submission by Request ID

This section of the business object uses the Bearer Token as authentication and the Request ID to retrieve from Interact the submission data and form structure. This is returned in a raw JSON format.

Update Process Submission by Request ID

The final part of the business object takes the raw JSON that has been retrieved, reformats it into an acceptable JSON, updates any values that have been changed using the ‘Replacements’ Collection that was created when the data was extracted from Excel and then posts the updated information back into Interact.

Running the Process

Go to the following URL to see a video (Part 1) illustrating the process in operation:

The video captures the information being typed into the Interact process form and being submitted. Then the process is stepped through, showing the data being extracted from Microsoft Excel. Finally, we revisit Interact and show the updated data in Interact.

Human/digital worker collaboration

The example process we are using contains ‘human/digital worker collaboration’ capability. Once the initial submission has been made and the data retrieved from Microsoft Excel and returned back to the user in Interact. The user can then action the second part of the process which is to decide whether to employ or reject the potential candidate and send them an appropriate letter. This is done from within Interact. The user can review the information returned from Blue Prism within the My Requests section of Interact, see below.

By clicking on the Open option, the user can see the original information submitted, first image, and then the retrieved information, second image.

We can see that the candidate who the BPSS check was performed may be an inappropriate candidate and so you may decide to send them a rejection rather than an acceptance letter. We can do this by selecting the Clone option at the top of the window. This duplicates the previous submission but keeps the data that has been returned from Blue Prism. Once cloned the user can change the flag to show that the BPSS flag has been completed.

By selecting the ‘Yes’ option the hidden field that we established using the Rules we set up when the form was created becomes available. We can then choose to select the appropriate letter as illustrated below.

By choosing the appropriate letter and then by pressing the Clone option again will create a new submission, see below.

By opening the submission we can see the update information being submitted. This information will once again be added into the Blue Prism ‘Interact’ queue. Running the automation again, the ‘BPSS Complete?’ decision stage diverts the process to produce the correspondence rather than performing the data extraction. The second video (Part 2) illustrates this part of the process and shows the letter produced as a result of selecting the ‘Rejection Letter’ option as the ‘Letter Type’. Go to https://video.blueprism.com/watch/pH4AbwdYrw9njgbG6ZK1JQ to watch these steps in action.