UiPath Integration Service, one of the star features of the UiPath 2021.10 release, opens up a brand-new universe to #RPA connectivity, enabling faster integrations and #automation at scale.
The Integrations Service now includes 14 new connectors, for services such as Slack, Box, Oracle Eloqua, or Zendesk – A lot to explore!!
UiPath Integration Service Introduction
In general terms “Integration Service” is the process of connecting different systems (sub-systems or external systems).
The goal is very simple, Integration is required so that different systems can “talk to each other” speeding information flow and reducing the time to market.
Another important fact is modern business processes require more connected systems and UI and API Automation both are required for managing automation effectively.
One may ask; As different IT Systems usually require data coming out needs to be transformed to a different data format so that the receiving system can process quickly.
To overcome this problem, the Common Data format approach is used and various UiPath Connectors (Say as pre-built API Integration) along with New Activity Packages help to manage the records into the various system.
At the time of writing this article as many as 14 New connectors for such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Dynamics CRM, NetSuite and SAP Cloud are available and hopefully, they will continue to grow.
Another important feature to look for is “Triggers” which provides a uniform mechanism for subscribing to events from the Connector platforms.
It gives you the flexibility to automatically start automation or processes in Orchestrator.
Let’s discuss in detail how UiPath Integration services can be used in your automation flow.
Why UiPath Integration Service
- Bi-directional workflow integrations
- Large Library of Connectors
- Easily set up and manage connections with standardized auth
- Provides a seamless transition between Ui and API based automation
Prerequisites for UiPath Integration Service
Integration Service for Automation Cloud requires you to enable “Integration Service” for the tenants you wish to use.
- UiPath Studio should be 2021.8.0 beta or higher
- Integration Service must be enabled from the Tenants settings page.
In case “Integration Service” is not enabled, you can navigate to “Admin > Tenants” then open “Tenant Settings using (⋮)” and click the check box for “Integrations”.
Once enabled you should be able to see the “Integrations” icon on the left navigation in Automation Cloud
More about the Integration Service
- What are Connectors – “Connectors” are nothing but pre-built API integration that provides a way to perform options in the target system. It usually consists of authorization and authentication for the systems you want to integrate. It further provides a way to manage the records in the target system with the help of “Activity Packs”.
You don’t need to re-invent the wheels for the standardized operation you can do in the target application.
Connectors can be accessed from the Integration service page -> Connectors Tab.
- What are Connections – “Connectors” uses “Connections” – You can treat them as a token for authentication and authorization. You can create as many connections as you need and set the required one as default in case much connection for the same services.
- What are New Activity packs – New Activity packs uses connections and leverage the Integrations service to provide easy accessibility for performing various operations.
- What are Triggers – Triggers provide a uniform mechanism for subscribing to events from the Connector platforms.
To Access the Triggers tab and click on the Add Trigger button. Select the desired Connector and Connection from their respective dropdown menus and finally select the desired Event and Record Type.
For Triggering the “Process” you need to select the desired Process from the dropdown.
Note- Event monitoring is currently set to poll every 5 minutes. So, it could take up to 5 minutes before the associated process starts; Once triggered you can verify started job as the source will be shown as “Integration Trigger “.
How it works
ServiceNow Connector for UiPath bridges the gap in Service Management by uniting UiPath and ServiceNow
- Expand your ServiceNow Capabilities with Free Automation
- Automate simple, mundane and repetitive L1 & L2 tasks
- Automate even non-IT processes using UI Automation
Obtain a ServiceNow Developer Instance
- Use the following URL for downloading the setup “https://developer.servicenow.com/”
- Give the registration details, and press submit.
- Check the inbox. We will get the mail for activating our account.
- When your account is active, log in through our credentials.
- Accept service & developer agreement.
- After completing the survey and press the submit button.
- After form submission, the ServiceNow dashboard emerges, press “Request Instance”.
Configure & Setup OAuth
While the documented steps are likely the same across all ServiceNow platform regions, it’s recommended that you follow the steps for your specific region in case there are differences
- Go to Your instance URL for example:https://dev105317.service-now.com
- Go to System Definitions > Plugins and verify the OAuth plugin Status is set to Active.
OAuth client application details.
For connectivity between your UiPath and service now instance. Create “Application Registries”. It will ask for the following details –
- Name- A unique name.
- Client ID- Client ID automatically generated by ServiceNow OAuth server.
- Client Secret- Client secret for the OAuth application. Leave it empty for auto-generation.
- Refresh Token Lifespan- Time in seconds the Refresh Token will be valid.
- Access Token Lifespan- Time in seconds the Access Token will be valid.
- Redirect URL- The redirect URLs authorization server redirect to. They must be absolute URLs and they are comma-separated. (for UiPath Use – https://cloud.uipath.com/provisioning_/callback.)
- Enforce Token Restriction- Restricts the access token usage to the API’s defined in the REST API Access Policies. Unselecting this option would allow access token usage across other REST API’s. Learn more.
Please make note of Client ID, Client Secret. This will be used in the next steps for creating connections using UiPath Integration Services.
UiPath ServiceNow Connector Authentication
To establish the connection, you need to give the connector the ability to retrieve the OAuth access token and enable the activities to successfully send requests to the ServiceNow API.
To authenticate on ServiceNow, you need to have an account with ServiceNow and know you’re the following:
- On the Authentication page,
- Subdomain- The Subdomain link to your ServiceNow account. (Example – https://dev105317.service-now.com/)
- OAuth Key- The OAuth Key for your ServiceNow account.
- OAuth Secret- The OAuth Secret for your ServiceNow account.
Once authenticated, you can access the different functionalities offered by the ServiceNow platform.
When establishing a connection, you allow UiPath for ServiceNow to connect to your ServiceNow account on your instance and allow it to interact with records like you
ServiceNow Activities Package
Using Triggers in the Integration Service
How it works
Triggers allow you to start processes based on events that happen in other systems. The Integration Service Connectors are used to expose events that are available for a given connector.
- To receive details of the record that resulted in the event, you can define the following input arguments of type String in your process and Integration Service will populate them when it starts the job –
- UiPathEventConnector
- UiPathEvent
- UiPathEventObjectType
- UiPathEventObjectId
The UiPathEventObjectId will generally contain the record primary ID that is being triggered. Example: Salesforce “AccountID”
- Publish your process to the Orchestrator, you can publish it to a shared folder or a personal workspace. If you are going to use Integration Service Connections in the process, make sure the user configured to run the unattended automation already has Connections created for them.
How to create and activate triggers –
Access the Triggers tab and click on the Add Trigger button.
Select the desired Connector and Connection from their respective dropdown menus. If there is only one connection configured for that particular connector, it will be selected automatically.
Select the desired Event and Record Type from their respective dropdown menus.
On the right, select the Process that you want to run and the respective Job Type.
Click the Add Trigger button to create your trigger and activate it.
Use Case Example - Create SAP User
Using Triggers in the Integration Service to receive Incident Record and Perform User Setup in SAP Application
01- User Create Incident Ticket
02- Events from the Service Now
03-Trigger UiPath Job
04- Create SAP User
Important Setup –
- To retrieve and work with a record that has a trigger on a job run, use the UiPathEventObjectId input argument to retrieve the record from the source system…for this example UiPathEventObjectId will return sysid for performing required operation.
- In UiPath Studio, Activate the ServiceNow Activities Package and use configuration wizard to setup connection and fetech record.
In my example; I used Incident Object to retrived from Service Now based on “UiPathEventObjectId” as sysid (input) and get required fields as shown below.
Incident Sample
- Description field will have all required information for creating SAP User.
- Details are parsed using string manupulation and passed as input argument for SAP workflow
- Once user is created, Incident will also get updated and marked as closed.
Job Details UiPath Integration Service
how can we use slack connector in uipath integration service, will you be able to do a tutorial?