Appian RPA - How to Send Notifications When "Open Browser" Fails?

Question

Hi, 
 I'm using the Open Browser action in Appian RPA to launch a legacy web application. Occasionally, the website may be down, and when that happens, the bot execution fails with an error like "unable to navigate to URL." 
 In such cases, I would like to trigger a notification (ideally an email) to inform the support team immediately about the failure. 
 My questions are:

Is there any default mechanism in Appian RPA to send notifications (like emails) on task failures?

If not, what&rsquo;s the best practice to implement an email notification when an action like Open Browser fails?

Any guidance or examples would be appreciated! 
 Thanks in advance.

Harsha Sharma · Accepted Answer

I found a documentation : https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/25.2/rpa-9.16/design-patterns.html#handling-unplanned-exceptions Basis this I can suggest you the below 
 sanmathis said: I tried triggering the bot from a process model a 
 While triggering from process model, keep a boolean botExecutionResult variable in process model that stores false initially. Now you can use this variable to trigger additional workflows from the process model. 
 If Execution is successful then in the Execute Robotic Task output should save true in the botExecutionResult variable. In case of bot execution failure that you are seeing in your case, you can have an additional path to handle exception in the same process model using rule event to trigger the process to send email. 
 Rule event can be configured by selecting a time say 1 hour from initial process start time. If you feel the process could take longer to complete add some more buffer hours. Idea is if the bot execution fails now then in one hour also it will be failed so using the rule event you can initiate another path that will trigger the email notification process. 
 Below is a sample rule event configuration code 
 and(a!addDateTime(startDateTime: pp!starttime,hours:1)=now(),pv!botExecutionResult&#160;&#160;=false())

Varun Teja Gurrapu · Answer

Please add the exception Start process in cleanup & check.It will work.

Harsha Sharma · Answer

You can try to set a timeout time in seconds or web browser related condition actions within the robotic task along with Open Browser action. When the website is down, before bot failure, you can catch the exception/issue and then start an Appian process from within the robotic task that can send out the notification email. 
 I have not worked on this use case myself so you can give this a try and let me know if it works.

Varun Teja Gurrapu · Answer

HI sanmathis , You need to handle the possible exceptions using IS WEB ELEMENT PRESENT when you work on Browser Automation. You need to manually write the possible exceptions occurred and create a subprocess for sending an email. You can check Take a screenshot : If you select this option, the robotic task takes a screenshot of the host machine immediately after the action completes. In Else Condition, You have to add a robotic subtask contains upload document mentioned in below image and configure the email body. We currently don't have an option to grab the RPA error messages from the execution log unless you write an Custom Java Code.

Appian RPA - How to Send Notifications When "Open Browser" Fails?

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