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

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
June 3, 2025
13 replies
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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’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.

Best answer by harshas2775

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

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!botExecutionResultÂ%A0Â%A0=false())

harshas2775

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.

S

sanmathis230174Author

Hi Harsha,

Thanks for the response!

I also explored using browser conditions, thinking I could add a check and trigger a process if the condition fails. However, I noticed that browser conditions only evaluate after the page is successfully loaded. In my case, the bot fails while loading the page itself, throwing an error like "unable to navigate to URL," so the condition never gets evaluated.

To handle this, I tried triggering the bot from a process model and attempted to catch the error using the Execute Robotic Task smart service. I found the FailureSection output, which indicates whether the error occurred in the Setup, Main, or Cleanup section. However, it doesn’t give detailed error context or allow direct handling of the error itself.

Is there any other way to catch exceptions or handle bot execution failures from the process model or within the robotic task to trigger a custom email alert?

Any suggestions would be really helpful!

harshas2775Answer

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

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!botExecutionResultÂ%A0Â%A0=false())

srmm0001

Hi ,

After Open Browser, use the "Does Browser Window Title Match?" condition with a short timeout to detect failure.
If it returns false, use "Is Expression True?" to control the flow and call "Start Process" to trigger an Appian process model.
In that process model, configure an email node to notify the support team about the failure.

S

sanmathis230174Author

Hi,

Thanks for the response.

I’ve tried a similar approach. In my robotic task, the first step is to open the browser, followed by navigating to the URL. However, the bot fails during the "navigate to URL" step itself—before any page content loads. Because of this, I'm unable to use browser conditions, as they only evaluate after the page is successfully loaded.

Since the failure occurs at the navigation step, I’m looking for a way to catch this specific error and trigger an appropriate notification or fallback action.

Would appreciate any suggestions or workarounds for handling this type of failure gracefully within the RPA flow or from the process model.

Thanks!

varuntejg243705

HI [mention:24d5f253c64047e4b97d2b72e6a80616:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] ,

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.

S

sanmathis230174Author

Hi,

Thanks for the response.

I’ve tried a similar approach. In my robotic task, the first step is to open the browser, followed by navigating to the URL. However, the bot fails during the "navigate to URL" step itself—before any page content loads. Because of this, I'm unable to use browser conditions, as they only evaluate after the page is successfully loaded.

Since the failure occurs at the navigation step, I’m looking for a way to catch this specific error and trigger an appropriate notification or fallback action.

Would appreciate any suggestions or workarounds for handling this type of failure gracefully within the RPA flow or from the process model.

Thanks!

varuntejg243705

There is no need to use Navigate to URL, as the open browser already has an option to input URL.

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