On-Demand RPA Environment Provisioning With Auto-Termination
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current robotic process automation (RPA) systems require advanced technical skills for provisioning and management, limiting accessibility to users without programming expertise, and lack efficient on-demand provisioning capabilities.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that employs a user-friendly interface to select and provision a pre-defined RPA environment template with a specified lifespan, utilizing a hardware processor to automatically configure a virtual machine and platform-specific services, and de-activate the environment when the lifespan expires, enabling on-demand provisioning without requiring advanced technical knowledge.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If manual provisioning of RPA environments is used, then users can have full control over configuration, but users require advanced technical skills and time-consuming setup
Solution Approach 1:
The patent pre-configures RPA environment templates with all necessary components (virtual machines, services, configurations) before deployment. Users select from pre-defined templates that already contain optimized settings and dependencies, eliminating the need for users to perform complex manual configuration steps while maintaining full functional capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically provisions and configures RPA environments based on user selection of templates, without requiring manual intervention for complex setup tasks. The automated provisioning system handles resource allocation, service configuration, and environment deployment independently, making the process accessible to users without advanced technical skills.
2Productivity
If RPA environments are permanently provisioned, then continuous availability is ensured, but resource usage costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic provisioning where RPA environments are created on-demand based on user requests and automatically terminated after a specified lifespan or when no longer needed. This dynamic approach allows the system to allocate resources only when necessary, optimizing resource utilization efficiency while minimizing continuous resource consumption and associated costs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system allows users to specify provisioning lifespan parameters when creating RPA environments. By changing the temporal parameter of environment availability, the system can automatically deactivate and remove resources after the specified duration, thereby reducing ongoing resource usage costs while maintaining environments only as long as needed for productivity purposes.
3Loss of time
If custom RPA environments are created from scratch, then specific requirements are met, but provisioning time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent provides pre-configured RPA environment templates that contain commonly needed configurations, services, and settings. Users can quickly deploy standardized environments by selecting templates, dramatically reducing provisioning time. The templates are designed to meet typical requirements while maintaining the ability to customize specific parameters when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The system offers a dynamic approach where users can start with pre-configured templates for rapid deployment and then customize specific parameters as needed. This flexible provisioning model allows users to balance between speed (using templates) and customization (modifying parameters), adapting the provisioning process to the specific requirements and time constraints of each situation.
Data Source
AI summary
Some embodiments provide a user-friendly interface enabling a non-technical user to automatically provision a robotic process automation (RPA) environment on a target computing system such as a cloud computing platform or an on-premises server. The provisioned environment may include all necessary components (e.g., virtual machines, robots, robot orchestrator, databases, network links) to execute a robotic task. The provisioned environment is terminated automatically after or at a time specified by the user. The described systems and methods are particularly useful at trade shows or other events, in order to simplify and speed up the demonstration of RPA software capabilities to different customers planning RPA software deployment in different contexts, including on different cloud platforms or hybrid contexts combining cloud with on-premises host platforms.