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Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK

SAP Process Automation “Agent 3” Now Available – The Gold Standard of Desktop Automation

After three years of research and development, the SAP Process Automation team is proud to announce the release of its Desktop Agent version 3. We like to call it “Agent 3.”

Agent 3 is the desktop tool in the Process Automation suite that allows you, the citizen developer, to automate any components running on your desktop.

It allows you, the business user, to click a button to perform hundreds of complex actions that could ordinarily take you many minutes or hours, and to avoid the tiresome errors and corrections that come from typing and clicking in different applications all day.

The Process Automation team has rewritten Agent 3 using modern development frameworks and leading-edge techniques to give you a fresher, more responsive, and agile tool that is faster, more accurate and more robust than its predecessors.

We have also taken a closer look at how the Agent is used and how it gets into users’ hands. Our team’s work in this area has been driven by the desire to get the Agent to you as seamlessly as possible.

Let’s look at what is really in Agent 3.

The Gold Standard

While Agent 3 was researched, developed, and rewritten over the last three years, it is based on code with almost 20 years of experience in the real world.

The front end is now based on the leading-edge Electron framework. You already know Electron from wildly popular tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack or Figma. Developers love Electron from the world’s top coding application: Microsoft Visual Studio Code.

Electron itself is based on two of the most widely used standards-based frameworks out there today: Chromium, for the user interface, and Node.js for file, desktop, and other back-end operations.

Built on Electron, Agent 3 rests on the number one open-source development platform available, with tens of thousands of developers contributing to its security, reliability, and evolution, and adds SAP’s unique ability to interact with your web and desktop applications to run automations with the highest possible performance.

Smart Update, Simplified Download, Fast Project Switching… and More

Agent 3’s new architecture enables light-speed development of modern new features that make your life easier.

The flagship innovation in Agent 3 is the Smart Update: a fully synchronized update system that keeps time with the SAP Process Automation cloud releases and makes sure you and your users always have the latest version of the Agent installed.

Agent%203%3A%20Getting%20a%20new%20version

Agent 3: Getting a new version

Out of the box, Smart Update will keep you and your team on the latest Agent version. You can also switch to Managed Update mode where you have a point-and-click choice of which version to deploy in your organization, and which version to test before rolling it out. Our User Experience team interviewed hundreds of users to design a simple interface to let you manage your Agent deployment strategy.

Since the Agent update mechanism has been redesigned, it also allows you to download it directly from your SAP Process Automation cloud application – you no longer need to find your marketplace credentials and compare the long version numbers to find the correct package. There is one download link, and it is right in SPA, where you need it.

The Electron framework also enables a much more responsive UI (User Interface), built on web technologies, so you will notice much faster switching from project to project, theming, and developers get the benefit of moving quickly from design to test to runtime modes. All this with no more restarts – Agent 3 is always ready to go to run your Automations!

Agent%203%3A%20Ready%20to%20Run

Agent 3: Ready to Run

Finally, being built on JavaScript technology means Agent 3 benefits from community research on testing and debugging tools and frameworks, and all our early adopters have praised the improvements in stability and robustness of the rewritten Agent.

The Future

Innovations such as Remote Desktop Protocol management on Windows Servers, as well as Dense Agent deployments and new cloud-suite connectors are coming to the exciting new Agent 3 platform.

You benefit already from installing Agent 3 today, but what it will offer you in the future is even more exciting!

When is it Available?

Agent 3 is generally available now, since September 20th, to all SAP Process Automation Customers.

Trial customers can also get Agent 3 from this page starting today, October 6th: https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#cloud.

How to get it?

Agent 3 is a simple one-click download from your tenant. Go to your SAP Process Automation cloud, and on the Settings, Agent Update page, follow the big blue button to Go to Download Page.

Agent%203%3A%20Easy%20first%20download

Agent 3: Easy first download

This Download page will ensure that you have the absolute latest version of Agent 3 installed, and even better – once installed, it will download the latest updates from SAP by itself.

What is SAP’s strategy for Agent 3?

SAP plans to move all its automation execution to Agent 3 in the near future.

Of course, we are here to help all our clients during migration and will continue to support Agent 2 to keep your business running.

To benefit from the newest innovations and architectural updates, we encourage you to start testing your existing automations with Agent 3. Both versions: Agent 2 and Agent 3, will continue to live alongside each other while our customers proceed with their tests.

 

We hope you will love the improvements in the new Agent 3, and the whole SAP Process Automation development team is excited to hear your feedback and to see you using it to keep your business Running Better!

 

For more information on SAP Process Automation:

And make sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube for regular content, events, and contests!

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      16 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Dario Fracassetti
      Dario Fracassetti

      Can't wait to test it in my free tier!

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Coming soon! 🙂

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dario,

      Good news. We have published Agent 3 now for Trial and Free Tier users, here: https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#cloud

      Happy testing!

       

      Author's profile photo Nishant Bansal
      Nishant Bansal

      Hello Martin,

       

      First of all kudos to all the Team for Agent 3.0. I have installed the Agent 3.0 and try to connect the SAP Backend via activity (Set SAP Connection (Basic) ) . Now, I am getting one exception in 3.0 ( which was working in Agent 2.0 ).

      The type initializer for 'SAP.Middleware.Connector.RfcDestinationManager' threw an exception.
       
      Thanks
      Nishant

       

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Nishant, thanks for raising this. I checked with the dev team and they are aware of the issue and working on a fix.

      Author's profile photo Nishant Bansal
      Nishant Bansal

      Hello Martin,

       

      Do we have any tentative date for fixing it? Else, I have to uninstall 3.0 and Install the Agent 2.0 version.

       

      Thanks

      NIshant

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      The fix is in progress and next delivery of the Agent is in November, so that's a reasonable target.

      If you have a paid account with SAP you could also create a support ticket and we could also exchange more details through the support system.

      https://launchpad.support.sap.com/

      Author's profile photo Dario Fracassetti
      Dario Fracassetti

      Thank you!

      I'll download it straight away!

      Author's profile photo Kasturi Bhanu Ravindranath
      Kasturi Bhanu Ravindranath

      Hi Martin JAKUBIK ,

       

      If we don't have a secret ID and want to create it through RBSC Portal. What is the role required to do that...?

      Please find the attached picture to see the error I am facing

       

      Can you please help me with this..!!

       

       

      Thanks in advance,

      Bhanu.

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Bhanu,

      The conditions to download Agent 3 are:

      ... if you are using the paid tier, you need:

      • an an S-User with a download license.
      • If you have this S-User, you can then create a technical user and copy this technical user's credentials to SPA.

      You can find details on that in Agent 3 doc here: https://help.sap.com/docs/IRPA/23d473160d5b425aa37fc6318ad9279f/0298059618c34fc8b107e801645354a6.html

      ... if you are using the free tier, you can download the Agent here https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#cloud.

      You can find more details on the SPA Agent repository (where SAP hosts the Agent download) here:

      https://help.sap.com/docs/RBSC/0a64be17478d4f5ba45d14ab62b0d74c/896168db683a4115b885faa0718e5f20.html?locale=en-US

      Author's profile photo Erick Gómez
      Erick Gómez

      Hello Martin,

      My%20Agent%203

      My Agent 3

      Thank you very much for the excellent news around Agent 3, I have already updated my agent to the new version, it was very easy thanks to the details in your blog.

      Additionally, I want to say that the new interface is amazing, I like it very much, congratulations for this great update.

      From Mexico, a hug.

      Erick Gómez

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks a lot Erick! I'll pass this on to our awesome Dev team. 🙂

      Author's profile photo Erick Gómez
      Erick Gómez

      Excellent news Martin,

      I'm doing tests and I found a detail, I wrote the question to validate if it happens to other users.

      https://answers.sap.com/questions/13731520/desktop-agent-30-extension-chrome-edge-sap-process.html

      Best regards,

      Erick

      Author's profile photo Patty Choi
      Patty Choi

      Dear Martin,

      I try to follow the developers.sap.com 's  tutorial to install the Desktop agent3 by download the latest version from developer tools website.   I got problem to add the extension to Chrome and Edge browser of my Window 10 PC.

      For initial installation of desktop agent3 software,  it did add the 3.0 extension to my Chrome browser. But I find my Chrome browser  is out of date version,  and thus remove the extension from Chrome and Edge browser and  uninstall the desktop agent3 from my PC.

      After re-install the new Chrome browser in my PC,  I did run the desktop agent3 installation again but no extension can be added to my Chrome or Edge browser.   As the current developer version of Desktop agent 3 installation tool  do not have a repair option to re-add the extension to my Chrome or Edge browser , pls advice the proper steps how to add back the extension add-on to Chrome or Edge browser ?  I just using the process automation free plan in my BTP trial account to try out the process automation features,  if I use the process automation > setting in my trial BTP login ,  error message saying installation of desktop agent3 valid for admin user only.

       

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Patty, sorry for the delay. Are you still having this problem?

      In your case, reinstalling Agent 3 should have also re-installed the extension in your browser. If this is not the case, our team can investigate it.

      Also, if you have a paid account with SAP you can create a support ticket and we could exchange more details through the support system.

      https://launchpad.support.sap.com/

      Author's profile photo Martin JAKUBIK
      Martin JAKUBIK
      Blog Post Author

      Hi again, sorry just re-read the last part of your comment where you confirm that you are using the free tier.

      As I understand it you:

      1. installed the Agent correctly with an out-of-date Chrome
      2. removed the extension from your out-of-date Chrome
      3. updated Chrome to current version
      4. re-ran the Agent installer

      Expected outcome:

      You expected the Agent installer to re-install the extension in your updated Chrome.

      Observed outcome:

      The extension was not installed.

      Can you confirm?

      Also, if you go to your Extensions in Chrome, can you confirm if the Agent extension is present or absent?