Product Information
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 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 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 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:
- Exchange knowledge: SAP Community | Q&A| Blogs
- Explore: SAP Product Page | Product Demo
- Try SAP Process Automation For Free: Get Started | SAP Help Portal
And make sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube for regular content, events, and contests!
Can't wait to test it in my free tier!
Coming soon! 🙂
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!
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 ).
Hi Nishant, thanks for raising this. I checked with the dev team and they are aware of the issue and working on a fix.
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
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/
Thank you!
I'll download it straight away!
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.
Hi Bhanu,
The conditions to download Agent 3 are:
... if you are using the paid tier, you need:
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
Hello Martin,
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
Thanks a lot Erick! I'll pass this on to our awesome Dev team. 🙂
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
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.
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/
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:
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?