Overview

Leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools excel at automating repetitive tasks, but a key challenge remains: post-implementation, support teams are flooded with notifications and rely on frequent manual checks to assess workflow performance. Automation Watchdog closes this monitoring gap.

Welcome to Automation Watchdog

Automation Watchdog is a third-party Monitoring-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform that allows teams to create 'Watches' for their workflows. These Watches define monitoring constraints that align with the checks currently performed manually by support teams. The platform exposes APIs that allow workflows to report their operational status directly to their Watches. Teams only receive alert notifications only when the constraints are not met.

Monitoring an example Dispatcher & Performer workflow

In this example, a Dispatcher runs weekly on Fridays at 08:00 and is expected to complete by 09:00. It loads work into a queue for a Performer, which is expected to process items at least every 5 minutes until the queue is empty.

To ensure smooth operation, we will create the following Watches:

• Dispatcher Watch – Ensures the Dispatcher completes between 08:00 and 09:00 on Fridays. If it does not finish within this window, a notification is sent to the Support Team.
• Performer Watch – Ensures the Performer processes at least one work item every 8 minutes, allowing some buffer.

Before Automation Watchdog RPA COEs manually checked job histories to confirm the Dispatcher completed on time and periodically monitored the queue to ensure it was being processed. Additionally, they sifted through various emails—either from the process or the RPA platform—to determine whether they required to take an action or ignore the alerts.

Integrating Check-ins with Automation Watchdog

• The Dispatcher performs a Check-in to the Dispatcher Watch after successfully loading work into the queue.
• The Performer performs a Check-in to the Performer Watch after processing each item—whether Successful, a Business Exception, or a System Exception.

These Check-ins are executed via API calls from the workflow to Automation Watchdog, allowing real-time monitoring and automated alerts.

Automation Watchdog provides flexibility in defining Watches and determining where within the workflow Check-ins should occur, enabling comprehensive monitoring across various scenarios.

For a deeper understanding of how Automation Watchdog operates, refer to the Core Concepts section.