Using Unattended Desktop Flows on a VM

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Posted on by dwm365

We are implementing an RPA to handle file uploads for a vendor who doesn't have an API. The flow is essentially this:

Our user clicks link that sends an HTTP request to Power Automate (First step in our cloud flow is "When an HTTP request is received")
Power Automate connects to SharePoint and the File System to find and download the document based on the body of the original HTTP request
The Power Automate Desktop Flow is initiated that visits our vendor's portal, navigates to the correct "Upload File" page, and uploads the file

This flow works as designed in "Attended" mode, however running in "Unattended" mode gives the error "There is a user session on the target machine. Cannot execute unattended desktop flow."

We would like this to run in the background for our users, so we'd like this flow to be "Unattended", but our user is always going to be logged in to Windows, thus there will always be a user session on the target machine.

Is our best option to set up a VM with the Power Automate and Desktop Flow, or is there a better/easier solution that I am overlooking?

Thanks

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Power Automate Desktop

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dewrimburak 28 on at

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Why is the support team not responding? From where? From where? The support team doesn't know either. I will write to all Microsoft employees from LinkedIn.

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evilnw 78 on at

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Hello.
Try this solution https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/run-pad-flow
To run unattended desktop flows, the target machine needs to be available with all users signed out.

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Waylold 106 on at

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@evilnw , this is only partially true, depending if you're running it on windows server or not.

@dwm365 We are currently running a dedicated account for Unattended that handles all the RPA functions. We are executing it on a windows server, so we can run other accounts that are not the dedicated one, but this is generally for administration only. You will need to ensure that whatever account the RPA is executing under is not logged into the target machine, otherwise this error will persist. Hope that helps.

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dewrimburak 28 on at

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There is no solution for the issue I want in the given link. I am able to run attended bot on remote desktop computer. but I still can't run it unattended and still no solution.

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dewrimburak 28 on at

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@evilnw how can i log out all users on remote desktop computer?

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dewrimburak 28 on at

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@Waylold Can you show how you did this? do you have a screenshot how did you do it?

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Waylold 106 on at

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Using a cloud trigger in power automate cloud you'll need configure something to trigger your automation to run. Generally a schedule, button or other action. You'll then need an account with an Unattended license applied in your environment, we use one called power.automate. The cloud flow will then need to know which machine to point to using your connection configuration, then simply let the action go:

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dewrimburak 28 on at

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we have license but as i said i tried everything but i get same error

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Waylold 106 on at

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Did you apply the unattended license in power platform admin?

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hitakshi 162 on at

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How to set up a VM and how to connect with our flow in Power Automate?

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