Unattended Flows in a Physical Machine - License ?

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Posted on by ArcherJayden17

Hi,

I have Physical Desktop Machine located in my Office premises. I have 3 PAD flows as below

1. Flow that runs every 15 mins - SFTP, Powershell & SQL Server statements

2. Flow that runs once a day - gets data from SharePoint and writes to SQL table

3. Flow that runs once a day - gets data from SharePoint , converts to csv and saves it to network drive.

Recently I believe Microsoft have changed the license model and I am unable to run any new flows with Attended or Unattended mode. So I worked with my internal Microsft License team and procured the license seen in the image below per guidance from MICROSOFT. The License was activated on my account today and when I try to create new flow in Unattended mode. I get an error as below and want to know what could be the issue ?

Error Error

Current License

Thanks

Categories:

Power Automate Desktop

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Pstork1 69,665 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Since its a physical desktop are you trying to run the unattended flow while your user account is logged in? If so that is the problem. On a Desktop OS you can only run one desktop flow at a time and to run unattended your user needs to be logged out of the workstation. Other than that, you need to have both a per user license with RPA and an unattended add-on license. The per user license with RPA should be enough to run in attended mode, but not unattended.
ArcherJayden17 14 on at

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@Pstork1 Thank you for the response. All of my existing flow are running in Unattended Mode. They all run fine and I am trying to add one or two more flows to existing 3 flows.
Pstork1 69,665 Most Valuable Professional on at

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From a licensing standpoint you are required to have both a per User with RPA and an unattended add-on to run unattended desktop flows. I can't explain why you have 3 that work, because they shouldn't unless you have the add-on. But the software doesn't always succeed in applying the exact terms of the licensing agreements. In your case that's why you have three that work. But to get anymore you'll need to get the unattended add-on or run them in attended mode.

Are you sure you are running them from a cloud flow in unattended mode? Or do you mean something else by unattended?
ArcherJayden17 14 on at

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Alright, so my intention is to run all of these flows in unattended mode hence I should get "Power Automate per user with UnAttended RPA Plan" ?

Yes I am sure that I am running PAD flows from cloud using unattended with user being logged out off the machine but machine is powered on.
Pstork1 69,665 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Then yes if you are running them from the cloud in unattended mode you need one unattended add-on per bot (bot being a desktop flow running in a session). Multiple flows running concurrently on the same machine are each considered a bot. But in your case I believe one bot add-on is enough. The add-on requires that you also have a per user with RPA license, which you do.
ArcherJayden17 14 on at

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Thanks @Pstork1
One last question, This Unattended Add-On can only work on whole Environment?
Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Yes, the add-on is assigned per environment. Not sure why you ask that, but if you want to limit the flows that run unattended, the mode is defined per flow. But if you want to limit user access to the add-on, I would suggest creating a separate environment for that.
Pstork1 69,665 Most Valuable Professional on at

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The unattended Add-On allows you to run one bot at a time unattended. If you could assign it to multiple environments you could run different bots at the same time in the different environments. So yes, it is Environment specific. But you can still only run one desktop flow at a time in unattended mode if you only have one add-on even if they are all in the same environment.
ArcherJayden17 14 on at

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thank you both @Pstork1 & @Agnius for your inputs.
I have got the add-on however due to capacity contraints we could only apply this Unattended Add-On to Personal Productivity which has almost all Company user profiles as per the looks of it. So my question is If I run 5-6 flows on unattended in this one machine which will work on queue basis FIFO probably. Can someone in Personal Productivity also use Unattended mode and if they run the flows , will that interrupt or cause my flows to go on running state forever depending on what others might do ?
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Pstork1 69,665 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I can't give you a definite answer on that, but as I understand it No they can't. I believe the add-on will be tied to your Per user license with RPA so you are the only one that can use that Add-on.