Create a configuration (run)

When you are ready to put your robot to work, it's time to create a run. A run is a configuration applied to the robot's execution; that is, how the robot behaves and when it operates.

To create a run:

On the Projects page,

1. Select your robot and

• Select Create new run at the top of the screen from the drop-down menu.
  

or,

• Select the New Run button in the slide-in panel.
  

This adds the run just below the name of your robot.

2. Enter a name for the run, then select Continue.

3. Select the name of the run and select the Open button in the slide-in panel.

You’re presented with the run page where you can:

• Edit various attributes of the run.
• View third-party integrations associated with the run.
• Initiate and view robot executions using the run’s configuration.

Let’s start with the Configuration tab:

A run's configurable attributes include:

• Run id: The Run id is used internally and doesn't need to be changed.
• Run name: The user-assigned name of the run.
• Number of simultaneous executions: The number of robots that will work to scrape the Web site.
• Maximum retries: The number of attempts for each input (result).
• Proxies: The proxy server(s) the robot will route traffic through to/from the Web site.
• Activate Schedule: Enables user-defined schedule for the run.
• Activate Timetable: Time periods during which the robot will operate.

Switching to the Integrations tab, you will see lists of third-party integrations and file formats in which to store your robot’s results.

Moving on to the Executions tab, you will see that This run has no executions yet, which simply means you haven’t yet put your robot to work.

An Execute Now button allows you to launch your robot into action with the current run configuration.

Upon executing a run, the screen changes to list active and historical executions. Each execution is listed with the run name, the Web site to scrape, the status of the run (Starting, Running, etc.), a progress bar and percentage complete reading, number of results extracted, a View button, and a Start/Stop button.

Selecting the View button here opens the execution screen, which features two tabs:

• Information
• Results

The Information tab lists an abundance of information about the execution, including a simple log of events.

The Results tab lists each set of results scraped from the website, along with status and error indicators for each set of results. Screenshots of the website are also available to help troubleshoot your robot. Also, daylight savings time (DST) is taken into account.

About Retries
When you specify a Max retries value greater than 1, the system will automatically re-run the robot for the inputs/results that failed. The maximum value you can specify is 5. This can be useful for robots that extract data from unstable websites or for handling proxy connection issues.

When an input/result is retried, all of its data (rows) is first deleted and the robot is then re-executed with the input/result.

It is possible to manually retry failed or stopped results using the Retry failed/stopped button on an execution:

Currently, it is not possible to see that an input/result has been retried.

About Time Schedules
The Time column on the dashboard shows the next execution time in your local time (based on the browser/OS config) but the run is executed in the timezone specified in the run configuration. If you hover over the values in the Time column, you will get the time in your local timezone.

Example 1

• Run configuration: every day at 03:00, timezone: EST ~ UTC/GMT-5
• Dashboard is viewed in timezone EST at 12:00 AM (17:00 in UTC)
• Time: 22:00 (in 11 hours, 03:00-17:00 but one extra hour due to DST) (03:00 in UTC)

Example 2

• Run configuration: every 5th hour (00, 05, 10, 15, 20), timezone: UTC
• Dashboard is viewed in timezone EEST at 14:00 (i.e., 11 in UTC)
• Time: 18:00 (in 4 hours) (15:00 in UTC)

Example 3

• Run configuration: every 7th hour (00, 07, 14, 21), timezone: UTC
• Dashboard is viewed in timezone EEST at 19:00 (i.e., 16 in UTC)
• Time: 00:00 (in 5 hours) (21:00 in UTC)

Example 4

• Run configuration: every 7th hour (00, 07, 14, 21), timezone: EEST
• Dashboard is viewed in timezone EEST at 19:00
• Time: 21:00 (in 2 hours)

Daylight Savings Time (DST)
Due to a bug in the programming runtime we use, there might be issues with certain time zones, e.g., America/Santiago. To work around this, we suggest you use UTC which does not use DST.