Activities

An activity is a single automation task performed by a bot. As a part of the activity configuration, you must define these properties:

  • Common: Properties common for most of the activities. For example: Continue on Error.
  • Input: Values required for an activity to run.
  • MISC: Display name property.
  • Output: Values produced after an activity is run.

This chapter describes each of the pre-defined automation activities that you can use for designing your RPA flow.

Note: Few activities require the need to create variables or arguments where the property data type must match with the created argument or variable data type. Else, an error is displayed. See, Variables and Arguments for details.

To display the list of available activities, click New Project or click on a particular project in the Recent table on the Home tab. Select the Activities panel to display the pre-defined activities.

See, Examples to review a few basic workflows using the pre-defined activities.

These activity categories are available:

  • Debug
  • Desktop
  • Email
  • Excel
  • Excel Online
  • Flowchart
  • HTTPS
  • IONAPI
  • OCR
  • OneDrive
  • PDF
  • Primitives
  • Programming
  • SharePoint List
  • State Machine
  • System
  • Two Factor Authentication
  • Web
  • Workflow

Microsoft 365 graph activities

Microsoft 365 graph activities provide a seamless integration between RPA application and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The activities leverage the MS Graph API that enables the RPA bots to access and interact with various Microsoft 365 services, such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and so on.

RPA developers can use Microsoft 365 graph activities to automate tasks. For example, document management and email processing. The activities included in Microsoft 365 are pre-fixed with “graph” as part of the name.

Prerequisites for using Graph API activities

To use activities in your automation workflows based on Graph API, these prerequisites must be met:

  • The user account must be part of Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online).
  • The mailbox associated with the user must also reside in Exchange Online.
Note: Microsoft Graph API is designed specifically for cloud-based services within Microsoft 365.Mailboxes hosted on on-premises Exchange Servers are not supported.

Additionally, all Graph API activities require specific permissions to run. The API permissions correspond to the functionality performed by the selected activity.

For example, Outlook activities that access shared mailboxes require these permissions:

  • Mail.Read.Shared
  • Mail.ReadWrite.Shared
  • Mail.Send.Shared

The permissions are added when the Microsoft Graph integration is configured for a tenant. You can navigate to Settings > Configurations > OAuth provider > Microsoft 365 page in the Mastermind application to verify the permissions assigned.

To use the Microsoft 365 graph activities, you must perform these actions:

  1. Create an Oauth of Microsoft 365 type on the Oauth Provider page (RPA Management > Settings > Oauth Provider). See, OAuth Provider Configuration.
  2. Authorize the create application on the Authorization page (RPA Management > Manage > Authorization. See, Authorizations.

These activities are included in the Microsoft 365 graph:

  • All Outlook Graph activities
  • All One Drive activities
  • All SharePoint activities