Queue management in Power Automate

[Twon]

Hi

I would like to ask about you opinion regards "Queue management" in Power Automate.

I'm looking for similar solutions to these implemented in Blue Prism and UiPath. I know similar topic has been created some time ago on this forum, but I haven't seen any answer so far so I thought it might be good idea to ask again.

I think we could consider(If I'm not mistaken) such posibilities in Power Automate like:

1. Dataverse table acting like a queue
2. Table created on SQL Server connected via Gateway acting like a queue
3. Azure Storage queue
4. Azure Service Bus queues
5. Dynamics 365 queue

Do you have experience guys with any of these? Would you see some of them more suitable than others? Is there any solution recommended by Microsoft?

[eric-cheng]

Hi @Twon ,

Can you explain the use case a bit more.

Are you after queue management or state management.  

Queue management for RPA products like AAE and UiPath is usually around workload management and load balancing between bot runners/agents.

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[Twon]

@eric-cheng 

So queues in UiPath and Blue Prism work like kind of to do lists. Once bot is running it takes cases to process from queue and mark them as either completed or exception at the end of processing. Bot can also feed the queue. This tailor made mechanism is not available by default in Power Automate. So I guess it can been created by developer\admin in one of the listed by me solutions.
Example of queue usage in Power Automate - Whenever email arrives retrieve id number from body, then put this id number to the queue along with other details from email, open legacy application in invoked Power Automate Desktop solution, process this id in there. Once operation has been finished successfully set status of this case as Success in the queue.

[ChaseKeilman]

Also interested in this topic. Wonder if there are any plans for MS to implement a queuing system like UiPath..

[VJR]

Hi @Twon 

Yeah so far no queues in PA like Blue Prism, Uipath etc.

From your list I can think of SQL Server because...

When it comes to queues in Blue Prism I always think of SQL Server because anyways BP stores them in SQL Server database behind the scenes in different tables and brings it back to us in the form of Queue.

Via Power Automate SQL queries can be easy to be created to simply add where clauses to call a Db column that has a particular status or priority or tag (where the sql db columns can be named that way too). Reports can also be generated out of a table or a combination of tables.

Also for small datasets the same can be done in Excel too 😉.

[ChaseKeilman]

Hey VJR,

While a SQL database is a good thought and could work in some use cases, if you were to have multiple robots working off of one sql table you could potentially be working the same case twice. With UiPath, Blue Prism, etc, multiple bots can work out of one queue without tripping each other up.. And say you built a database table for each robot performing that process - it would just get messy in the database server.

Hope that MS comes to market with a solution for this.

Chase

[VJR]

Hi @ChaseKeilman,

Oh yes, that's absolutely true 😊.

That is going to be cumbersome. I was just giving an input consideration. Recordset locks have been existing since a very long time which can help in case of a multi bot architecture. The "environment locking" concept, for example, in Blue Prism internally must me doing the same. If one bot has taken up one queue item, maintain a lock on it and therefore when a "Get next item" is made, fires a query such that the locked record is not pulled. But achieving this concept all by ourselves is going to be a lot of work and in no way just a Sql database can replace the queue concept of RPA tools. 

[Twon]

@ChaseKeilman  not really. In UiPath there is just one table for transaction items(ofc and other tables in relation to it, in order to define all things around like e.g. Queue names). I haven't been working for some time now with Blue Prism, but as far as I remember there is also one table for transaction items. Anyway. If you have few robots working on sam queue and you want to avoid situation where both of them grab same item, all you need to do is just change status of such item. That's one of the very first steps robot should do, once such transaction item doesn't have status new anymore but e.g. in progress then it can't be taken by another robot. - Because only items with status new are going to be taken. 

Environment variables should be used for something different  e.g. once you don't want to start populating queue by more than one robot simultaneously 

[The-LastBencher]

This can be done using any db where we have to load all input data with some flag lets say 0 and pick row one by one by updating the flag to 1 so that it can be locked. Also mark them as complete or exception at end of the flow.

I have mentioned very high level logic here. This has been already implemented by me and currently in use.

if you think this is helpful please do mark it as an answer.

[Treebys]

There are already Queues and Queue Items tables in the Dataverse. There is also an 'Add to Queue' button on the command bar though it says it is legacy now. I just started looking into this haven't found guidance yet, We do not have Service Management so I cannot access Routing Rule sets but I'm sure a Flow could do similar. Just need to figure out how they work!

[Treebys]

Just found this useful video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFC4dklLUKk . You can enable queue on an entity/table by going into the solution and classic view and selecting the entity that you wish to enable queuing for.

[Akshara_1]

..

[Akshara_1]

I have to get only Bot queue table while i am sending message to teams with help of power automate cloud flow. please help on this.

[Muthu]

Have you got any reference how to use Queues and Queue Items tables in DV.

Thanks

Muthu

[Twon]

I have built my own queue management system based on UiPath structure in Sql Server as DV has limited capabilities

[dinesh517]

Power Automate In built work queue feature is available for preview.

[ChaseKeilman]

Any thoughts on how you would enter the "Value" into the queue item? For example, you have a process that is simply loading the queue with items to be processed. The values that you need to enter into the queue for future processing come from an Excel spreadsheet with multiple columns of data. How would you enter your "Value" in the queue item? Would you delimit the data with a special character?