Process job states in RPA Hub

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Process job states in RPA Hub

    A process job in ServiceNow RPA Hub represents the execution of a bot process on a robot. Understanding the various states of a process job helps customers track bot execution progress, handle conflicts between simultaneous bot triggers, and diagnose execution outcomes effectively.

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    Process Job States and Their Meanings

    • Running: Indicates a bot process is actively being executed by a robot.
    • Canceled: Occurs when a bot process execution is manually canceled or interrupted by another bot process with force start enabled, causing the first to cancel and the second to run.
    • Success: The bot process completed execution successfully.
    • Failed: The bot process execution did not complete successfully.
    • Skipped: Happens when multiple bot processes are triggered on the same unattended robot, and only one can run due to priority, timing, or robot state. Skipped processes include those triggered while another process is running without force start, lower priority concurrent processes, or additional start requests before execution begins.
    • Abandoned: Applies when a previously running process job did not update its status to a completed state (Success, Failed, etc.) due to interruptions such as network failures or robot state changes. When the robot reconnects and transitions to Available, the last known running process job is marked as Abandoned.

    Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers

    • Monitoring process job states enables proactive management of bot executions and troubleshooting execution failures or cancellations.
    • Understanding the Skipped state helps in managing concurrent bot automation requests on unattended robots and optimizing scheduling and priority settings.
    • Recognizing the Abandoned state assists in identifying bot executions interrupted unexpectedly, prompting investigation into connectivity or robot health issues.
    • Force start settings directly impact process job transitions between Running and Canceled states, providing control over job interruptions.

    A process job represents the execution of a bot process on a robot.

    Table 1. Process job state scenarios
    State Scenario
    Running When a bot process is being executed by a robot, the status of the process job is updated to Running.
    Canceled When a bot process execution is canceled manually, the process job status is updated to Canceled.

    If Bot process 1 is already executing, and Bot process 2 with force start enabled is triggered, then the process job status of Bot process 1 is updated to Canceled, and the process job status of Bot process 2 is updated to Running.
    Success After a bot process is executed successfully by a robot, the process job status is updated to Success.
    Failed When a bot process execution fails to complete, the process job status is updated to Failed.
    Skipped Consider the following scenarios when more than one bot processes are triggered for the same unattended robot:
    • If Bot process 1 is already executing and Bot process 2 with force start disabled is triggered, then the process job status of Bot process 2 is updated to Skipped.
    • If two bot processes, BP1 and BP2, are scheduled to run on the same robot at the same time and BP2 has lower priority (higher priority order number), then the process job status of BP2 is updated to Skipped.
    • If two bot processes, BP1 and BP2, with the same priority order are scheduled to run on the same robot at the same time, then only one of the bot process would be selected randomly for running and the process job status of the other one is updated to Skipped.
    • If Bot process 1 is triggered and robot is waiting to login, and in the mean time Bot process 2 is triggered, then process job status of Bot process 2 is updated to Skipped.
    • The Start process action is invoked for Bot process 1. Until the execution starts, if other bot processes are triggered then the process jobs of all other start process requests are updated to Skipped.
    • When a robot comes back to responsive state, it will start to receive start process requests that were triggered when the robot was in the unresponsive state. The latest request which falls under the configured threshold is updated to Running and all the older requests are updated to Skipped.
    Abandoned
    • For any robot type, if a bot process was previously executing and the process job status was not updated to Completed, and a new process job is created, then the status of the previously executing process job is updated to Abandoned.
    • When a process job is running, the robot state is moved from Busy state to any other state.

      For example, when a process job is executing locally in the robot machine, a robot may fail to update RPA Hub with its heartbeat call due to network failure, certificate authentication failure, machine user profile corruption, and so on.

      In all such scenarios, when the robot calls the RPA Hub after an interruption, and then updates its status from Busy or Disconnected to Available, then the status of the last known process job is changed to Abandoned.