How to run automation 24/7, but not on my computer?

Q: I wrote some RPA automation incorporating Selenium WebDriver. It visits various internal company webpages and checks for updated resources, such as white papers and forum posts. It refreshes every 5 minutes, and sends an alert email if a new resource is found. How can I run this RPA script 24/7 somewhere other than on my computer?

A: The best bet in this situation is to setup at least two virtual machines (VMs). One VM would act as your “base” VM, from which you’d connect to the other “worker” VM where your RPA script would run 24/7. This is necessary for those scripts that require the Windows user interface to be visible/available in order to find buttons, fields, etc. The quickest way to check for that is to minimize your application while a RPA script is running, and if it suddenly can’t find the next button or field, then the user interface is required.

When connecting to the “worker” VM via Remote Desktop Connection from the “base” VM, when the RDC window is minimized the UI gets turned off by Windows to conserve resources, but it’s possible to adjust a Registry value to prevent this from happening.

Steps:

1. On your “base” VM (not the VM where RPA runs), open Start->Run and type regedit.exe to open Registry Editor
2. Navigate to one of the two keys below, depending on whether you’d like to configure this only for the current user, or your entire computer/VM:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client

3. Update or create a new DWORD Type value: RemoteDesktop_SuppressWhenMinimized with a Data value 2 (see screenshot below).

At this point, whenever you minimize the Remote Desktop Connection window that’s connected to the “worker” VM where your RPA script is running, the UI would remain available as expected and you shouldn’t encounter any related errors.