Cross-tenant project promotion in IBM RPA 30.0.2
In enterprise IBM Robotic Process Automation environments, organizations often maintain multiple tenants for different purposes—development, testing, staging, and production. Moving bots between these environments has traditionally been a manual and error-prone process. The new Project Promotion feature in IBM Robotic Process Automation 30.0.2 addresses this challenge by enabling seamless promotion of bots across tenants, even when they reside on different servers.
Previously, promoting bots between tenants required manual recreation of resources, causing:
- Time-consuming: Each bot and its dependencies had to be manually recreated
- Error-prone: Missing dependencies could cause runtime failures
- Difficult to track: No clear visibility into what resources would be affected, including different script versions
- Risky: Version conflicts and configuration mismatches were common
The new Project Promotion feature introduces a streamlined workflow that allows users to promote one or more bots from a tenant to another with full visibility and control over the process.
Key features
1. Multi-Bot Selection
Users can select one or more bots from a project for promotion, enabling batch operations and reducing the time needed for large-scale deployments.
2. Dependency detection
The system automatically identifies and displays all resources related to the selected bots, including:
- Connections
- Counters
- Credentials
- Parameters
- Queues
- Scripts
3. Pre-Promotion validation
Before promotion begins, the system highlights resources that could not be identified or cannot be promoted:
- Resources using variables for names
- Counters belonging to different projects
- Credentials using Internal Provider (these credentials are encrypted using the tenant's key pair, so they cannot be decrypted by IBM RPA Server)
- Scripts with versions not found
- Scripts using local file paths
4. Conflict prevention
The promotion process includes built-in safeguards:
- Aborts if script versions exist with different content in the destination tenant
- Validates computer group existence in the destination tenant before proceeding
Special handling
- Computer groups must be created beforehand
- Projects, bots, and connections use "Unique Id" for linking. All other resources use the "Name"
Note: If a resource name changes, the system treats it as a new item.
How it works
Before starting a bot promotion, ensure:
- User must have permission for “Promote From” in the source tenant in order to view the "Promote" menu item on the projects page.
- Obtain an API key from the destination tenant with "Promote To" permission.
- If the destination tenant is on a different server, add its URL to the "Allow URLs List" under Tenants > Tenant configuration > Security settings
Important: Without proper URL configuration, users will encounter an "Environment is not valid" error when entering the API key.
Note: These two new permissions are already included in the "Business Operator" role.
1. Navigate to the "Manage projects" page
- Access the context menu for your project
- Select the new "Promote" option
2. Configure destination environment
- Enter the "API Key" for the destination tenant
3. Select bots
- Choose one or more bots to promote
- Choose project visibility (used only if the project does no exists)
- Public (shared with all teams)
- Private (not shared)
4. Validate resources
- Check for any highlighted issues
- It is possible to select the Override option for each parameter
- This way, even if the parameter already exists, the value will be overwritten by the value in the source tenant
5. Execute promotion
- At the end of the process, a list of resources that have not been created will be displayed
Note: For all resources that depend on providers (Queue, Connections, and Credentials), the destination tenant must have the same provider (with the same name) created.
Best practices
1. Plan your promotion strategy
- Review all dependencies before promotion
- Ensure destination tenant has required providers and connectors
- Verify computer groups exist in the destination
2. Use consistent naming
- Avoid using dynamic names in scripts
- Maintain consistent naming conventions across tenants
3. Manage credentials securely
- Use external credential providers when possible
- Avoid internal providers for resources that need promotion
4. Configure Allow URLs when promoting between different servers
- Confirm that the source IBM RPA server has access to the destination IBM RPA server
- Add the URL of the destination IBM RPA API to the "Allow URL List"
Current limitations
In this initial release, the following resources are not supported:
- Processes
- Workflows
- Chatbots
- Machine Learning models
- Non-systemic Vaults
Conclusion
The Project Promotion feature represents a significant advancement in IBM RPA's enterprise capabilities. By automating the complex process of moving bots between tenants, it:
- Reduces deployment time from hours to minutes
- Minimizes human error through automated dependency detection
- Improves visibility with comprehensive resource mapping
Whether you're managing a multi-stage development pipeline or deploying bots across global regions, the Project Promotion feature streamlines your IBM RPA operations and accelerates time-to-value.