dynamic credential allocation in aa client 11.3.2

Question

I need to use credential for log in to a system in AA for a bot that may run on different machines with a technical user for the system associated to each machine/bot.

Lets say the system is Stackoverflow. Lets say I have two Virtual Machines,named:VM1, VM2

I name my credentials "Stackoverflow-VM1", "Stackoverflow-VM2" and want the automation to dynamically access those credentials, so that running on VM1 the automation will always use the VM1 credential.

I cannot find out how to use such a machine-dynamic access in AA while this is easy to do in other automation softwares and credential vault seems to be pretty useless without this functionality, especially with the extra concept of lockers...Any help?

Already tried:

1) The credential variables in AA will look like this from the client: $Stackoverflow-VM1(username)$, so i tried to simply write (not using the F2 variable list): $Stackoverflow-$Machine$(username)$ into the Set Text field but that results in the string "$Stackoverflow-VM1(username)$" written into the corresponding text field, which is consistent with the AA documentation: https://docs.automationanywhere.com/bundle/enterprise-v11.3/page/topics/aae-client/bot-creator/using-variables/credential-variables.html "Credential variables contained in the Credential Lockers can be seen and accessed only from the Insert Variables window."

2) I tried to create different lockers, where VM1 will only see "Stackoverflow-Locker-VM1" and a corresponding locker for VM2 exists. Now if i could create credentials with the same name but different content in each locker i could easily do this, but i cannot create identically named credentials, since they are aware of each other and not only defined in the context of a locker.

3) This page suggests its not possible: https://apeople.automationanywhere.com/s/question/0D56F00005dy3Ri/can-we-able-to-use-credential-vault-dynamically-?language=en_US but its a 8 month old thread and possibly it has changed now. Everything suggested in this thread is not possible in terms of scalability.

Thankful for any input, Thank you.

Answer 1

First thing I would suggest that you should always use F2 to fetch the variable list.

Returning to the question, to me, it seems that you have a system where you want to log in using different devices (bot runners) using different credentials.

It is possible by creating provided credentials values.

When you create an attribute for any credential, there is an option to mark the value as provided. That way, the associated users will get the credential request.

Each user will have to provide their own set of values. The bot can be created using those credentials. At run time, based on the user who is logged in, appropriate values will be fetched.

Disclaimer: I work for Automation Anywhere.