Configure and call Third Party Web Service (Web API) in Blue Prism

Blue Prism has endless capabilities when it comes to automate business processes securely keeping scaling in the context all the time. If some caught with a scenario where a service or process needs to be call using Web API without accessing GUI which normally exists. For example medical companies has to validate any information they label on medicine and get approval from medicine department. Likewise insurance may have API exposed to, possibly, create policy or claim.


Let's explore how we can configure a Web Service within Blue Prism and call appropriate method to automate business process. I am taking an example of performing calculator basic functions using Web WSDL API. Following are the steps:

1. Go to System Tab -> Web Services (Inside Objects in navigation) -> Click on "Add Service" link. It will open a popup to configure API
2. Blue Prism asks to supply Web Service URL (Make sure API is WSDL only, Blue Prism doesn't support REST APIs) then click on next button to supply credentials
3. 
4. APIs used within Business Processes can never be public. It will ask you to supply credentials. We are accessing public API which doesn't need credentials this is why we can just pass it by
5. There are possibilities that server hosting those services are down when we call it from Blue Prism or different issue. Then Blue Prism should wait for limited time to get a response. Next screen gonna ask you default timeout parameter.
6. Blue Prism will import Web Service details by own. 
7. Blue Prism will show all possible methods exposed using configured Web API Service. Blue Prism allows us to select limited methods to be used in Object Studio.
8. You must see Web service configured on Web Services Navigation option in System Tab.
9. All the configurations are set, now we can work on Object studio or Process studio to use configured service. Let go to Object Studio and add Action Stage where we can select Web service which we have configured and perform action. Nothing much to explain here as we selected Web Service and only available action "Add". Supply to Numbers and Acceptable input parameter.
10. We just need to add other data type to store results. 
11. We just need to run the processes. I have configured initital values for both input data types as 10 & 20 respectively. We must expect result 30, let's run and check the result. 

 Feel free to comment and ask if you have any concern