Action Center: Azure PaaS installation

The Azure installation script enables you to install Action Center on one or multiple nodes.

Important: All the steps in the installation procedures listed below are mandatory.

Before You Begin

Make sure you have the following tools installed on your machine:

PowerShell Web Deploy Snapin
PowerShell AzureAZ Module version 7.0 or higher.

Single node installation

Creating the Azure App Service for Action Center

Navigate to your Azure Portal and search for App Services.
Create a new app service and name it accordingly, for example UiPathActionCenter.

Note: From the Runtime stack drop-down select .NET Core 3.1.
Open the previously created web app and navigate to Configuration > General settings from the left-side menu and set the Platform field to 64 Bit.

Creating the Azure Service Principal for Action Center

In the Azure portal, search for App registrations and create a new one, named accordingly.

Important: You need to assign the Contributor role to the app registration. See here how to do it.
On your app's Overview page, copy the Application (client) ID and save it for later use. This is your Azure service principal ID.
On the Clients & secrets page of the previously created app registration, generate a new client secret. Copy its Value and save it for later use. This is your Azure service principal password.

Note: Optionally, you can ask your friendly DevOps team to provide you with an Azure service principal ID and password that can access the app service and its associated resource group.

Installing Action Center on Azure

Download the UiPathActionCenter.zip archive to your local machine. This contains all the necessary installation scripts.

Note: UiPath provides the UiPathActionCenter.zip archive on request. Contact us for details.
Extract the content of the .zip file to a folder on your machine.
Run the Publish-ActionCenter-Azure.ps1 script in PowerShell, using these installation parameters.

Check out this script example.
Enjoy using Action Center on your Azure Portal.

Multi-node installation

The multi-node installation is similar to the single node installation, with an additional step between steps 6 and 7 of the single node procedure.

Therefore, after step 6, you need to perform the following actions:

Open the newly created app service.
Go to the Scale out (App Service plan) tab from the left-side menu.
Select the Scale to a specific instance count option.
Provide the desired Instance count.

Continue with step 7 of the single node procedure afterward.

Important:

After migrating or upgrading to Orchestrator 2022.4 PaaS, go to the Azure App Service Configuration and make sure that the following keys are present in the list and their value is set to true:

IdentityServer.OAuth.Enabled
IdentityServer.S2SIntegration.Enabled

Powershell installation script parameters

Note:

If you want to use a custom domain for your Action Center app service, please set the custom domain first and then use this domain name in the script parameters.

For example, if your custom domain is https://actioncenter.xyz.com, use the same value for the actionCenterUrl script parameter.

Parameter	Description
`orchestratorUrl`	Mandatory. The URL of the Orchestrator instance.
`identityServerUrl`	Mandatory. The URL of the Identity Server instance.
`actionCenterUrl`	Mandatory. The URL of the ActionCenter instance.
`identityInstallationAccessToken`	Mandatory. The access token from the Identity Management Portal. See Host authentication settings for details.
`azureSubscriptionId`	Mandatory. The Azure subscription ID for the App Service that hosts Action Center. Note: Find it on the app service's Overview page, in your Azure Portal.
`azureAccountTenantId`	Mandatory. The Azure tenant ID. Note: Find it on the app registration's Overview page, in your Azure Portal.
`azureAccountApplicationId`	Mandatory. The Azure service principal ID. Note: It's the one you copied and saved at step 5 of the Single Node Installation procedure.
`azureAccountPassword`	Mandatory. The Azure service principal password. Note: It's the one you copied and saved at step 6 of the Single Node Installation procedure.
`package`	Mandatory. Indicate the full path or relative path of the `UiPath.ActionCenter.Web.zip` archive. Note: Find it in the `UiPath.Actioncenter.zip` archive.
`resourceGroupName`	Mandatory. The name of the Azure resource group that contains the Action Center app service.
`appServiceName`	Mandatory. The Action Center Azure app service name.
`stopApplicationBeforePublish`	Optional. If present, it stops the application before deployment and it starts it after the deployment is completed.
`unattended`	Optional. If present, the deployment continues without any user confirmation.

PowerShell Script Example

.\Publish-ActionCenter-Azure.ps1 `
    -orchestratorUrl "https://<OrchestratorServiceURL>" `
    -identityServerUrl "https://<IdentityServerURL>/identity" `
    -actionCenterUrl "https://<ActionCenterServiceURL>" `
    -identityInstallationAccessToken "abcdefgh ... MAxJeysh6IQFSabcd" `
    -azureSubscriptionId "d12f123e-12ac-1da1-1234-ed1234d5cf4b" `
    -azureAccountTenantId "d1234d2a-b123-1d12-1234-902c51f12345" `
    -azureAccountApplicationId "12345678-67e1-123d-1234-1c6cd123b123" `
    -azureAccountPassword "O.T5pX4bX89I3~Wi.clbM_u0-R5Aa-sRl~" `
    -package "E:\)\)Work\)\)UiPathActionCenter\)\)UiPath.ActionCenter.Web.zip" `
    -stopApplicationBeforePublish `
    -resourceGroupName "<ResourceGroupName" `
    -appServiceName "<ActionCenterServiceName>" `
    -unattended.\Publish-ActionCenter-Azure.ps1 `
    -orchestratorUrl "https://<OrchestratorServiceURL>" `
    -identityServerUrl "https://<IdentityServerURL>/identity" `
    -actionCenterUrl "https://<ActionCenterServiceURL>" `
    -identityInstallationAccessToken "abcdefgh ... MAxJeysh6IQFSabcd" `
    -azureSubscriptionId "d12f123e-12ac-1da1-1234-ed1234d5cf4b" `
    -azureAccountTenantId "d1234d2a-b123-1d12-1234-902c51f12345" `
    -azureAccountApplicationId "12345678-67e1-123d-1234-1c6cd123b123" `
    -azureAccountPassword "O.T5pX4bX89I3~Wi.clbM_u0-R5Aa-sRl~" `
    -package "E:\)\)Work\)\)UiPathActionCenter\)\)UiPath.ActionCenter.Web.zip" `
    -stopApplicationBeforePublish `
    -resourceGroupName "<ResourceGroupName" `
    -appServiceName "<ActionCenterServiceName>" `
    -unattended

Storage buckets requests

Action Center features that use the storage buckets inside Orchestrator, such as images & PDF rendering on Form actions, Document Classification, and Document Validation actions, require the following configuration in Orchestrator:

To accept Action Center requests to Orchestrator:

Open the Orchestrator web app in your Azure Portal.
Navigate to Configuration and select Application Settings.
Add a New application setting and input the following:
- Name - AcceptedRootUrls
- Value - https://localhost:6234,https://<ActionCenterServiceURL>
  
  Important: Make sure the value entered in the Value field has no empty spaces in it.
  
  Note: Replace <ActionCenterServiceURL> with the corresponding URL of your Action Center Service.

To allow `OPTIONS` in the `web.config` file of the Orchestrator web app:

Open the Orchestrator web app in your Azure Portal.
Navigate to App Service Editor (Preview).
Edit the web.config file:
- Navigate to the <requestFiltering> <verbs> section.
- Append <add verb="OPTIONS" allowed="true" /> at the end of the section.
  
  Note: Upgrading Orchestrator resets the web.config file, so you need to allow the OPTIONS verb once again.
  
  For third party storage providers, read more details about the CORS/CSP Configuration.