You are combining and mixing up words that most people working with RPA software would consider opposites. It’s really hard to answer if you don’t know the terminology but are using the words that has special meaning for people working with rpa software.
- unattended means a robot that works without human intervention. In small setups that would be on the console of a windows pc somewhere, in bigger installations that would run in some type of HD robot using RDP or VDI. In that cases workflows are triggered by a schedule ( can be coded in OpenRPA or triggered external using many different means ) or they get triggered by events ( could be a detector in OpenRPA, like the file watcher ) or externally using a webhook, a database trigger, a workitem queue, a message queue, an MQTT message etc.
- attended means something triggered by and/or assisting a user. These robots are either started directly inside OpenRPA by the user, or triggered by an action the user does ( copying a file, pressing a hot key, opening a specific window, using web forms in OpenFlow etc )
- Hybrids, seems to always go wrong, but that will not let people stop trying. Normally the main reason for doing that is either you want “the human” to keep an eye on the automation, but still be able to keep working ( that is when Child Sessions ( also called Picture in Picture ) can be handy), or to save on license cost. The latter should not matter when working with open source software.
But even RPA vendors can mess up, like UiPath that insist on calling a workflow a robot, but also have robot software running. Or other vendors that call a Process ( that can span multiple workflows and other technonolgies and/or humans ) a robot.
So to clarify,
- to us, a robot is an instance of OpenRPA running somewhere
- to us, a workflow is a single workflow running inside OpenRPA
- to us, an agent is a software package running either inside docker, remotly as a daemon or inside the desktop assistant. And Agent could be your own code, or common packages like NodeRED
- for us, a process is the people’s definition of a task you are trying to automate, that can span one or more workflows in OpenRPA, one or more workflows in NodeRED, one or more packages in agents, one or more human forms and one or more humans interaction with the process. When spanning more than one, we use workitem queues to control the flow and keep track where in the process we are.
If all you need is to automate something on a single pc, you don’t need central backup, you don’t need api access, and you don’t need access to a secure database, you don’t need access to an event based workflows or scheduling of workflows and so on. Then sure you can install OpenRPA in offline mode.
LiteDB is the database OpenRPA uses to cache things when connected to OpenFlow and/or is where it stores data when running in offline mode. It’s suppose to be thread safe, but there has been a few reports now and then, where the database has been corrupted, so if your running in offline mode, make sure to take backup often. If using openflow, you don’t need to care, in that case you can just delete the .db file and then robot will recreate it from the data in openflow. And all data will be handled when you backup mongodb.
you can run OpenRPA on premise, or in the cloud.
You can run OpenFlow on premise or in the cloud.
You have already been giving the guides on how to do that.
You can run OpenRPA without access to the internet.
Either by using it “offline” or by connecting it to an openflow that is also off the internet.
If running OpenRA offline, then some things will not work, like workitems and HD robots.
If you want to run OpenFlow without internet access, hire some people who has the expertise, I cannot and will not guide you on that over the forum. But if that is a requirement you have, yes that can be done.
If neither fulfill your need, you a blessed with at least 70 other rpa vendors, so there is plenty of options out there.