Getting started
Before you begin
The pharmacy workstation
- Windows 10 or later, 64-bit.
- Administrator rights for the installation itself (a one-time UAC prompt). Day to day the agent runs as a normal user.
- DocuTrack installed and working — the agent reads documents from your DocuTrack queue.
- QS1 / PrimeCare installed and working — the agent completes Cancel RX actions inside QS1.
- Internet access from the workstation. The agent connects to the
PharmAutomate service over HTTPS; if your network filters outbound traffic,
allow
*.pharmalytics.skypondtech.com. - Roughly 1 GB of free disk space for the application and the text-recognition component it installs on first start.
wingetavailable (it ships with current Windows builds). The agent uses it to install Tesseract OCR the first time you press Start — see Start automation.
Important: Use a dedicated workstation or VM for automation if you can. The agent drives the real mouse and keyboard, so a person cannot use that computer while a run is in progress.
Accounts and information
- Your Merchant Portal welcome link — emailed to your designated administrator when Skypond creates your account.
- For each pharmacy location: name, address, timezone, and the NPI number (optional).
- A name for each computer that will run the agent, for example
counter-pc-01.
Machine settings that matter
The agent reads the screen. Anything that blanks, locks, or detaches the screen stops it from working — and these are the most common cause of a pharmacy reporting "the agent did nothing overnight". Set these up once, per machine:
| Setting | Why | How |
|---|---|---|
| No lock screen during automation hours | A locked desktop cannot be read at all. The agent reports "the screen cannot be read" and waits. | Group Policy: set InactivityTimeoutSecs to 0. On a domain-joined machine this must be done via GPO — a local registry edit is overwritten. |
| No screensaver | Same reason. | Disable it in the machine's policy, not just the user's. |
| No sleep / no display timeout | A sleeping machine processes nothing. | powercfg — set standby and display timeouts to 0 for the active plan. |
| RDP session stays attached | Closing an RDP window detaches the session and the screen goes away, even though the machine is still on. | Before disconnecting, run tscon <session-id> /dest:console so the session drops back to the physical console instead of detaching. |
The agent sets keep_session_awake by default, which prevents sleep, display
timeout, and the screensaver. It cannot stop a lock screen and cannot
reattach a disconnected RDP session — those two need the settings above.
Note: If the screen becomes unreadable mid-run, the agent keeps retrying and emails a stuck alert after three consecutive failures. It resumes by itself when someone reconnects. See Alerts.
Name the DocuTrack folder exactly
The agent finds your DocuTrack folder by reading its name on screen. Configure
the full folder name, not a fragment: Cancel is ambiguous when a folder
called Cancel with Association also exists. Item-count badges are fine —
Triage (12) still matches Triage.
Before every run
- DocuTrack open and signed in, with a user who can see the target folder and change document status.
- QS1/PrimeCare open and signed in, with a user who can accept Cancel RX messages.
- The workstation powered on and unlocked.
Important: Both applications must stay signed in. If you set their executable paths in the agent's Worker Settings, the agent can bring them to the front and launch them if closed — but it never logs in for you, and it will never restart QS1.