In case you haven't heard about Product Club — the Pathfinder Community Product Club is a monthly virtual meetup led by Automation Anywhere product leaders that focuses on our latest proprietary product innovations. It offers a place for community members to stay informed, connect with product leaders, and gain insights into real-world applications of the latest innovations in intelligent automation.
P.S. If you can’t attend a meeting, no worries — we'll be dropping a recap of each month's session right here in our Product Club hub.
HOSTS
Allison Able, Pathfinder Community Director
Vineet Pujari, Sr. Product Manager
Charumathy Venkatraman, Sr. Director of Enterprise Engineering
Sarangadhar Sahani, Director of Software Engineering
TOPIC
For May’s Product Club, we were pleased to be joined by two Automation Anywhere engineering leaders in addition to our product expert to give you all the details on our newest no-code tool, Connector Builder.
Here’s a rundown of the session:
- Vineet and the engineering leaders introduce Connector Builder.
- Vineet demos creating a connector for the CRM and marketing automation tool, Hubspot.
- Vineet, Charumathy, and Sarangadhar answer live audience questions.
If you’d like to watch the entire session recording with visuals from the demo, you can view it here.
Want to read through additional resources on Connector Builder? You can find more information here.
THE CONNECTOR BUILDER ORIGIN STORY
We've observed most companies today moving toward SaaS-based utilities (ERPs, CRMs, etc.), creating a significant need to transfer internal data to these SaaS applications. That was a big catalyst for creating Connector Builder—to help customers and users build A360 native connectors that can be used in task automation and API task automation, adding immense value and acceleration to your API strategy. And if you have a swagger specification or a postman collection, you don't need to know much about APIs. Just get your hands on the swagger specification, and Connector Builder will do the job for you in a minute.
Long story short? Connector Builder is a low-code/no-code tool that allows users to create connector packages in mere minutes. You can download the packages you create to use in your automations, whether task bots or API tasks. You can build connector packages rapidly and reuse or distribute those packages across your community or internal organization. You can also download the connector package from the cloud control room and upload it to an on-prem control room.
Connector Builder is available on cloud with the A.32 release for customers with an Enterprise plus license, and will soon be made available on-prem.
How can our partners benefit from this tool by catering to their customers' different use cases?
Given that we are a domain-agnostic platform and have provided API service at a framework level for every feature we offer, this tool can be leveraged across verticals. Customers continue to show us time and again that these tools are only limited by somebody's imagination!
At its core, Connector Builder gives you the capability to connect our A360 platform to the external SaaS world (which is exploding as we speak) and consume that without writing a lot of code.
DEMO: CREATING A CONNECTOR FOR HUBSPOT
Brief overview of the Connector Builder user journey:
Log into control room > Manage: Packages > Click ‘Create Connector’ > Define Connector > Publish Connector to Control Room > Download & share or Put directly to use in automations
- Let's create a connector for Hubspot:
- From Control Room, navigate to Packages page. Click' Create Connector' in the upper right corner. We want to import all of Hubspot's operations into our Hubspot package, so we need an API definition. API definitions are open source, so we simply need to go to the Hubspot developer portal (developer.hubspot.com) and download the API definition. You can download and save it on your local machine.
- Next, name the connector. For this demo, we're calling it "Hubspot Package 101." You can also give a description, but this is optional because once you import the API definition, the description will also import and populate automatically.
- Third, select 'Connector Type.' For now, we only support REST-based API frameworks. In future releases, we hope to support GraphQL as well, but we have found that more than 70% of modern applications expose their REST APIs, which comply with the open API specification or standards.
- For the final bit of set-up, enter the base URL for your package. For this demo, we will input https://acme.hubspot.com, but it can be changed later. Then click 'Create.'
- Now, a draft Hubspot connector package has been created. You will land on the Connector Editor page next, where you can define your connector package actions manually, import your API definition, or upload a logo for your package. We're going to import and open the API definition file located on our local machine. Alternatively, you can import it from a URL if it's publicly available or import a postman collection.
- Over 100 actions are populated in the actions pane almost instantly. The Connector Builder smartly parsed the entire API definition file, which in this demo is more than 28,000 lines, and extracted the actions automatically. You can review and delete any actions that you don't need.
No matter how big the response object is, Connector Builder passes through each of the elements from the root element to the leaf element and brings about all of those attributes in a flat schema so you, as the developer, can easily consume and map them. This has been a pain point for developers using SDK—now all that effort has been made simple for you!
- Next, save and publish this package by hovering over the three dots on the right and clicking the 'Publish' action icon.
- Once published, it will disappear from your Connector tab. Go to the Published tab, and you'll find the package that you just created. You will also receive an alert in your notifications that the package is now available. That means if you go to your Automation workspace and create a new task bot or API task, you will see your package available with all the actions, ready to configure, save, and run your bots.
- To download the package, from the Published tab, hover over the three dots to the right of your package to expand the menu options and click 'Download.'
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
We polled our live audience throughout the meeting to gain insights and share feedback. Here’s what we learned from our attendees during this session:
- When reflecting on the most challenging aspect of creating a custom connector using SDK, nearly half the audience expressed that Java expertise, the SDK knowledge required, and maintaining the package over time were the biggest roadblocks. The audience also agreed that long build times, difficulties testing, and limited working knowledge of APIs (REST/etc) were also significant challenges.
- 58% of the audience told us that their preference for low-code or custom-code solutions for building connectors depends on the project requirements. However, 41% said they always prefer no-code/low-code solutions, and 17% prefer custom-code solutions.
- After listening to the presentation from Vineet, a whopping 88% of the audience agreed that they anticipate Connector Builder making the most significant impact in accelerating development time for new integrations. More than half the audience also sees values in this product to simplify and standardize the integration of diverse applications, enhance the reliability and scalability of existing integrations, and improve maintenance and management of integration workflows.
- Regarding roadmap features for Connector Builder, 38% of the audience told us they’d most like the ability to use natural language to speed up further and revolutionize connector development, and 27% would like connectors for popular and latest apps in the Bot Store. The lowest priority feature on the roadmap, according to our audience, was support for OpenAPI (7%).
- Finally, audience members shared the first custom connector they would likely build. Answers included a connector to API connect an internal legacy system or custom ERP, VMWare package, Lending Cloud, SAP Concur, Igloo, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Adobe Workfront, Jira/Confluence, TeamDynamix, Cerdian Dayforce, MS OpenAI, and Sharepoint.
SESSION Q&A
Thank you to our audience for submitting their questions! Unfortunately, we aren’t always able to answer them all during the live session. We also want to express our gratitude to our special leadership co-hosts, Vineet, Charumathy, and Sarangadhar, for providing their responses.
**Please note that all answers were shared during the week of May 14, 2024, and are subject to change. We strongly encourage you to contact your account management team for any licensing and pricing inquiries.
Q: Who has access to Connector Builder?
A: This feature is available only on our enterprise license. So if you have the Enterprise license installed on your control room. Then all you need is Bot Creator license and the permission to Create/Edit custom connector packages. Those are the only 3 pre-requisites for you to start building connector packages
Q: Will connector builder be available for on-prem?
A: Connector Builder is available on cloud with the A.32 release. We plan to release on-prem in the near future and will follow up with everyone on the timeline soon.
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Q: We tried using Connector Builder unable to use Auth 2.0 authorization and bear values are getting vanished. Is it a bug from the product? Are there any alternatives we can use, or just wait till next release?
A: That is a bug that has been fixed. Reach out to the support team if you are still experiencing this issue so we can help figure out what’s going on.
Q: How does the connector feature supplement the Apigee integration?
A: The existing Apigee integration package that we have allows you to discover integrations on apg, configure them, and and run your integrations directly from A360. Now, in case Apigee exposes a few additional integrations or additional processes on their side, we can use the Connector Builder in conjunction with the Apigee's API definition and create those new packages for the new features that Apigee has launched. So I would say, Connector Builder improves or makes you independent to build any new features that Apigee exposes on your own. It basically complements your Apigee.
Q: Can we see a response of the API live when building Connector Builder like UI Path? Just the click away to see API action works or not, instead of testing after publish.
A: This covers the developer productivity aspect as well, e.g. instead of having the developer test the API and watch the response in a tool like postman, what about having the feature native as part of Connector Builder? We've heard you and we are launching this feature in the A.33 release where you will be able to test your APIs, watch the response, including the response code and the response body inside of the Connector Builder experience itself. So yes, it's coming.
Q: Does the Connector Builder support APIs with cookie-based authentication?
A: Not at the moment, it doesn't. Being able to store the session information in cookies and being able to pass that information to the subsequent actions in an automation is actually a quite a good feature to have. But I'd like to do some more research and if it's okay, reach out to the person who posed this question and understand their actual use case, so that if it's an important use case, we'll definitely add it in the roadmap.
Q: Are there size constraints on the API definition file?
A: No, there's no such constraints. As you just saw, I imported a 30,000 line file in no time, so I think we've tested it with our benchmarks, which are pretty high, so there's no constraint.
Q: Is this feature existing on community edition? Can somebody go on community edition and experiment with this?
A: No, unfortunately, but we should consider it for a future time. Always feel free to reach out to your account team to see how we can accommodate your needs.
Q: Can users with the necessary permission edit all created connector packages, or only the ones they originally created?
A: Yes, users with the right permissions can edit all of the connector packages that other users would have created in the control.
Q: Is there separate error handling structure and connectors?
A: Error handling is standardized, whether they are client-side errors or server-side errors. So you don't need to worry about it. Had you been building your custom connector, you would have to worry about this, but those are all taken care based on the REST error standards. They're all error code-based, basically.
Q: Is it a similar import/export routine for these packages?
A: Yeah, just like how I demoed it. It's even simpler than exporting automations. You directly locate your connector package and you just hit the download button and the download starts.
Q: Will automation anywhere be using this for creating their own supported packages going forward?
A: I have been building a lot of connectors over the last few days. I love the tool, and I love playing with it. I've been encouraging all of my colleagues and some of the MVPs. They love it! So if there is something that can be built using Connector Builder, for sure we will use it to release out-of-the-box packages. Stay tuned for more announcements on this coming during Imagine in June.
Q: Are there any limitations working in a GCCH vs. commercial environment?
A: Typicall there are additional restrictions on GCCH calls. They tend to have more constraints. As of now, we have not formally tested this on a GCCH environment. There is definitely an organizational-level plan to qualify all our products on that kind of high, secure Gov kind of environment. But it's not something that's imminent in the next release.
Q: How can I get API definition for service now? And this question stands for all the other SaaS applications as well.
A: For ServiceNow, obviously we do have an out-of-the-box package. But Connector Builder is a great use case for building those connector packages for which are even supported out-of-the-box. Customers might want to increase or enhance the number of actions, or build something very specific to their own infrastructure. Connector Builder allows you to do that. Now, the the best place to get these API definition files is the respective developer portals of these API providers. So for ServiceNow it would be developer.servicenow hub, for Atlassian or Jira or Conference, it would be Atlassian developer portal, and so on. Just as as an additional giveaway. I will provide a link to one of these files or some of these files as a follow-up to Alison.
Q: If API request and response is of complex object type, how does it work with connector builder?
A: Connector Builder UI has a request and response builder for you to address complex I/O mapping
Q: Do all packages have to be uploaded to the bot store or can they be kept private?
A: No, after a connector is built through this tool, you have an option to only publish to Control Room.
Q: Is connector builder available to all clients as a part of A360.33, or is packaged with other items under a different license structure?
A: Under Enteprise Plus license.
Q: Does Enterprise plus comes as a default SKU for cloud customers or we need to buy?
A: Enterprise SKU is not the default, and has to be purchased.
Q: How can I update my Control Room to the version that allows Custom Connector creation?
A: A360.32 version (Cloud)
Q: Can we change the full URL dynamically based on the region like test and prod?
A: Yes. While building bot task or API task, Bot Editor allows you to change the base URL.
Q: If we download another package and there's a change are we able to update those or do we have to wait for the original creator to fix (thinking if there's an option that I would use heavily and they don't so do not update)?
A: No, you can only edit the connectors that are built through this.
Q: Can you share Swagger file link that has been used in this demo?
A: You may start with pet store swagger provided by Swagger to play around: https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json
Q: How do we publish only a selection of required actions instead of the full set of available actions?
A: Right now it’s all or none, but you have a great suggestion.
Q: Can users with the necessary permission edit ALL created connector pacakages, or only the ones that they originally created?
A: This is an ongoing issue with A360 in that Enterprise deployments cannot have users with complete access to everything. In this case, users should not be able to edit connectors that they don't have explicit permission to do so.
Q: So currently you only support REST APIs, will you support SOAP in the future?
A: We are evaluating some of this (GraphQL as well) for future releases. Stay tuned!
Q: Network latency can impact the speed and responsiveness of the connector, how's it going to be handled in Connector Builder?
A: Any network-related factors including latency will impact both direct REST calls and connector the same way, there is no special handling.
Q: Do we have the option for promoting the package instead of export / import ?
A: You can promote through bot promotion and exclusively the connector.