Pathfinder Blog

If you are already leading automation initiatives, enjoy mentoring peers, or advocating for Automation Anywhere, then you may be interested in getting more involved with Pathfinder. Within the Pathfinder Community, we offer two leadership programs designed to expand your impact: Community Captains and Most Valuable Pathfinders (MVPs).Both play an important role, but the difference lies in how you want to contribute and where you want to focus your energy.Community Captains bring people together around shared automation interests. If you enjoy facilitating conversations and creating learning spaces, this path may be right for you.As a Community Captain, you:Plan and host user groups (virtual or in-person) Lead discussions on use cases, trends and best practicesA single meetup can spark ideas that elevate entire automation programs, and Community Captains create those moments.

Every February, I’m reminded of something pretty great about this community.You show up.You have unique perspectives.And you care about what represents us.That’s why we’re back for our third annual Pathfinder Community Swag Vote. Once again, you get to decide which design becomes our official Pathfinder shirt for the year. But first, let’s take a look back at our past winning designs. Two years of community-selected swagOver the last two years, the community has voted, commented, debated, and proudly worn the winning designs. 2024: Flow vs. List View 2025: AI Constellations

At Automation Anywhere Pathfinder Summit 2025, we invited the Pathfinder Community to take on an exciting challenge: Identify a real business problem. Design a goal-based AI agent. Build something that works.The response exceeded my expectations.What impressed me most wasn’t only the technical creativity. It was the storytelling. Each participant clearly articulated the problem, explained why it mattered, and showed how an agent could step in to help. That mindset is what agentic process automation (APA) is all about.Today, I’m excited to celebrate our three winners. 🥉 Third Place: Jenna – Turning Product Reviews Into InsightJenna (​@Jenna4321) started with a simple observation: every company collects product reviews. Very few teams actually extract structured insight from them fast enough to influence decisions.Anyone who has tried to manually review hundreds of

Welcome to the January Developer Meetup Recap!In our first Developer Meetup of 2026, we dove into Agentic Browser Automation with UI Agents, led by Pratyush Garikapati, Director, Product Management at Automation Anywhere. Pratyush walked through how UI Agents enable goal-driven browser automation, demonstrated a real-world invoice extraction and entry workflow, and explained how teams can combine UI Agents with existing RPA, recorders, and document automation to reduce build time and maintenance at scale.HOSTSPratyush Garikapati, Director, Product ManagementLu Hunnicutt, Pathfinder Community ManagerTOPICIn this session, we explored how Automation Anywhere’s UI Agents enable goal-driven browser automation. UI Agents let you express the goal (what you want done) while the agent inspects the page, plans the steps, executes actions (DOM and/or

Welcome to the February Product Club Recap! This month, the Automation Anywhere community gathered for a look at Universal Webhook Listener (UWL) and how it unlocks real-time, event-driven automation far beyond the limits of pre-built integrations. The session featured Vineet Pujari (Product Management) and Max Cassidy (Senior Developer Evangelist), who broke down the “why,” the “how,” and the real-world patterns teams can use to move from polling-based automations to instant, contextual execution.SPEAKERSVineet Pujari, Principal Product ManagerMax Cassidy, Senior Developer Evangelist

In enterprise automation, speed is seductive. Every team wants to move faster by deploying automations, integrating systems, and scaling digital workers across business units. But, for companies in highly regulated industries like banking, healthcare, and insurance, speed without oversight can be a liability.That’s the paradox of automation governance: how do you move fast without breaking trust?The answer is smarter design.At Automation Anywhere, we built CoE Manager with one guiding principle: governance should accelerate automation, not strangle it.The Governance DilemmaEvery large enterprise eventually confronts the same reality: the more successful your automation program becomes, the harder it is to manage.What starts as a few departmental automations can quickly evolve into a portfolio spanning hundreds of processes, multiple geographies, and countless stakeholders. Without a structured

Bot Store was created in 2018 to solve a practical problem. Automation teams were spending too much time rebuilding the same foundational pieces: common actions, system integrations, etc. The idea was simple: share what’s proven to work so the automation community across the globe could move faster and avoid starting from scratch.This idea still holds true. What’s changed is the nature of automation itself.Today, as automation evolves into the era of agentic AI, where systems plan and act toward goals, we’re evolving our marketplace as well. Bot Store is now the Agentic App Store, fully aligned with Automation Anywhere’s agentic process automation (APA) vision and approach.Whether you’re a seasoned automation developer or a citizen developer building your first agentic workflow, Agentic App Store gives you a shortcu

Most automation teams have experienced the same kind of failure: A workflow starts with an email. It pulls out some fields, applies business rules, and sends the result along. During testing, everything works perfectly. But in production, someone forwards the email instead of replying. A field label changes. A signature block shows up in the wrong spot. The automation fails not because the logic is wrong, but because real-world details changed.This problem goes well beyond tools, starting with how we think about solving the problem.Traditional automation assumes that inputs, formats, and decisions can all be set ahead of time. This works for some tasks, but falls apart as processes get more complex, variable, and involve more human input. Goal-based AI agents try to change this basic assumption. The ceiling of deterministic automationDeterministic automation works best when systems are predictable. APIs give back the same data formats. I

In many automation projects, bots need to exchange files with external systems like APIs, databases, or web applications. However, not all systems can directly send or receive physical files such as PDFs, images, or Excel sheets. Most of them work only with text data.This is where Base64 file conversion becomes useful.Base64 conversion allows us to convert a file into a text format so it can be safely transferred through APIs, JSON payloads, or stored in systems that do not support binary files. Later, the same text can be converted back into the original file without losing any data.Approach Used in Automation AnywhereAutomation Anywhere does not provide a direct built-in action to encode or decode files into Base64. To handle this, we use a C# DLL that exposes functions for:Encoding a file into Base64 Decoding a Base64 string back into a file

Welcome to the January Product Club Recap! This month we kicked off the very first Product Club of 2026 with a deep dive into Document Automation, led by Alex, Director, Product Management at Automation Anywhere. Alex walked through what’s new, what’s next, and how teams can use cloud-scale extraction and GenAI-driven configuration to improve speed and accuracy across real-world document workflows.HOSTSLu Hunnicutt, Pathfinder Community ManagerAlexander Timoshenko, Director, Product ManagementTOPICIn this session, we explored how Automation Anywhere’s Document Automation product helps teams extract structured data from unstructured documents (including tables) and how recent innovations are improving both performance and accuracy. Alex introduced Document Automation as a modular extraction capability that plugs into workflows to extract fields from documents like invoices, p

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now firmly embedded in the fabric of enterprise operations, driving real impact and delivering measurable value across industries. The era of experimentation has evolved into one of purposeful, organization-wide adoption. As enterprises move from limited pilots to robust, scaled deployments, the profound opportunities and real-world complexities of AI are coming into sharper focus.Looking ahead to 2026, the companies that truly lead the pack will not be those who adopted AI first. Instead, they will be the ones who implemented it with a clear strategy, strong governance, and a commitment to long-term discipline. The story of enterprise AI is evolving, and the next chapter is all about maturity, reliability, and systemic strength.Trust is the foundation, not the finish lineFor years, the conversation around AI has been dominated by a single, critical word: trust. It’s a theme that will undoubtedly continue to be important in 2026

We’re excited to highlight ​@Ganesh Bhat, Senior Software Engineer at Novatio Solutions, as our Pathfinder Member of the Quarter.Ganesh has become known across the Pathfinder Community as someone who not only shows up but genuinely elevates the space. He’s an MVP in all the ways that count: sharing expertise, encouraging others, and engaging in Pathfinder programs like Product Club, Developer Meetups, and User Groups (and he has the official MVP title to prove it, for over a year now!).Ganesh has gone above and beyond, wi

By Peter White, Chief Product Officer, Automation AnywhereAgentic ConfusionScroll through LinkedIn or attend an AI conference, and you’ll hear dozens of definitions of what an “agent” is. Some describe any chatbot that answers questions. Others point to plugins or integrations that extend model capabilities. The result is a cloud of confusion where everything becomes an agent and, at the same time, nothing does.For enterprises, this lack of clarity creates real risk. Decision-makers evaluating technology need to know what agents can deliver today, how they differ from other forms of automation, and what criteria separate hype from substance.From my perspective leading emerging product strategy at Automation Anywhere, one principle has consistently proven true: agents earn the name only when they combine knowledge with actions that drive outcomes.Defining an AgentAt its simplest, an agent combines three capabilities:

This November 18–19, join us for our biggest community event of the year — Automation Anywhere Pathfinder Summit 2025: The Automation Revolution World Tour.Across 48 hours of global programming, you’ll connect with automation innovators, sharpen your technical skills, and see what’s next in agentic process automation (APA) — the breakthrough rewriting how work gets done.Whether you’re a developer, automation leader, or business innovator, here are 5 reasons you don’t want to miss it.1. Be part of the automation revolutionPathfinder Summit brings together the world’s most influential automation professionals — the change agents leading the shift from RPA to agentic process automation. You’ll be part of a movement that’s shaping the next era of digital transformation.2. Choose from 75+ sessions across four tracksDive deep into your area of focus — Strateg

 Pathfinder Mission Control: The Community’s Complete Book of Plays for Automation Hyperscale Looking for all of the community's winning plays in one place? This is it. These easy-to-use checklists will ensure that your Automation Program moves “Beyond the Bot” to drive business strategy and growth. Think of this as your all-under-one-roof accountability system for your most important automation program priorities.  PROGRAM  This is where you can check the boxes to start, accelerate and scale your automation program from Vision Casting and Environment Set Up through Performance and Delivery Metrics. Develop Compelling Vision and Goals STARTConduct workshops, set goals, develop a compelling vision Identify ke

Welcome to the Pathfinder Newsletter: Edition .38, your quarterly update on all things Pathfinder Pathfinder Summit: The Automation Revolution World Tour 🤘It’s time to buckle up, because November is about to get LOUD. Automation Anywhere Pathfinder Summit: The Automation Revolution World Tour is rolling into town (virtually, of course), and for 48 hours we have a setlist ranging from hands-on demos to real-world success stories, all dedicated to exploring the breakthrough force of Agentic Process Automation (APA).Why you can’t miss it: 48 hours, nonstop - live sessions tailored to every region. 4 dynamic tracks - Strategic Leadership, Operational Governance, Tactical Execution, Building AI Agents. Hands-on demos + real stories from automation pione

By Micah Smith, VP, Developer Relations, Community & Learning, Automation AnywhereEvery enterprise I’ve worked with has shared a version of the same frustration. Somewhere in their workflows sits a mountain of unstructured documents: invoices, enrollment forms, contracts, claims, applications, medical records, compliance reports. They are messy, inconsistent, and critical to business operations.For years, enterprises tried to automate these processes with template-based extraction or custom-trained machine learning models. Those approaches delivered incremental gains, but they came at a cost. Models had to be retrained for every new format and form version. Complex layouts confused template engines. Edge cases piled up until humans had to step in. And don’t even get me started on the use cases involving unstructured forms.The result was a cycle of partial automation followed by manual correction — a source of cost and delay that scaled with th

📣 This post was updated in November 2025 with our latest best practices! 📣 You schedule regular checkups for the health of yourself, your car, and your career ... is your automation program due for a checkup?Mission Control is your guide to accelerating program growth, and the first step is the assessment — a tool to help your team take a good look in the mirror. Assessing the progress and effectiveness of your automation initiatives can:Provide valuable insights into the current state of automation programs Identify areas for improvement Chart a course for future successAfter the assessment, you’ll see your results: Your program’s overall score as well as your score for each of the nine dimensions of automation program strength.This blog post is your definitive guide to conducting your Pa

We’re starting something new because new training platform, new you, am I right?Enter: Learning Trail of the MonthEach month, we’ll spotlight a curated learning experience to help you grow your automation expertise, explore new tools, and stay ahead in your journey with Automation Anywhere. And to kick things off on our brand-new learning platform, we’re diving into a topic that every automation program can benefit from: Setting up CoE Manager.About This Learning Trail 

AI agents in Automation Anywhere’s platform don’t just make predictions or answer questions, they act. They launch workflows, retrieve data, and make decisions in real time across critical systems. This creates powerful new opportunities for productivity and innovation, but also new risks if left unchecked.When the agent fails, the stakes are higher compared to single incorrect model output. Without governance frameworks aligned to emerging AI regulations, such as requirements for transparency, accountability and data protection, AI agents may inadvertently expose sensitive data, make biased decisions, or carry out harmful actions that impact customers and operations. Embedding guardrails, robust monitoring, and auditable controls is not only prudent—it is becoming a regulatory expectation. Who is accountable when AI agents go wrong?AI liability cases have exploded with skyrocketing settlements.

Welcome to the October Product Club Recap! This month our focus was on the A360v.37 Vision Fallback enhancement to Generative Recorder and seamless agent interoperability powered by the Process Reasoning Engine (PRE), led by Rajendra Vijay, Director of Product Management at Automation Anywhere. HOSTSLu Hunnicutt, Community ManagerRajendra Vijay, Director of Product ManagementPrakash, Director of EngineeringTOPICIn this session, we delved into the new Vision Fallback feature and how agent interoperability can enhance automation processes:Rajendra introduced the Vision Fallback enhancement, showcasing its impact on automations. We explored how agent interoperability powered by PRE eliminates costly integrations and enables seamless collaboration. The session highlighted how AI models like OCR, Object Detection, and Vision-Language Models (VLMs) enable