Pathfinder Blog

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312 Topics
213 Replies

312 Topics

kate-resslerPathfinder Community Team

Inspire the Automation + AI Community: Speak at Pathfinder Summit 2025News

Calling all automation visionaries, technical gurus, and strategic leaders! Pathfinder Summit 2025 is your chance to share your hard-won expertise with a global audience of automation professionals. Whether you want to inspire with a powerful use case, deliver a technical deep dive, provide strategic guidance, or facilitate a lively peer discussion - we want to hear from you.This virtual conference on January 21-23, 2025, will empower the Automation Anywhere Pathfinder Community to set bold goals for the year ahead. And as a speaker, you'll play a vital role in arming attendees with the insights they need to achieve automation success in 2025 and beyond.APPLY TO SPEAK AT PATHFINDER SUMMIT Speakers can choose any of the following session types:💡 Community Spark Session: Share an inspiring automation use case that solved a real business challenge. In this 30-minute session, provide an overview of the problem, walk through your innovative solution, and discuss the positive impact it had,

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21 days ago

OliverM108256Automation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Bot Games: Document Automation Training Camp Edition | Lease Processing ChallengeBlog

Welcome to the latest edition of Bot Games — are you ready to push your automation skills to the next level? To beat this challenge, you will need to combine everything you’ve learned about Document Automation with new technologies like generative AI and API Tasks. If you can complete this challenge successfully, you can be confident you’re at the forefront of the latest and greatest in automation technology.Watch the video HERE, by me, and get a complete run down of the challenge.Challenge ObjectiveHousing Hope is a fictitious non-profit organization dedicated to providing rent relief and support for families displaced due to various circumstances. To streamline their processes and better serve their clients, Housing Hope is looking to leverage the power of automation and generative AI to optimize their lease agreement onboarding process.The problem: Housing Hope’s lease agreement onboarding process involves manual document processing and data entry. Each existing lease agreement mu

76917

1 day ago

kate-resslerPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

October Product Club Recap | AI Solution Accelerators

If 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. HOSTSKate Ressler, Community & University Marketing Director Akshay Mehtani, Lead Solution EngineerMatt Stewart, Director of Evangelism & Content Strategy TOPICFor October’s Product Club, we’re chatting all about how Solution Accelerators are the key to supercharging new and existing automation workflows with AI Agents. These solutions are versatile, smart, and, most importantly, easy to implement with minimal development time! Here’s a rundown of the se

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7 days ago

ShreyaKumarPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

3 Eye-Opening Lessons from My First 2 Weeks with Document Automation

When I joined Automation Anywhere and jumped into the Document Automation Training Camp, I thought I knew what to expect. After all, I've worked with AI projects before - how different could this be? Well, grab your popcorn, because these first two weeks completely changed my perspective towards intelligent automation.Here's what I've learnt so far: Lesson 1: Document Automation Goes Way Beyond OCRI'll admit it - I walked in thinking document automation just meant glorified OCR with some data validation sprinkled on top. And I'll admit it - I was wrong!OCR and data correlation barely scratch the surface of what modern document automation can do.Think of Document Automation like an iceberg. The visible part includes the OCR and basic validation we all know about. But dive beneath the surface, and you'll find a whole ecosystem of processes: setting up sophisticated input pipelines, preprocessing data to clean up inconsistencies (because let's face it, real-world data loves entropy), imp

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15 days ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Bot Store Spotlight: File and Folder Attributes Package

Automation Anywhere's Bot Store has an awesome collection of freely available bots and packages. In this tutorial, we'll take a look at setting up and using the File and Folder Attributes Package. This tutorial can be followed if you're using Community Edition or Automation 360 Enterprise - so follow along so your bots can know more about the files and folders that you work with. File and Folder Attributes PackageIt's not uncommon for an automation use case to include the need to manipulate, modify, and iterate through files. When those situations come up - it can be important to validate that the file you're about to make modifications to is the actual file you intend to modify, and not another file found within the folder. This comes up frequently in situations where you need to find the newest file in a directory, need to delete the oldest file in a folder, or you're looking for the smallest file but don't necessarily know the name. The best way to be sure you're working with the co

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26 days ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

CoE Operational StructuresLearning Journey

Objective Now that we know what a Center of Excellence is and the benefits one can provide, we’ll explore the common operating structures of a CoE and their pros and cons. Deciding to create a CoE without planning its operating structure is like asking an architect to design your new house without giving them any details. You’ll get something, but it might not be exactly what you want or need. If you already have a CoE in place, consider whether the structure you have right now is meeting your needs and how it may need to evolve. If you don’t have a CoE yet, think through the best structure for your team right now. There are many important questions in planning your CoE: How should you structure it? What are the pros and cons of different governance models? Which governance model fits our needs for today, and what governance model will fit our needs three years from now? How many departmental teams may be interested in building on our Automation platform? Do we have teams of p

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27 days ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Pathfinder Community Camp Day Special Edition Flight Plan & Tools - Generative AI EditionCommunity Event

[Part of the 1st Annual Pathfinder Community Camp hosted in May 2023] 🚀 PATHFINDER MISSION OVERVIEW The Automation Pathfinder Program is your intergalactic flight map for automation mission success. Developed with over 20 years of first-hand automation expertise across thousands of use cases, each mission is calibrated to serve as your blueprint for best practices to achieve scalable growth, measurable value, and long-term sustainability. We’re here to help you soar beyond RPA to implement and advance intelligent automation initiatives in your business. Today’s Bonus Mission - Generative AI 📌 MISSION PARAMETERSThis is your mission focus of the day. 3...2...1...Blast off! GenAI has taken the world by storm with its futuristic ability to turn natural language into creative content and images. And now, we’re taking automation to new heights by integrating OpenAI’s generative AI tools with your favorite Automation Success Platform! Say goodbye to tedious document hunting, boring emails,

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28 days ago

kate-resslerPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Build new Skills at Document Automation Training Camp!

Are you ready to take your AI-powered automation skills to the next level? We’re excited to launch Document Automation Training Camp, an exclusive four-week program to help you master the art of automating document workflows. Why should you join?Document Automation has become a game-changer for businesses, speeding up processes, reducing errors, and freeing up valuable time. At Document Automation Training Camp, you’ll get digital training and live coaching on how to handle semi-structured and unstructured documents, learning best practices and strategies from industry experts. Here’s what you can expect during the 4-week training camp:Weekly Game Plans: Each week, we’ll share a curated set of bite-sized courses focused on specific aspects of Document Automation. You’ll learn how to classify, extract, and validate document data, master image preparation, and tackle tricky document workflows with ease. Live Coaching Meetups: Join live sessions with our expert team and special guest spe

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1 month ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

September 2024 | SaaS Triggers

If 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. HOSTSKate Ressler, Community & University Marketing Director Vineet Pujari, Senior Product Manager, API-as-a-Service Matt Stewart, Director, Evangelism and Content Strategy Nirmal Mathimaran, Lead Technical Writer TOPICFor September’s Product Club, we’re talking automation triggers and the huge benefits on the horizon with our cloud-based SaaS Triggers. So, pull up a seat and take notes as the Product Team covers this forthcoming game-changing tool and how

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1 month ago

rima.senguptaPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Pathfinder Community Monthly Flight Plan: October 2024pathfinder news

Welcome to your one-stop hub for this month’s key Pathfinder Community news and featured events, content, forums, and more!📚Community Stories Never miss a beat—here are your can’t-miss updates from the Pathfinder Community this month: Build new Skills at Document Automation Training Camp! August 2024 | Process Templates AI Agent Studio | August Developer Meetup ✨Stellar Contributor SpotlightMeet Dinesh Kumar M from HCL Technologies (DK 964)Each month, we’re shining a light on a stellar member whose recent contributions are truly making a big impact in our community-driven ecosystem.Dinesh Kumar, an RPA technical and development lead at HCL Technologies, is featured as our Community Spotlight of the Month in October 2024 Newletter. In this video, he shares his journey and contributions to the Automation Anywhere community. Dinesh recounts winning an Automation Anywhere hackathon in 2021, emphasizing that anyone can transition from non-technical to technical roles with dedication. Dines

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1 month ago

Micah.SmithPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Development and Testing: Start to Accelerate

Testing in automation development serves as the safety net that catches errors, ensures quality, and maintains the integrity of automated systems. It's a critical factor that separates successful automation projects from failed ones.But the approach to testing can vary across different phases of development. In this blog post, we'll explore why an organized approach to development and testing is so crucial for your automation program and how it should be approached from the start phase leading into the accelerate phase.Let’s dive in. Why Testing is Mission Critical in AutomationsTesting in automation is akin to a health check for new software – it diagnoses problems before they become critical. In the world of automation, where processes, automations, and solutions are expected to run smoothly and efficiently, testing ensures that automations not only perform their intended tasks but also handle errors gracefully and adapt to unforeseen situations. Start Phase: All About Reducing RiskE

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1 month ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

QuickTip: Connect to an Excel Spreadsheet As a Database

In this session, we'll dive into connecting to an Excel Spreadsheet using the database package - especially useful when working with large Excel datasets. Video RecapKnow Your Options There are several packages available for working with an Excel file Excel Advanced - great for advanced spreadsheet manipulations. This package has the most actions by far, and is great for taking advanced operations on your spreadsheets. Excel Basic - great for quick operations. This package is great because it has no requirement for Excel to be installed on the machine - note that it only works on xlsx files though. Database Package - great for working with huge datasets. While its primarily designed to connect to actual databases, it works in this case because of the Microsoft Access driver being used. Of the available options, this has the least "Excel Friendly" packages - and is more for users who are comfortable writing their own SQL queries. Get the Driver In order to connect to a spreadsh

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1 month ago

kate-resslerPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

New Certification, Big Savings, Greater Impact

Get Your Advanced Certification for $5 and Help Bridge the Digital Divide in Rural India Are you ready to take your automation career to the next level? We’re excited to announce the launch of our latest certification on Automation Anywhere University, the Advanced Automation Developer Certification. The Advanced Automation Developer Certification shows you can tackle real-world business challenges using the Automation Success Platform, helping you stand out in your field.To celebrate this opportunity, through October 15, 2024, you can take the Advanced Automation Developer Certification exam for just $5. After this promotion period, the price will go up to $80.There’s more. Your $5 exam fee doesn’t just save you money, it will also benefit rural Indians living in poverty. All exam fees during this promotional period will be donated to Karya, an ethical AI organization that trains and provides digital work to those who need it most. Watch the video below to learn more about their impac

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1 month ago

arjun.medaPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Bot Games Season 4 Generative AI Edition Solution Tutorial Challenge #2

Challenge Page Tutorial -Shipment ProcessingIf you're interested in learning about automation development, the Bot Games Challenge Pages are a great place to start.Have you tried the Shipment Processing Challenge yet? If so, great job! If not, don't worry - we're here to help you get started.To help you succeed, we've put together a step-by-step video guide for how to solve this challenge, along with some useful tips to help you automate this use case. Additionally, we're providing some pointers below to help you increase your efficiency and finish the challenge as quickly as possible.Don't be intimidated by this challenge! With a little bit of practice, you'll be able to automate the shipment processing use case in no time.Here is the link to the Shipment Processing Challenge Intro Page with full details.Challenge page: https://pathfinder.automationanywhere.com/challenges/shipment-processing-challenge.htmlOpenAI Generative AI Package This cutting-edge package brings the power of OpenA

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1 month ago

Matt StewartAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Work Item Tracking: Your Secret Weapon to Track Metrics and Support Automation Priorities

Build, enhance, maintain.Automation teams have multiple priorities pulling them in different directions at all times. Aligning those priorities and incoming requests to a logical automation pipeline can be a tricky science that leaves many of us scratching our heads, unintentionally stalling work, or stuck in a hamster wheel of building, enhancing, maintaining, and trying to keep up with demand with no business assessment or master plan in mind. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!Which new opportunities or enhancement requests should be addressed first? How can you consider variables like time, effort, and ROI to calculate prioritization? Today, I want to introduce you to a secret weapon—a metrics tracking system you can leverage to capture essential data from the beginning, make smart decisions about automation priorities, and set your team up for success downstream. Enhancement vs. New AutomationIf you’re in the Start phase of your automation program—POCing your first use case and

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1 month ago

arjun.medaPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

AI Agent Studio | August Developer Meetup

In the August Developer Meetup, Arjun Meda was joined by Rinku Sarkar (Director of Product Management), Jason Trent (Director of Product Management), and Smita Biswas (Lead Technical Writer) to deep dive into the newly released AI Agent Studio that allows you to easily build, manage, and govern custom AI Agents to responsibly execute cognitive tasks embedded in any automation workflow.In this meeting recap, we’ll cover:What AI Agents are and the capabilities of AI Agent Studio A support case handling demo that leverages AI Agents and AI skills Security features built into our AI Governance Additional resources for AI Agent Studio on our docs portal Live audience Q&AYou can watch the full recording of the meeting below.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yiIk687I30] What is are AI Agents?We define AI Agents as cognitive tasks that combine AI skills with contextual actions. AI Agents can make decisions based on knowledge inputs and perceptions, communicate in natural language, adapt to

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1 month ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

JavaScript Injection: Using Browser Run JavaScript

Browser: Run JavaScript For some background, the Browser package is most commonly used for opening a web-browser session to be used in conjunction with the Recorder package....but did you know it can also be used to inject JavaScript into a page for execution? In this tutorial, we'll look at how to use a Self-Executing Anonymous Function to inject a CDN-hosted JavaScript source to the head of the DOM and then execute it. Sound confusing? Don't worry, let's break it down together.Oh, and while this is a serious topic - the bot we'll be building shows a confetti explosion on the page...a fun way to add some pizazz to your next automation demo. Having a Window to Practice With We first need to have a browser session for our Browser: Run JavaScript to interact with. If you have a window open already, that's fine, but the first action we'll add here for the tutorial is a Browser: Open action to launch Google Chrome and open Google.com Adding a Delay For our JavaScript Injection to work co

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1 month ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

August 2024 | Process Templates

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.HOSTSMatt Stewart, Director of Evangelism & Content StrategyNishikanth N, Director of Product ManagementAanubbhaa Jhhaa, Lead Technical WriterShweta Srivastava, Lead UX Designer TOPICFor August’s Product Club, we dive into the not-so-secret weapon that should be your pro developers’ and citizen developers’ best friend—automation templates! Our product team specifically covers the details of how our newly enhanced process templates can make automating

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1 month ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Pathfinder Community Monthly Flight Plan: September 2024Pathfinder News

Welcome to your one-stop hub for this month’s key Pathfinder Community news and featured events, content, forums, and more!📚Community Stories Never miss a beat—here are your can’t-miss updates from the Pathfinder Community this month: If you’ve missed our July Product Club on AI Agent Studio , get caught up on speed A360 Package Updates coming in Aug, 2024. New Skill Booster, New Badge: Delta Training for Automation 360 .33 Release ✨Stellar Contributor Spotlight Each month, we’re shining a light on a stellar member whose recent contributions are truly making a big impact in our community-driven ecosystem. Stefano (@Stefano 5934 ) Stefano has consistently made outstanding contributions to our community, providing invaluable assistance to those facing issues with Javascript function to get expected output . We express our sincere gratitude for his outstanding commitment and invaluable support. Thank you, Stefano! Highlighted SolutionsHow to reference multiple variables in javascript to

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2 months ago

Matt StewartAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Using the AIM Framework to Craft an Impactful Metrics Story

Automators express the same challenge to me over and over—the hardest thing about running an automation program is proving the value of automations when the metrics at your disposal are simple and generic. Reporting to a management group that views cost savings as the only legitimate way to capture automation value is a common roadblock to expanding your use cases. As a former member of the CoE at PNC Bank, I know first-hand the difficulties of advocating for opportunities that would enable employees and improve morale but not necessarily directly generate revenue. More often than not, if it didn’t promise direct benefits like cost savings, cost avoidance, revenue generation, or cash flow, it would not be approved. As Automators, we must chip away at the mindset of “If we’re not saving money, what’s the point?” Because many times, there absolutely is a point!Now, as a member of the Automation Anywhere team focusing on evangelism and content strategy, I get excited to help people facin

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2 months ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Working With Large Excel Datasets in a Bot

We’ve all been there: Someone in a business role asks, “Hey can you create one of your RPA bot things to automate validating data from one spreadsheet and writing data to another file?”. Without hesitation, most Automation Anywhere developers reply “Sure, that's easy”…only to subsequently receive a spreadsheet with 40,000+ records paired with a sudden sense of self-doubt questioning how easy this might actually be.Fortunately, automating with large Excel datasets doesn’t have to be something to make you question your bot building aptitude. In this article, we’ll take a look at 3 approaches for reading data from a large dataset and discuss the pro’s and con’s for each.ScenarioAs a part of our automation, we need to validate the zip code from an address and retrieve the corresponding city and state values to make sure they match up. Per USPS, there are nearly 42,000 Zip codes in the United States. (for those outside the United States - a zip code is a postal code that allows mail deliver

33163

2 months ago

CaseyB1210Customer

published in Pathfinder Blog

Support Runs The Business | Insights on Dynamic Automation Support from Boston Scientific

Post this on your bulletin boards, put it in the company newsletter, send out a company-wide notice: Support runs the business. It doesn't matter how mature your program is or how talented your developers are—automations break; they just do. Bugs happen, applications update, whatever the variable may be; these things can upend even our most resilient automations. That is exactly why production support, especially proactive production support, is critical to keeping your business running smoothly and minimizing downtime. Good support enables your program to flourish. Good support ensures optimal customer satisfaction. Good support allows you to explore new technologies.In the six years since I became the first automator in Global Business Services (GBS) at Boston Scientific (BSC), helping to launch their official automation program, I've experienced ambitious growth and enlightening challenges. As a result, I've become a staunch champion of prioritizing a robust production support frame

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2 months ago

Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Working With the DLL Package

This is a guest post from Magdi Ramadan, a Senior RPA developer at Basserah company and contributor to Automation Anywhere's APeople. If you have an idea for a blog post or tutorial that you think would benefit the Automation Anywhere developer community, let us know at developer@automationanywhere.com. In this article, we will look at how to use the DLL Package with Automation360. First, let’s understand what DLLs are:A DLL file, acronym for Dynamic Link Library, is a kind of file that provides instructions/resources for other applications to execute. DLLs contain functions, classes, variables, and other resources that can be used by other applications/DLLs. This way, many applications may share and even operate concurrently on the capabilities written into a single DLL.Hands-on learning is always great, so let's create a simple DLL using Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition.Step 1: Navigate to File > New > ProjectWe'll use a Class Library (.NET Framework) Step 2: Paste t

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2 months ago

arjun.medaPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

New Skill Booster, New Badge: Delta Training for Automation 360 .33 Release

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of our Delta Training for the Automation 360 .33 Release, now available on Automation Anywhere University. This Skill Booster training series is designed to ensure you and your team stay ahead in the automation technology, empowering you to make the most of our latest tools and features.Delta Training for the Automation 360 .33 Release includes guided walkthroughs, real-world demonstrations, and hands-on exercises for many of the new features in this release. In about two to three hours, you'll gain the expertise needed to leverage these powerful updates. Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect:AI Agent Studio MasteryDiscover how to build intelligent applications effortlessly with the AI Agent Studio. This module addresses the challenges of generative AI model selection, data visibility, and response accuracy, ensuring your applications are smarter and more reliable.Rapid Development with GenAITransform your process documentation into efficient au

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2 months ago

kate-resslerPathfinder Community Team

published in Pathfinder Blog

Introducing the 2024 Class of MVPs

We're thrilled to introduce 2024's Most Valuable Pathfinders (MVPs)! These incredible individuals are more than just experts in AI and automation—they're leaders, mentors, and true innovators who are driving change and sharing their knowledge with the global community. What is a Most Valuable Pathfinder (MVP)?The MVP title is awarded to dynamic leaders, innovators, and skilled practitioners in the field of AI-powered automation. Our MVPs are the backbone of the Pathfinder Community, consistently going above and beyond to mentor others, volunteer their time, and share innovative ideas that push the boundaries of what's possible with AI and automation. Their dedication and passion help shape the future of our industry. Introducing our new MVPsHelp us welcome our newest members to the MVP family. These individuals from around the world and across industries have demonstrated exceptional skills and a deep commitment to the AI and automation community. From India to Canada and from chocolat

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3 months ago

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