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HOSTS
Matt Stewart, Director of Evangelism & Content Strategy
Nishikanth N, Director of Product Management
Aanubbhaa Jhhaa, Lead Technical Writer
Shweta Srivastava, Lead UX Designer
TOPIC
For 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 end-to-end processes a breeze.
Here’s a rundown of the session:
- Nishikanth reviews what automation templates are and jumps into two demos that leverage existing automation templates and create a new custom task bot template.
- Matt and Nishikanth answer some questions regarding automation templates and review the key features and benefits of templates.
- Aanubbhaa takes us through product documentation and additional resources.
- Matt and Nishikanth answer final live audience questions.
AUTOMATION TEMPLATES
Traditionally, we think of automation templates only as frameworks for tasks. That has all changed with the new v.33 release because we’ve now expanded our templates to include process templates!
To provide a little background, automation templates are frameworks that enable developers to create automations, and now end-to-end processes, faster by utilizing a pre-defined template, giving them a significant head start. Not only do automation templates accelerate the development of process automations and API tasks, but they also help ensure compliance with best practices. Developers can also create custom templates specifically tailored to your organization’s business requirements.
With the v.33 release, you’ll find pre-defined process and task bot templates created by Automation Anywhere automatically shipped in your Control Room. And thanks to meaningful collaboration with customers and partners, we’ll be expanding our pre-defined template catalog in Bot Store to include industry-specific verticals in the next few months.
KEY CAPABILITIES & BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION TEMPLATES
- Kickstart automation development using Process and Task Bot templates
- Access pre-defined and custom templates
- Incorporate best practices in the template code
- Improve developer experience and productivity
- Leverage templates to enable and expand citizen developer programs
DEMO: LEVERAGING TEMPLATES TO ACCELERATE END-TO-END PROCESS DEVELOPMENT
For this product demo, Nishikanth showcases how pro developer, Marcus, and citizen developer, Sue, create an automated insurance quotation process quickly using process templates.
- From Marcus’ Control Room, we can see a new option on the Automation page under the Create button called “From Template.” Marcus clicks “Create…From Template” and is navigated to the Templates page.
- Marcus can now see all the templates available to him under 2 tabs, “Process” and “Task Bot.” Automation Anywhere templates are delineated with the A logo in the bottom corner, and all others without the logo are custom created templates from his organization. Also, by clicking on the binoculars, Marcus can preview what the template looks like and verify it has the necessary automations and flow he needs before he gets started. Marcus locates a pre-defined Insurance Quotation Process template and selects it.
- Marcus enters the name of his new process and selects the folder in which he wants to save it, then clicks “Create & Edit.”
- From there he’s navigated to the Process Composer. The template loads the entire process with all necessary automation assets laid out in the proper flow. Now Marcus can make edits and enter any missing details required for his business use case.
Note: You can use Automation Co-Pilot in the Process Composer to make development even more efficient! Use natural language prompts in the Assistant window to request specific actions from Co-Pilot.
- Now, Sue needs to automate a task for the Insurance Quotation Process that extracts details from a Salesforce report. Just as Marcus did, Sue selects “Create...From Template” on her Automation page.
- On the Templates page, Sue selects the Task Bot tab and is presented with a range of task bot templates available to her. She selects the Salesforce Report Extractor template, enters the name of the new task bot and selects the folder in which she wants to save it, then clicks “Create & Edit” to navigate into the Bot Editor canvas.
- The task automation skeleton populates in the canvas and best practices have already been built into the template. For example, we can see Error Handling included in all the right places, as well as explanations as to what each step is for. Sue can now make changes or add new actions.
DEMO: CREATING YOUR OWN CUSTOM TEMPLATES
Out-of-the-box templates don’t always solve all our use cases. Sometimes we need to create our own custom templates. Any user who has access to Process Composer or Bot Editor can create a custom template, not just pro developers. A great way to identify what template you should create is to review automations in your system that are often cloned for different departments.
For this demo, Nishikanth shows how Marcus creates a custom template for a common use case, “DB operations for Salesforce.”
- Marcus starts by opening the DB operations for Salesforce automation. When it opens, we can see a new option under the Save button called “Save as Template.” He clicks this, provides a name and description for the template and sets the destination folder.
Note: Once you save a new template, it does not immediately become available to other developers. We always want CoEs to review custom-created templates to verify they contain all the necessary best practices (such as logging comments) and ensure the actual use case being automated using the template is as per the requirements. To that end, you must save and then check-in the template to a public repository or public workspace before it becomes available for other developers to use.
- After saving, Marcus is navigated to the Editor. Now Marcus can add or remove actions that are not necessary from a template perspective, as well as ensure there are no hard coded values, which is best practice when creating a template—everything must have variables.
- There are a few warnings and errors showing, but that’s okay. Marcus can still save and check-in the template with the warnings because the nature of templates is that some properties will be kept empty. However, it is best practice to add a comment to those errors or warnings so that anybody using the template in the future will understand why the properties are kept in that manner.
- Marcus makes his adjustments and clicks “Save.” He can see his new template in the folder now. Next, he clicks on the three dots to the right of the file and selects “Check in Task Bot Template.” He enters comments for the dependencies and clicks “Check in.”
Note: The beauty of templates is that they need not be standalone shells. They can include any other dependencies that you may want to have as part of the template. For example, with a Salesforce operations template, let’s say you want to store all the necessary configurations for your automation in an XML or JSON file. You can refer to that file in your template and add it as a dependency, so anybody using that template to create an automation will automatically have the reference to the other files as well. The same applies for process templates.
- Soon after checking in his new custom template, Marcus can see it available for use on the Templates page.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
There are tons of resources on automation templates available on the Automation Anywhere Product Documentation Portal! You can access the main landing page for Templates product documentation here, which will provide a plethora of guidance on pre-defined and custom templates, actions with templates, and even scenarios for how templates can be used by different personas, plus much more.
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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 want to express our gratitude to our special co-hosts, Nishikanth, Aanubbhaa, and Shweta for providing their expertise and responses.
**Please note that all answers were shared live during the August 2024 meeting, and are subject to change. We strongly encourage you to contact your account management team for any specific licensing and pricing inquiries.
Q: It seemed very easy to hit “Save as Template.” Are there role controls around who can hit Save, or alerts to a CoE Manager on what’s getting saved into templates to have guardrails around what’s getting out there?
A: Currently the templates can be created by any user who has access, with your permission, to create automated processes. They do have a check-in process in place, but it's still means they can sneak in some of the templates, right? So definitely, I think that's a very valid feedback, which is part of our road map to bring in controls in terms of who can really create templates.
Follow-up: Some organizations manage access to folder by role. So if they did not have public check in access to that folder where the template would be saves, theoretically would that be a place they could not promote to?
A: That’s correct. For example, let's say if you have 20 templates and there are 5 templates very specific to the HR automation use cases and you want users from the HR department or the SMEs to have access to only those 5 templates, you can make that possible with folder-based access control. So in a Federated model, every team could build their own templates and host them in their own folders. Then the CoE, for larger processes that are that are standard across the entire group or the entire enterprise, could create their own folder that only they can maintain and and publish those out.
Q: How and when do new templates get into our environment? Are they part of upgrades or is that the process like a package? And how will the users be notified of new templates?
A: The templates as a feature are already available from v.30. However, from v.30 to v.31, you could create only custom templates. And from v.32 on, we started shipping pre-defined templates from Automation Anywhere. As mentioned earlier, in v.33, these templates are automatically made available in Control Room without going through any manual steps. Now, is it available in your environment? Definitely, it should be available if they are not already downloaded. There is a manual way to get these templates added to your control room. And definitely, I would request you to go to the documentation portal that Aanubbhaa walked us through and look at the steps to download the templates. It's a very simple set of steps, just two to three steps. You would have to click buttons and the templates would be available in your Control Room if they're not already available. And whenever any new templates are made available, they will automatically be added to your Control Room. So you really don't have to go through any manual steps and therefore a notification is not added for that purpose.
Q: When creating a task bot using a template, which version of package will it use? The one used to develop the template or the latest as per CR?
A: By default it uses the version that's used in the template. However, you do have the flexibility to change it as per the version. That is, the version that is available in the Control Room.
Q: Is an additional license needed?
A: There is no additional license. The base package of Automation 360 will give you the capability to create, use, as well as leverage the pre-defined templates from Automation Anywhere.
Q: Is there any impact on CR performance with the number of templates available?
A: Absolutely not. In fact, these templates are skeletons of the automation, so in no manner would they actually impact the Control Room performance.
Q: Are the templates modular in nature? That is, are they child and parent task bots or will it be a singular task bot?
A: The templates are currently singular in nature. However, they can have references to other child task bots or even other files. Which means if you're creating a template, you can have references to other files, including the child automations. And when you ship, they do get shipped as one single template, but they will have the necessary references to other files.
Q: Are templates really meta-bots?
A: I would not at all compare them to meta-bots. Most of the time metabots are being used to do a repeatable task, whereas these templates are meant to help structure an entire process. So its more of a flexible skeleton for you to sculpt to your specific needs versus something that is treated as an external function or method.
Q: Are templates and Co-Pilot available in v.33.?
A: Yes, but it’s important to note that Automation Co-Pilot does require an additional license and cost that you will need to take into consideration.
Q: Updating a template - will it also affect the bots where it is used, or will it notify the owners or developers using the template?
A: The template, once used for creating a bot, has absolutely no mapping or connection between the template and the bot that was created out of it. And we do that on purpose so that it only serves as a skeleton and not really as, let's say, a dependent bot. So you can always keep updating your templates and when you create new automations, only those would take the effects of the new changes.
Q: Is the new feature available in Community Edition?
A: Templates are not available at Community Edition.
Q: Is this available on cloud based model or also on-prem?
A: It’s available in any environment for you to leverage the pre-shipped templates. There’s a URL that you'll have to open in your control room and with that you'll also get the pre-shipped templates. But even otherwise, you can create your own templates and use it on any environment.
Q: Are there robotic enterprise framework like there are in other tools in the market like AARI framework?
A: Not currently with templates. But yes, we'll allow you to kind of structure that in a manner. But not exactly, or I would not say 100% comparable to AARI framework, but that's definitely in our road map.
Q: Can we call the template from another task bot?
A: No, the template is the starting point for you to create automations. You could put in a template a placeholder to call, you know, a little line statement in a comment that says “This is where you would call template two,” and template two is its own template. You would build your tasks out for each of them, and then you could, in your parent taskbot, call the child taskbot. But the goal of the template is to simplify development for that task or process, not necessarily to wire together multiple templates. You have to build the parents and the children. If you've already created a child bot with a template and that's going to be an artifact that stays forever, you could put that in your template, but not the templates itself.
Q: Are the custom templates created only available to my organization here?
A: Yes, absolutely the the all the templates or custom templates that you create is going to be sitting only within your control room. But certainly if you have multiple control rooms, you can always export and import them for the developers and other environments to use the templates.