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Objective: With a foundation of what RPA actually is, it’s important to start thinking about how RPA can be applied. In this learning experience, we’ll take a look at what bots can do and how they can be utilized in different areas of an organization. Bots are RPA: specialized software robots that automate high-volume, repetitive, rule-based tasks in an auditable and reliable way…but what do bots actually do? And how can that help save my organization time, money, reduction in errors, etc? The answer to both of these questions really depends on the manual efforts that take place in different areas within your organization. Take, for example, processing sales orders. Regardless of the size of your organization, there is some place that your company is tracking customer relationship data (in a CRM, xls, some other system of record) where data needs to be updated in the case of a sale. Additionally, most organizations also leverage an enterprise resource planning application as part of th

Overview: Identifying some of the most valuable automation opportunities in an organization requires critical thinking and a creative mindset. Those skills come from experience, as well as an exploration in the ‘Art of the Possible’. In this learning experience, we’ll take a look at how Bot Store can be used to explore pre-built bots and packages to enable developers to accelerate bot builds and branch out on bot capabilities.  As new developers start to find their groove in developing RPA bots, a trap that many developers fall into is thinking that the automations they build in the future have to be similar to the automations they’ve built in the past. Said another way - it’s important that as you’re learning to build bots, you continue to think “outside the box” as far creatively approaching solutions to automation opportunities. One way to encourage such creative thought is to regularly explore the bots and pre-built packages available in Automation Anywhere’s Bot Store. Bot Store i

Overview Welcome to the start of building great intelligent automation! This journey is focused on helping process analysts, business analysts, and process improvement specialists gets started in learning the capabilities of robotic process automation and learning to build their own bots on Automation 360. Users for this track will tend to have the following profile: Familiar with understanding and documenting of business processes. Comfortable with general problem-solving approaches and creative thinking. May or may not be familiar with creating process flows in a software application. Interested in learning the capabilities and use of robotic process automation to automate manual tasks.  If the above describes you, then let's get things going! This journey is organized into learning experiences that continue to build on each other: What is RPA?:   We’ll give you a quick overview of RPA and Enterprise Automation 360, our web-based RPA platform, and the basics for building on it.

With the rise of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as an antidote to dealing with the increasing workloads and inefficiency in helping humans complete their digitally-based tasks, there will inevitably be the case where a bot fails. If your bot is simply handling pulling data from other sources, and the bot is well-written—e.g. supports appropriate exception handling—then the user will simply get a notification that the bot did not complete its task and it can be re-run.But what about scenarios in which the bot was updating systems and the bot stalls or fails in the middle of the updates? This is a tricky scenario. RPA is essentially non-transactional, which means that it cannot roll-back changes that have already been made in the middle of a bot execution if the bot cannot complete its tasks. We see this scenario growing not only around RPA but also in the rise of microservices design that calls a sequence of application programming interfaces (API) to update multiple services as part

In this episode of #AAillustrates, we'll discuss what an Application Programming Interface (API) is, have a brief intro to the Automation Anywhere Control Room API, then dive in to setting up and using an Automation Anywhere Control Room API Postman Collection to test different API endpoints. For some additional background, Postman is an API testing/creation collaboration tool that allows developers to test different API endpoints. It's extremely useful for RPA developers to test with so they can understand the proper format for calling APIs, correctly formatting the body of a REST Web Service call, and understand the returned responses from an API endpoint. If you haven't tried it out, you can download the Postman application at Postman.com Full Automation 360 Postman CollectionKeep LearningGot the basics of the Automation Anywhere Control Room API down? Great, check out the tutorial on Triggering Bots Using the Control Room API to take the concept even further. In this session, Micah

In this session, we'll walk through creating a bot from start to finish that can read an RSS feed from wired.com, parse the RSS feed using some commands from the XML Package and Loops Package, and create an HTML page from a template in the referenced GitHub link below.While creating this exact bot build may not be something you have an immediate need for - think about other use cases when your bot may need to parse XML (possibly to read bot settings files, or pass data between bot/sub-task) or create an HTML (building an html based email, creating an html page breaking down the bot run results, or a bot that creates a dashboard based on the logs of other bots).Packages UsedStep Package, XML Package, Loop Package, Log To File Package, REST Web Services Package, Datetime Package, Step PackageHelpful LinksRSS Feed URL: https://www.wired.com/feed/rssGitHub Code: https://github.com/AutomationAnywhere/AAillustrates_RSS_FeedReader Keep LearningKeep the momentum going! If you enjoyed building

In this session, we’ll look at 2 approaches for extracting text from a web application - including a unique application of the REST Web Services package to perform browser-less web scraping.Video Recap:Recorder Use the recorder in conjunction with the Automation Anywhere Chrome Extension to highlight object on a webpage and extract them. The recorder action does require an established browser session to interact with. Recorder can be a great option for use cases where some navigation through multiple pages is needed or objects on the page are being dynamically loaded at runtime. REST Get Use the REST Get method to read the full page's HTML without the need for a browser - returned as a dictionary - where the Body is the dictionary key to the full HTML text. The String Package can be subsequently used for extracting specific text from the REST response. Bonus TipWhen using the REST Get method to return the full HTML of a page or when using the Recorder Capture action to return the i

In this session, we’ll look at the String Package and discuss approaches for extracting a sub-string. When extracting data from web applications, OCR'd text from images, or even an Excel file - data unfortunately doesn't always come in the perfect format we need it in - which is why its important to understand how best to extract out the text you need.Video Recap:Extract Text Use the before, before and/or after, or the after settings to extract a sub-string from a body of text. Before: You provide the text that precedes the text you're interested in extracting, and the action will return everything that comes after. Before and After: You provide the text that precedes the text you're interested in as well as the text which comes after the text you're interested in. The action will return all the text that comes between the two. Before or After: You provide the text that may precede the text you're interested in as well as the text which may come after the text you're interested in

In this session, we'll look at the basics of Error Handling in A2019 using the Try, Catch, and Finally Blocks. Remember: Beyond executing the task at hand, your bot's #1 responsibility is to not hard fail leaving a bot runner in a bad state; error handling is the best approach to always being in control of your bots.Video Recap:Try The Try block is for the core code you want to execute. Should everything run smoothly here, the finally block would run next. Should things not run as expected, the catch block would run next. Catch The Catch block is for code that should handle exceptions. This might include logging to a file, saving off a screenshot of the machine's current state, or even sending an email off to a support team. After the Catch block runs, the Finally block will execute. Finally The Finally block is for code that should execute whether an error occurred in this bot execution or not. This block might include things like writing out to an audit log, closing applicati

  In this session, we'll look at how best to to set up your bot-building interface to maximize your developer space. Video Recap: Minimize Tabs Minimize those sections that you don't need open - especially menus that aren't relevant to the task you're currently focusing on Zoom Control Zoom in/out as needed - some developers specifically build at one-click-out-zoom as it allows them to still read everything while seeing more of their bot at once Maximize Your Screen In Google Chrome, you can press F11 to maximize the screen (pressing F11 again exits the maximization). Great for making the most of your screen real estate, as well as avoiding distractions during development. Bonus Tip Use Steps! They are a great way to minimize your code blocks and only show the specific logic you need to focus on.  Be sure to stay tuned to our Community for more Quick Tips!

According to Everest Group, “roughly 35% percent of business applications, which run on mainframes or similar systems, force users to access applications through what is known as 3270 or 5250 emulations, sometimes known as “green screen”. In some industries with higher technical debt, this share is higher. For instance, when we examined the record-keeping systems for the leading ten firms in the US, we found 8 of the 10 firms running these applications on mainframe systems.”Maintenance of these applications can be complex as many are fragile and few businesses want to extend their capabilities with Application Programming Interfaces (API) even though advancements in the operating systems on these platforms now facilitate this using high-level programming languages, such as Java. This results in one of three options for business: automate the interaction with these systems through the use of keyboard and mouse emulation via robotic process automation (RPA) tools, refactor/re-platform/re

PrerequisitesYou’ll need to have Automation Anywhere Enterprise v11 workbench installed and licensed with a bot creator license to follow along with this lab.BackgroundThis lab is the same back story as our last. Review the details below to re-familiarize yourself with the scenario. Most all web applications have some sort of login process. The primary focus of this first bot is to enter a username and password into a log in form, and successfully log in to a web application.PseudocodeThink of pseudocode as the human readable steps that our program/bot will need to accomplish. When creating a bot, it can be helpful to lay out the steps that the bot will need to take to accomplish a task. In this way, the process of translating into Automation Anywhere commands becomes more straightforward, and we can know we did everything needed.Step 1: Launch Website – We'll have to have the website open to start entering any username/password info.Step 2: Enter Email Address – The email address is a

PrerequisitesYou’ll need to have Automation Anywhere Enterprise v11 workbench installed and licensed with a bot creator license to follow along with this lab.BackgroundMost all web applications have some sort of login process. The primary focus of this first exercise is to create a bot that will enter a username and password into a log-in page, and successfully log-in to a web application.PseudocodeThink of pseudocode as the human readable steps that our program/bot will need to accomplish. When creating a bot, it can be helpful to lay out the steps that the bot will need to take to accomplish a task. In this way, the process of translating into Automation Anywhere commands becomes more straightforward, and we can know we did everything needed.    Step 1: Launch Website – We’ll have to have the website open to start entering any username/password info.Step 2: Enter Email Address – The email address is a required field, and will be needed for us to properly log in.Step 3: Enter Password

The Automation Anywhere Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform enables users to automate common or repetitive tasks quickly and almost effortlessly. Users design automations by creating bots, then deploy those bots to the machine where the automation must run. As you can imagine, there are several elements of bot creation that form the moving parts to this process. The first ones you'll encounter are the Control Room, where you'll create and manage bots,  and the bot agent, which runs completed bots. In this article, you'll get a tour of these tools and components required to create your automation successfully. The Control RoomThink of the Automation Anywhere Enterprise Control Room as mission control for all your bots. It’s based in the cloud and accessed through your browser. You use the Control Room to create bots in the bot workbench, to deploy them to your local machines running the bot agent, and to monitor those deployed bots.The Control Room home screen looks like this:Let’

Overview Welcome to the start of building great intelligent automation! We focused this journey on helping IT engineers and other experienced developers learn to build advanced bots and action packages on Automation 360. Developers for this track often: Handle integrating or building software to meet business users’ needs. Are comfortable with writing and integrating software using APIs. May not be familiar with RPA, or are just getting familiar. Are interested in learning how to build and operationalize automation.  If the above describes you, then let’s get things going! We organized the learning experiences of this journey to become progressively more challenging. Explore:  What an RPA is: We’ll give you a quick overview of RPA and Automation 360, our web-based RPA-as-a-service platform, and the basics for building on it. Additionally, we’ll get your machine set up with the Bot Agent to enable RPA development and testing.   How to Use Bots to Solve Problems: Learn to approach

Overview Automation Anywhere’s Bot Store offers hundreds of pre-built bots and packages for both Automation 360 and Enterprise v11. In this learning experience, we’ll look at leveraging the pre-built content available in Bot Store to build complex automations quickly. Automation Anywhere’s Bot Store is the world’s largest RPA marketplace - containing several hundred pre-built bots and packages created by process automation and integration specialists. By utilizing pre-built, customizable, and reusable bots and packages in the Bot Store, developers can speed up their RPA development by 70% and at half the cost. To Do Take a look at Bot Store to review some of the available components. We sorted components by business process they serve, their categorization, and the applications they engage with. Beyond being a location for downloading pre-built bots/packages to include in bot builds, the Bot Store is also an excellent place for automation ideas and to explore some of the “art of the po

Overview Knowing how to build bots and packages is vital to create automation opportunities, but are your bots and packages consistently following established best practices for re-usability and security? In this learning experience, learn about the best practices suggested by Automation Anywhere and how you might implement them within your organization. Beyond automating the task at hand, there are several questions developers should ask themselves as they are developing bots and packages. Am I doing my development in a way that components from this bot could be easily reused and integrated into other bots? Are there parts of the process I’m automating similar to already built bots/packages which I could leverage instead of building from scratch? Is my bot/package built in a way that I am introducing a security risk on deployment or execution of my bot/package? If you haven’t been asking yourself such questions - it’s okay, but it’s time to start. You should develop your bots and pack

Overview One of the best features of Automation 360 is the ability to create (and independently upgrade) custom packages. In this learning experience, we’ll dive into the basics of custom packages, learn how to use the package SDK, and uncover some best practices for package development. Packages in Automation 360 are Java Archive (JAR) files that contain the actions available to bot builders in the Control Room Action Panel. The modular design of packages in Automation 360 is a huge benefit to organizations and developers because it allows for packages to be installed, upgraded, and referenced in bot builds without impacting prior versions of the package, which may be currently used in existing bots. Best of all, developers can create their own custom packages to supplement the default packages installed in the Automation 360 Control Room. Organizations can create packages that can interface with their own internal web services, consume 3rd party services/cognitive capabilities, or pe

Overview JavaScript is a popular programming language that is well supported, dynamically typed, and is one of the core technologies of the web. It is a dynamic programming language that is well supported in development communities, is easy to learn, and doesn’t require the pre-installation of any specific software or IDE’s to build and test. Beyond its capabilities to enable interactive front-end applications, JavaScript can also do data manipulations, validations, and utility operations to support Automation 360 bots. Many developers find it a great language to create quick data validation scripts, sort operations, or manipulate data. Like Python and VBScript, we include embeded JavaScript as a package in Automation 360 to allow developers to use JavaScript functions from within their bots. To Do Review the documentation for the JavaScript Package. Pay close attention to the specific order you need to use the JavaScript actions. i.e. You need to use the ‘open action’ before you can i

Overview With the introduction of new data types in Automation 360, developers have the flexibility to store and interact with new types of data as they call subtasks, read from an HTML table, and iterate through CSVs. In this learning experience, we’ll review different user cases and discuss the benefits of using variables and learn which types of variables are appropriate. Variables are containers that hold values that can store and retrieve data during bot execution. Variables all: Have a name - which is how they are accessed and referenced within the bot’s logic Have a value - which is what’s actually inside the variable (null to start for most variables) Have a type - which is an indicator of the expected type of data they contain  In Automation 360, variables are now strongly typed. Strong typing keeps the behavior of the logic explicit during run time by enforcing data typing and explicit conversions. Conditional statements in bot building allow developers to execute differe

Overview There’s no better way to learn about building bots than by actually getting hands on and doing it. In this learning experience, developers will walk through creating their first bots. With a foundational understanding of what RPA is and how bots can solve problems, there is no better way to learn about creating bots than getting hands on experience.Using Automation 360’s cloud-based bot editor, let’s start off by building a few simple bots before moving on to more complex user cases. Learning to become a good RPA developer does not differ from learning any other skill - it takes observation, practice, and repetition to build the skill set. Once some experience is under your belt, tackling more complex automation opportunities is well within reach! Use the exercises that follow to practice. Get your bots to work, understand why they work, and tweak them a bit to understand how changes impact how they run. To Do Follow along in this Let’s Build a Bot video tutorial to build a bo

Objective: Learn to systematically approach problems in order to more quickly break them down for automation opportunities When evaluating an opportunity for automation, in its simplest form, a bot is designed to help solve problems. While that seems simple to say, often times developers (new and old) can become overwhelmed with a laundry list of requirements thrown at them all at once, whether that be in the form of a poorly documented process design document, or by way of a recorded screen share that quickly rattles through any number of steps of a process which may or may not include the specific detailed requirements for each step. With that said, it’s important to highlight that most business/process problems can be broken down into 3 core tenets of problem-solving. Let’s look at each of the tenets for using bots to solve problems. This involves understanding, dissecting, and communicating processes. 1. SequenceSequence is the order in which steps must occur to accomplish a goal.

Objective: Define Robotic Process Automation and get started with Automation 360.  Before we dive too deep into the technical implementations of Automation 360, it’s helpful to build a strong foundation on what robotic process automation is, and what robotic process automation is not. Robotic Process Automation (or RPA as it's often referred to) is a technology that allows users to create, configure, and run software “bots” to emulate human interaction within their systems to automate business processes. The specialized software bots in question provide value to organizations by automating high-volume, repetitive, rule-based tasks in an auditable and reliable way while freeing up humans to focus on more cognitive tasks which may require subjective decision making or emotional intelligence. Automation 360 bots can do everything from capturing data from applications (excel, text, forms, web, etc) to navigating websites, performing data entry, and even interfacing with web services. While

Overview No doubt anyone who has been in or around software development for the last 10 years has used, or at least heard of, Python. It has become an extremely popular programming language over the last 10 years - largely due to its emphasis on code readability, dynamic typing, and its comprehensive standard library. Python is a general-purpose programming language that enables the creation of everything from small utility scripts to large-scale projects and the creation of machine learning models. At the time of writing this article, there are over 240,000+ packages available via the Python Package Index that enable developers to build advanced Python applications in minimal time. While Python scripts alone can be quite valuable - integrating Python into Automation 360 bots allows developers to supercharge their automations. One of the most exciting features of Automation 360 is the introduction of the Python Script package. Let’s explore this package and learn to create a bot that i

Overview Using loops in Automation 360 allows for developers to control how many times, and under what conditions, actions are run in a repetitive basis. Mastering loops means having full control over your bot’s actions, and making sure that the bot can dynamically handle a single operation or multiple operations in a single bot run. Loops are one of the most powerful constructs in bot building. Loops are instructions that repeat-containing actions for a specific number of times or until it satisfies a specified condition. In a loop, the loop checks for the completed number of specified iterations or the satisfaction of a condition. If it doesn’t satisfy that condition or the number of iterations, then it will execute the operations within the loop. The same conditions are checked for again and again until the condition(s) has been satisfied, at which point the logic inside the loop is no longer executed. Each time it checks the condition for satisfaction is called an iteration of the