Pathfinder Blog

This article is part of a series authored by Zeth Baker previously from Republic Airways documenting their experience and decision to migrate from Automation Anywhere v11 to Automation 360 On-Premise.   With the introduction of Automation 360, the web-based building/testing capabilities, and the ability to create and use custom packages - we began thinking about when the best time would be for us to migrate from Automation Anywhere v11 to Automation 360. We’ve been happy with the stability of v11, and while we didn’t want to be the first to migrate, we wanted to be a fast follower in being able to take advantage of all the newly introduced functionality that Automation 360 has to offer. To be very honest, it can be a difficult decision to take the plunge on a platform migration – especially when you’re the individual who will prima

In this series, we will guide you to use different actions available in Excel advanced package.Before we get into the details about the bot, let's understand the basics of the Excel advanced package.The Excel advanced package contains actions that enable you to automate many of the repetitive tasks when working with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.You can automate tasks related to the workbook, worksheet, rows, columns, and cell operations. You can use these actions when Microsoft Excel is installed on the device that you want to use to automate the Microsoft Excel-related tasks.Actions in the Excel advanced package support Microsoft Office 2016 through Microsoft Office 2019 and .xls, .xlsx, .xlsb, and .xlsm formats. You can also use some of the actions with the .csv format.To use the actions in Excel advanced package, use the following sequenceOpen the Microsoft

  In a previous post on package development, we took a look at returning a Dictionary as a part of the package's action. In this post, we'll take a look at the breakdown of a test class from that same project - which allows developers to simulate the process of a user mapping data to fields in the Control Room UI, and see the resulting data from the Java IDE before going through the build/install process that would otherwise be required. To be very clear - the use of a test class is one way to validate the functionality of a custom package, but in and of itself is not the full extent of testing that should be performed. While a test class can be great for validating basic functionality, it'

  One of the best ways to build reusable components to share with other developers in your organization (or with developers of other organizations through Bot Store) is through the creation of custom packages in Enterprise A2019. Custom packages look and operate just like the standard package set available from Automation Anywhere - but with the flexibility to be customized to meet the specific needs of your organization or your customers. Be it automating service calls to an internal application to validate customers by ID, or integration with cognitive services to make machine learning and AI capabilities available to other bot builders within your organization - custom packages have the power to greatly extend the out-of-box capabilities of Enterprise A2019. That capability paired with the new data types available for use in Enterprise A2019

 Organizations across the world are using Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019 to drive some of their digital transformation efforts...but what different types of bots are they creating? Let's examine 4 different types of bots to understand what types your organization may already be working on, as well as some types that you may look to create in the future.  Stuff We're Doing Today Bots This bot type is the most common type of bot that organizations are creating - the bots that automate the heavily manual, mundane, and "robotic" tasks that humans are being asked to do. This category of bot includes automating the repetitive, high-volume, rule-based tasks where humans are often tasked with playing the bridge between applications that don't otherwise have automated methods of interfacing with one another. O

Automation Anywhere 2021 A-Lister ProgramThe A-Lister program at Automation Anywhere is for developers and advocates who have demonstrated exceptional expertise and engagement on the Automation Anywhere platform and with RPA developer communities. This program is not just about who has the most development experience. It's about identifying and recognizing passionate thought leaders who love building automations, want to share their stories with others, and engage with the Automation Anywhere developer/customer community.In this post, we'll break down what it means to be an A-Lister, the benefits of the A-Lister program, and how you can apply to become a 2021 Automation Anywhere A-Lister!Program DescriptionThe A-Lister program exists to recognize individuals who are technical customer advocates and influencers in the Automation Anywhere RPA community. Applicants can apply to be an A-Lister via the form at the bottom of this page - which

 Top 5 New Features in Enterprise A2019.18The product and development teams at Automation Anywhere have been on a roll with new features and updates coming out with each release. In this post, we'll dive into some of the most popular and most requested features that were newly added with .18 (build 7560). Discovery Bot With the .18 release, Discovery Bot enables developers to make smarter and faster decisions when reviewing bot recordings Users also have the ability to hide sensitive screenshots from the created recordings - opting instead to write detailed descriptions as to not accidentally display PII or other sensitive data Recorder layout updates mean bigger screenshots and easier to read/review processes Biggest news of all - Discover Bot is now available as a part of Automation Anywhere Community Edition and the Automation Anyw

 Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019 enables developers to leverage lots of different technologies from within their bots - optical character recognition, file manipulation, and even different programming languages. One programming language that developers frequently find useful to leverage in their bots is JavaScript. Not to be confused with Java, JavaScript is a well-supported programming language that powers a good majority of the front and back end web applications that we use every day. Fortunately, that power is also available from directly within an Enterprise A2019 bot. Establish a JavaScript Session Using the Open action of the JavaScript package, bot builders can establish a session that can be called using the Run JavaScript action. The JavaScript session can be established off of a .js file that is stored in a local/network directory, stored

Tech Talks: What is AARI? If you haven't heard, Automation Anywhere has a new digital assistant product: AARI. AARI stands for Automation Anywhere Robotic Interface. Think of AARI as an application that provides new interfaces for humans and bots to collaborate on work. Gone are the days of having to provision Control Room access for everyone in the organization, or having to set up schedules for certain bots that would regularly execute only to sit and wait for input files from humans. AARI provides 3 distinct interfaces for interacting with bots: AARI Apps Built-in plugins for applications that enable users to engage with bots directly from the applications they are already working in. The applications currently supported include Microsoft Excel, Salesforce, and Google Sheets. Bots

   In this session, we'll look at how to test the Enterprise A2019 Salesforce Package available from Bot Store. The Salesforce Package enables developers to quickly and easily perform insert operations, make updates, fetch Salesforce object details, and delete existing objects (standard and custom). We'll walk through setting up the package and understand how each of its actions work by directing the sample bot included with the Bot Store package. Included Actions:Authenticate Securely connect to Salesforce using insecure string (though not recommended), variables, or values stored in your Credential Vault This authentication returns a token. This token doesn't need to be used by a developer, but the return wil

 In this Automation Anywhere tutorial, we'll learn how to publish Automation 360 bots and packages to Bot Store. Bot Store is directly integrated with the Automation 360 Control Room to allow you to easily publish bots to Bot Store from within the Control Room.

 As Robotic Process Automation activities expand within businesses, not all bot developers are well versed in best practices for developing secure and auditable bots. While enabling federated development to many business groups within the organization has its benefits – namely increased productivity and speed of execution for redundant processes – it can come at the potential risk for data loss and an overall decrease in the confidentiality of business data. Many businesses attempt to overcome these challenges through the use of a Center of Excellence (CoE) that reviews bots and may run code scanning analyzers in an attempt to increase adherence to corporate and IT standards. This helps to minimize the risk. However, more can and should be done in the design of a bot to help ensure businesses can continue to receive the value from RPA while mitigating as many risks as possible. The following are some additional guidelines that can be followed to mitigate risks: 

 In this post, we'll look at one of the three tenets of problem-solving: Selection. Selection is the process of taking action (or not) based on the evaluation of a condition(s). If the condition resolves to true, the corresponding actions are taken. If the condition does not resolve to true, then alternate actions (or no actions at all) may be taken. There are plenty of examples in our day to day business operations where conditional statements come into play...likely without us really naming them as such. As you read through each statement below, think about what action takes place when the condition is true vs the action (if any) that takes place if the condition is not true. Additionally, see if you can identify what part of the statement is the condition vs the corresponding action. Examples: If there is a new invoice on the X drive (a shared folder), then Nacy will pay it.

  Intelligent automation is the sweet spot between robotic process automation (RPA) and the broad categorization of artificial intelligence (AI) to mimic cognitive decision making in task automation. In this second part of our 2 part series on intelligent automation, we'll be using the Machine Learning Classifier tool discuss in part one to assist in training a machine learning model, and using that model from within our bot to appropriately classify IT helpdesk tickets. Note: if you haven't checked out part I of our series, check that out here to get a background on the use case introduced as well as the tool we'll be using in this session. If you want to follow along in the AAillustrates session, you'll need the following resources: 

 1. Vendor Registration (required for first submissions only)Every developer/organization that posts bots on Bot Store is required to register. This registration is handled by the vendor registration process. Here, developers/organizations will need to enter some basic details about themselves/their organization as well as a logo/emblem that can be used on their bots. This is only a one-time process to be set up as a vendor. Bots submitted after this initial vendor registration process can all be linked to the existing registered vendor.This is a great way for individual developers to create an online reputation for themselves as being expert bot builders. This is also a great way for organiz

Automation 360 Bot Store Submission Checklist 1. Vendor Registration (required for first submissions only)Every developer/organization that posts bots on Bot Store are required to register. After you submit your first automation, we’ll reach out to ask for your organization details and work with you to set up your Bot Store profile.This is a great way for individual developers to create an online reputation for themselves as being expert bot builders. This is also a great way for organizations and service providers to showcase some of their work and possibly build a pipeline for future engagements.2. Read Me File Content and FormatRead Me files are critical and required for submitting a bot or package successfully. The

In this update, learn about the newest updates to the Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019 platform including:AARI - the Automation Anywhere Robotic Interface Discovery Bot - the process discovery tool that helps organizations identify automation opportunities, and begin building automations based on recorded processes. IQ Bot - updates to IQ Bot's ability to extract text - now with image preprocessing capabilities and Python integration Enterprise A2019 Updates - multi-user support for terminal server connections and new deployment options for the bot agent client Bot Insight - updates to the analytics capabilities of Bot Insight allow for tracking of attended automation tasks

In this tutorial, we will build a bot to change the background for multiple car images. Here is the use case we are addressing: A car dealer has pictures of his car inventory with non-uniform backgrounds. He wants to remove the background for each picture and update it to have a uniform branded background. Let's see how we can build a bot in Automation 360 to update all the images.This bot can be used to update/remove background images for other use cases such as:Updating employee profile pictures Media houses use images without a background in different editorial sections Marketing teams use it to update image backgrounds to suit different ads based on the contextHere is the data setup required to build this bot:Download the folders with different car images here. H

 In this session, we'll look at how to use the JSON Object Manager package available for download from Agentic App Store. This package can be used for retrieving data from the JSON response of a REST web service call, reading JSON config files, getting the length of an array object within a JSON, or for updating JSON values based on the value's key.Note: If you are using Automation Anywhere A2019 Community Edition, this package has already been installed for you.Reference Link: Please find the link to the JSON used in the video here. As is done in the video, you can use a REST Get action and use the pr

In this tutorial, we will look at how to use Office 365 One Drive Package in Automation 360 platform. Pre-requisites:Active Office 365 subscription Office 365 Username Office 365 Password Office 365 Tenant Id Office 365 Client Id Office 365 Client SecretFirst lets set up the App and credentials in Azure (https://portal.azure.com/)Login to your Azure PortalClick ‘Azure Active Directory’ (if you don't see it on the home screen, search for Azure Active Directory in the search bar) Note the Tenant Id by clicking the Copy icon shown below. Then click on App Registrations

In this tutorial, we will learn about how to use Camunda DMN package available in Bot Store.First let's look at what DMN means and its background.As defined by OMG, DMN (Decision Model and Notation) is a modeling language and notation for the precise specification of business decisions and business rules. DMN is easily readable by the different types of people involved in decision management. These include: business people who specify the rules and monitor their application; business analysts.As referenced in Camunda website, DMN is not owned by a certain enterprise but by an institution (

In this session, we’ll look at some advanced error handling techniques that can help keep your bots up and running even when dependent applications misbehave.Video RecapGlobal Debug/Log Flag Most bots that developers create ultimately end up running "headless" on a virtual machine. ("headless" meaning no one is sitting there watching them once in production). Unfortunately that means that when an error occurs, it's not always easy to know exactly what happened, what the machine state was like, or what was actually on screen. One helpful approach around that is to build your bot in a way that its looking for a global value to indicate its log/debug level. In this case, the bot can be set up to do more or less logging dependent on that global log level. This additional logging may include writing out info messages to an audit log (as opposed to only errors) and ma

In this session, we'll look at how to embed custom Python in a bot to enhance our ability to quickly and easily extract data.Video Recap:Determine an Order of Operations When mentally thinking through how to solve problems, determine an order of operations for how you'll proceed. As a good practice: Try to solve problems using packages alone. Most of the time this can get you the data/solution you need. When packages leave you short, understand your options...you could use embedded Python, embedded JavaScript, embedded VBScript, write a DLL and use the DLL package, or consider writing your own package (Java). Python Script: Open Action Adding embedded Python to a bot starts with adding the Open Script action. Using this action, developers can choose to execute Python scripts located in their Cont

Objective: Following a tutorial to build a bot is one thing - but it's important as a new bot developer to understand the Control Room, how the development interface is laid out, and the flow that bots typically follow from ideation to public check-in and deployment. The Control Room is the central interface for all things bot management, global value creation, user management, deployment, and testing. All that said, depending on your role within the organization - you may or may not see all of those capabilities from the Automation 360 Control Room interface. While most of your time as a bot builder will be spent in the Bot Editor interface, it's important to recognize what else can be done from the Control Room itself. Take a look at the tabs you most likely have access to as a developer (again, if you don't see all of these tabs in your interface, it’s ok - that’s controlled through your role…it’s most important just to understand what’s possible from this interfa

Objective: As you come to understand the capabilities of robotic process automation and using bots to automate redundant, rule-based tasks, it’s important to also understand the capabilities available out-of-box to bot developers. In this learning experience, we’ll highlight the interface and some of the capabilities of the Bot Editor and establish a pattern for learning about how to better understand the use of the available packages. To progress in the use of any application requires an understanding of its capabilities as well as information related to their appropriate application. For bot building, that means diving head first into the capabilities of the Bot Editor. Through the Bot Editor, developers can create, test, and review bot builds. As a bot builder, it’s important you’re familiar with the Bot Editor interface so that you know what packages are available and a general idea of the actions they contain, how to create and modify variables, and how to test