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312 Topics
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cat.thomasNew Member
published in Pathfinder Blog
Stories of Scale from our Q4 User GroupsAutomation Pathfinder Program

Our User Group meetings are always lively and chock full of ideas, ways to overcome challenges, shared goals and so much more. Haven’t attended one yet? Here’s your chance to eavesdrop on the best of what we’ve seen come out of our Q4 2022 round of these community gatherings:Theme: Just. Start. This is one we hear A LOT. And it’s still a conversation highlight in User Group meeting after User Group meeting. Start small, but start. Don’t stall. Our speaker, Jim Frost, Lead Engagement Partner at R-Path Automation, refined the thought, sharing that: “For anyone in their initiation stages of their automation program, don’t try to do the most complicated thing straight out of the gate. Do something small yet meaningful, get the quick win and get the train moving. In another group, Bonnie Dallum, Global Intelligent COE Lead at Cargill agreed: “Think big, but start small. Don’t boil the ocean right away. Carve out something small in the beginning and bring the use case to your partners to sho

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1 year ago
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Most Valuable Pathfinder
ChanduMohammadMost Valuable Pathfinder
published in Pathfinder Blog
How to Use Code Analysis in the Automation Success PlatformMost Valuable Pathfinder

This is a guest post from Automation Anywhere Most Valuable Pathfinder ChanduMohammad S, a Module Lead and Senior RPA Developer.  Currently, most of us use the manual code review process, which means we wait until development is finished before starting the code review process with the Lead Developer (or the Architect in some organizations). Every developer has a unique way of developing solution; however, to promote consistency across the team or organization, developers will be required to refer to existing Coding Best Practices for Reliability & Maintainability of the Code. This begs the questions:  Do you really need to wait until the development is complete for the code review?  Or, during development, If you as an RPA/Citizen Developers, deviate from the set of best practices will the bot editor alert us with remediation steps to deliver the reliable code? Automation Success Platform comes with a new feature called Code Analysis [a.k.a Linter] which helps you define and enf

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Most Valuable Pathfinder
1 year ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Triggering Bots Using the Control Room API

In this episode, we dive into creating a basic bot which can be triggered and receive values from the Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019 Control Room. The video leverages the Enterprise A2019 Postman collection. If you don't have Postman yet, check out http://getpostman.com/ - its a great tool for testing API calls to understand how they work and what their responses look like.Video Recap:Get a Token Before any bots can be triggered or ID's can be pulled back, a token must be generated using the Control Room authentication API. The video uses authentication via username/password, but API key authentication could have been used as an alternative  - and would have returned an identical response body. Setup Input Variables For variables to appropriately be sent from API call to bot, the variables must be: Indicated in the variable setup as input values Be referenced exactly by name. To say that however they are set up in the bot itself, you'll need to reference those same variable

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Micah.Smith
1 year ago
Micah.Smith
Micah.SmithPathfinder Community Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Bot Games Collab Edition: Pixie Brix ChallengeBot Games

  When businesses grow, and processes become more complex - humans are often charged with being the “glue” that connects disparate systems together. This is absolutely the case for financial advisory firm Swivel Chair, Inc. Because of acquisitions, mergers, and fragmented business processes - certain financial transactions for Swivel Chair, Inc.’s managed clients still go through a legacy workflow application that the firm has been “migrating off of” for 8+ years now. Sound familiar?The vendor who created the legacy workflow application stopped updating it long ago - and begrudgingly provides sev-1 support to Swivel Chair, Inc....all of this to say, Swivel Chair users are consumers only here - and Swivel Chair has no access to make modifications to this platform. Where Swivel Chair Users Come In 💻 Each day, as Swivel Chair, Inc. advisors work with clients to perform rollovers, transfers, or IRA contributions - the transactions need to be migrated and logged into the FinTech Workflow S

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Padmakumar
1 year ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Congratulations to Automation Anywhere’s 2023 Most Valuable Pathfinders!Most Valuable Pathfinders

As part of our MVP Program - that’s our [M]ost [V]aluable [P]athfinder Program - Automation Anywhere has assembled and recognized a cohort of dynamic leaders, innovators and skilled practitioners. They’re common bond? Being united to inspire and ignite a groundswell within the field of automation.    Without further ado, join us in recognizing our first class of esteemed MVPs:   These MVPs truly give back to their global community through volunteer leadership, mentorship, and ideation. They were chosen specifically for their efforts:    Facilitating Forum Engagement  Building Networks & Leading Community Groups  Sharing Expertise via Community Events  Influencing Automation Anywhere Product Development  Partnering in Community Ecosystem Development  and more    Congratulations again to our 2023 MVPs—and thank you for all that you do to build a stronger and deeper automation community!  

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Emerson.F2
1 year ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Inaugural Galaxy Series Badge challenge initiatedBadge Challenge

We are initiating the launch of our Monthly Badge Challenge.   Each month we will post a new set of actions you need to take here in the Pathfinder Community in order to earn an exclusive, limited-run badge. You have only that month to complete the challenge before the badge is decommissioned.  Commencing countdown on the December Challenge   Earn the first of the Galaxy Series badges by completing these actions before December 31st:  Start a new conversation in any one of the forums  Automation Leaders Forum Citizen Developers Forum Developers Forum  Share your “first impression” of our new community via this form 

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1 year ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
VMeetup Recap: Automating SharePoint with Automation 360 using Python

In this session, we discussed about how to Automate SharePoint with Automation 360 using Python. Here are the reference links discussed. Steps to create a Developer accountYouTube video with the steps to create an office 365 developer accountYouTube videos with the steps to create a Share point site:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHeEmHjQ5pghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNV99Xi5I0wYouTube video with the steps to create a document libraryYouTube video  with the steps to create a listPython Setup installation available on the official site of python (www.python.org)Learn about the Shareplum library here.Python Script:# Import Site, Office 365 and Version package from Shareplum Libraryfrom shareplum import Sitefrom shareplum import Office365from shareplum.site import Versionfrom office365.sharepoint. files.file import File# Connect Office Share Point Site with Office 365 Developer Accountauthcookie = Office365(‘https://patelmaulesh1978.sharepoint.com/’, username=”, password=”).GetCooki

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
How to Hype Your Automation Program

Whether it’s a series of intranet posts, emails or a coveted Intranet hub dedicated to socializing your Automation Program, these are great tips for educating and inspiring your audience about the power of automation. Start by welcoming everyone to your Automation Hub or Email Series. Introduce Automation not so much as an army of bots (which can sound confusing, or scary) but as digital co-workers ready to help with routine work or make someone’s everyday life easier. Here are recommendations from the Automation Anywhere Community. Try them on for size in your own promotion and engagement efforts: Hello world, Meet Your Automation Program Encourage as many people as possible to get involved in the automation process. Let them know that the best way to start is by learning about the power of Automation or reaching out to team members with specific questions. Introduce Your Team Let everyone know your team has been charged with automating the enterprise, and how you’re using technology

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Leverage A+ Accelerators to Start, Accelerate, and ScaleAutomation Pathfinder Program

 What are A+ Accelerators? They're concise, pre-packaged, outcome-based services engagements. Created from real-world customer experiences, A+ Accelerators can help solve a wide variety of automation challenges. This collection has been curated specially for you as part of the Automation Pathfinder experience. Choose from a library of A+ Accelerators to solve any issue with scaling automation Delivered by our Professional Services experts who guide you and your team to the right solution Ensure success with validated outcomes-based packages Get the tools, training, and best practices necessary to help drive your automation program success From discovering the next set of processes to automate, to checking the health of your automation program, to improving employee productivity with human-bot collaboration, our Professional Services experts have identified best practices to accelerate your automation journey success. Explore our A+ Accelerators library for a selection of solution

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Special Access: Templates and Planning Documents from Professional ServicesAutomation Pathfinder Program

 Your Short Cut to SuccessWe’re giving you a head start with some expert guides for every step of your automation journey. Whether you are just embarking on your intelligent automation journey, scaling your program or driving large scale transformation, these guides from our experts in professional services will help.  Bot Velocity Planning (Excel) Process Definition Document (Word) Solution Design Document - Co-Pilot Desktop (Word) Solution Design Document - Co-Pilot Web (Word) Solution Design Document - Co-Pilot On-Demand (Word) Solution Design Document - Co-Pilot Run Local via Event Triggers (Word) Solution Design Document - Run via Control Room Request (Word) Solution Design Document - Run Local On-Demand (Word) Solution Design Document - Run Local On-Demand with Workload Manager (Word) Solution Design Document - Run Local On-Demand (Word) Solution Design Document - Run Local via Event Trigger with Workload Management (Word) Solution Design Document - Run Remo

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Stories of Scale from our Q3 User GroupAutomation Pathfinder Program

 Our User Group meetings are always lively and chock full of ideas, ways to overcome challenges, shared goals and so much more. Haven’t attended one yet? Here’s your chance to eavesdrop on the best of what we’ve seen come out of our most recent round of these community gatherings:  Theme: Meet our Meta Bot! One customer, a global retailer, shared information about their own automation journey and how they leverage a “Meta Bot” to achieve demonstrable ROI. What’s a Meta Bot? We thought you’d never ask. A “Meta Bot” is a piece of effective, reusable code that, with only a few tweaks, can have multiple applications to automate a range of business processes. Having a “template” bot not only reduces developer time and effort to iterate offshoots, it also blows open the door to opportunities for new use cases, quick wins, and big hour savings. This concept has the power to shift an organization’s mindset of what can be achieved with an automation program. Theme: Work smarter, not harder. The

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Confessions of Automation LeadersAutomation Pathfinder Program

 These quick-to-read case studies all stand out for their innovative approaches to getting associates to rally around the Citizen Development cause:  Fujitec CO LTD.   Who They are: One of the world’s biggest players in the “E&E” game – they manufacture, install, and maintain elevators and escalators with more than 10,000 employees in Japan. The Challenge: Before even implementing an automated digital workforce, they were drawn to the Automation Anywhere Citizen Development Program. They could easily see the many benefits it offered their own users to develop and scale automations themselves. But they needed to promote the idea and get people on board. The Solution: Fujitec created an internal support system with online and video training accessible to anyone interested in automation development and deployment. The CoE members periodically published a “Developer’s Champion” booklet to recognize the number of digital co-workers developed and light a friendly, competitive fire be

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
5 Pillars for Moving Your Automation Program "Beyond the Bot"Automation Pathfinder Program

 

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Blueprint: Winning Plays for all 5 Pillars of Success and ScaleAutomation Pathfinder Program

 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 key success metrics for your program Document metrics and targets for success such as number of successful runs or amount of hours saved ACCELERATESet goals, track progress and define actions to drive your program’s progress forward, such as expanded idea contribution, automation deve

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Blueprint: Promoting Your Automation ProgramAutomation Pathfinder Program

 AKA: So, you didn’t know you needed to be a marketer. When you launched into the position as Automation Leader you were charged with delivering automation to your organization. Obviously, right? Now you’ve delivered some automations and earned your first wins. Next, it’s up to you to communicate your program’s success. Whether it be to key stakeholders, other department heads, or potential business users in the automation orbit, it’s on you to spread the benefits of automation using your program’s results as proof of business ROI. Bet you didn’t know you needed to be a marketer too, eh? No fear – this is your chance to get important buy-in from the rest of your organization so you can accelerate transformation and deliver more impact to your company. Cue Automation fever. When to Promote You’ve delivered your first quick wins with automations, but how do you know when you’ve achieved enough to start shouting your success from the rooftops? Do your initial pilots or POCs carry enough c

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Blueprint: Driving a Healthy Use Case PipelineAutomation Pathfinder Program

 You want a continuous pipeline of new automation use cases to tackle. You already knew that, but how and where do you generate that thriving flow of automation priorities across diverse lines of business? From our experience here at Automation Anywhere (yes, we drink our own champagne), as well as from many community success stories, we’ve extracted three tips to help you drive a healthy use case pipeline. 1. Find Your LOBBF When it’s time to expand your reach after your first wins, there are typically two methods we see Automation Leaders employ to find their next use cases.  Crowdsource. This is a strong play for a high volume of ideas. Reach out to users and ask for input on what they should automate next. Theoretically, this is helpful to discover where pain points are for your end users. However, when automation criteria isn’t meticulously outlined, the inbound suggestions can range from far too simple to downright comical–a smattering of ideas that aren’t the quality use cases y

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Blueprint: Demonstrate Maximum Value of Your Automation ProgramAutomation Pathfinder Program

 When your automation program is up and humming, it’s undoubtedly providing value to your organization. But in order to understand just how far that value stretches, you have to ask the right questions to unfurl the more substantial, perhaps unquantifiable, metrics that are truly giving your program clout. And the best questions to ask—and answer with metrics—will likely shift based on the phase you’re in: Start, Accelerate, or Scale. Ask the Right Questions Think about baseball and the movie Moneyball. Haven’t seen it? Here’s a synopsis: Because of a limited budget, a young Yale grad comes into the Oakland A’s organization to help them draft and trade players based on some unconventional metrics. Most major baseball organizations with deep pockets like the Yankees draft top picks and pay multi-million dollar contracts to bring in big name, and sometimes overhyped, players. They often want big hitters, so when evaluating a draft or trade pick they asked the question: what’s his batting

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Blueprint: Achieving Success at Scale with Citizen DevelopmentAutomation Pathfinder Program

 We know the drill: You’re an automation leader in your company’s center of excellence (CoE). It’s 8:30 pm. You should be at home. But you’re still working away—lots to do and not many on your team to do it. You’re wrestling with the question your CIO just asked: can’t you go faster if you train up some citizen developers? You understand why citizen development sounds great. But the practical side of you thinks opening up automation development across the organization sounds risky in terms of governance and quality. We get it. But with the proper tools, training and support systems in place, Citizen Development is an incredibly effective way to scale automation success across your enterprise. It can even take the pressure off of your own time- and resource-strapped CoE. Preparation is Key Make sure you have these key elements in place before moving forward with a citizen development effort: Secure Sponsorship. General support is good. But citizen development requires more than that to

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Where to start scaling: Citizen Development or Democratized Automation?Automation Pathfinder Program

  

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Blueprint: Achieve Hyperscale by Democratizing your Automation ProgramAutomation Pathfinder Program

 AKA: Can just anyone really do this? Fact: Citizen Development is hot right now. It’s a buzzword, something stakeholders and sponsors are demanding we make happen and even something many of us may feel we’re behind on. After all, you have your automation program going strong, you’ve had some wins, you’re expanding across the business, it’s driving results…but you haven’t launched a Citizen Development program yet. Are you missing the boat? What is Democratization? Simply put, success at scale is about empowering more people through automation. And that’s NOT just Citizen Development. Democratization is about delivering opportunities around and the benefits of automation to a diverse group of employees at a variety of levels. It’s one of the effective ways to involve teams and talent in a system and a program and, ultimately, make automation a part of your culture that can grow as your organization does. Consider Your Goals What are you trying to get out of opening up automation to the

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Lessons from the Desk of our CIOAutomation Pathfinder Program

 From the Desk of our CIO: An Email Template to Promote Your Automation Program If you can craft an email, you can get started on the road to evangelizing your Automation Program. Here’s how we do it at Automation Anywhere. <<Start with the title of your newsletter. Ours is obvious and includes a timeframe:>> Automation @Automation Anywhere Newsletter (FY23 1st Half Update) <<Start the newsletter out with a warm introduction that gets people excited about automation within the organization—here’s an example from our own Automation Leader:>>From the Office of the CIO While Automation Anywhere is helping its customers build a digital workforce, our Global IT organization is doing the same for our internal operations. When I joined last year, I committed to becoming the best customer of our technology. We restructured our internal automation Center of Excellence, set up a customer zero program, and evangelized and scaled our program. These efforts produced signific

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Developing an Intake Process for Automation IdeasAutomation Pathfinder Program

 Everything begins with an idea - Earl Nightingale, Author & Radio Speaker One of the most important things in your automation program - the gasoline in the automation engine - is the automation ideas themselves!  When the workforce has absorbed the true “art of the possible” with automation, they’ll have lots of ideas for things that should be automated. A solid intake process will ensure people are encouraged to submit ideas and your CoE will have what they need to quickly determine next steps.  Let’s talk about some features of a healthy intake process! Features of a Good Intake Process Ultimately there is a delicate balance you’ll want to strike for your intake process.  Your objective is to get the key details of the idea to the Center of Excellence as quickly as possible, while ensuring sufficient detail is provided so that it can be quickly assessed and next steps defined.  Let’s make it simple - here are 3 features to consider for your idea intake process!  #1 - Make it acc

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Deciding on the Right Data to Prove PerformanceAutomation Pathfinder Program

 Consistency is Key If you expect to have 3-4 different federated teams building automations on the Automation 360 platform 18 months from now, expect to have about 12 different methods of reporting savings. Why? Because without guidance from the organization’s governing Automation Practice on capturing, storing, and reporting savings, everyone will come up with their own methods - and expect many of them to be less than accurate or auditable. Seek to answer questions like:How are we measuring the value that our automations are generating? How do we track how much money an automation saves? What’s the best way to track these values across multiple bots? How do business value metrics like money and/or time saved relate to operational metrics like the number of bot runs? And which ones do I report on to an executive? See the Future Whether you’re just starting out with Automation Anywhere, or your organization has been building bots for a while, one thing is certain: someone - with some

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Citizen Development Enablement - Accelerate PhaseAutomation Pathfinder Program

 Citizen Development is a lever for scale that many organizations leverage to expand and multiply the ROI for their automation programs. A citizen developer is an employee who comes from something other than a computer-science background - who is creating automations that are consumed by themselves or their team. Citizen Developers are typically motivated business users who’ve identified areas for streamlining/automating areas of their business processes and are interested in creating solutions to meet their own need(s). Organizations who’ve taken on Citizen Development programs have unlocked 2 key benefits:Faster Innovation - With business users able to self-identify, and prioritize their own use cases, they aren’t reliant on the capacity of a central automation development team to deliver innovative automations.ROI Acceleration - The development of additional automations means that organizations are seeing automation impacts more broadly across their organization, rather than being l

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2 years ago
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Automation Anywhere TeamAutomation Anywhere Team
published in Pathfinder Blog
Managing Reusable Assets - Start PhaseAutomation Pathfinder Program

There’s a phrase that is said commonly in programming disciplines (developing automations not excluded) - “don’t reinvent the wheel”. This phrase is used to suggest that there may not be a great reason to create something net-new, if there are reusable, potentially optimized assets already available that can be leveraged to solve your problem. In this post, we want to examine how building with a “reusability-first” mindset can accelerate your automation development efforts and ultimately make life as an automation developer easier. Building with a Reusability-First mindset means going through the following thought pattern anytime you come across the need to do something repeatable within your build: Is there something that exists already that I can leverage to make my life easier here? This may be identifying and using a built-in package instead of trying to script something out or this may mean checking within the shared public repository of your Control Room to see what reusable subt

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2 years ago
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