Recap Video Link HERE
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.
HOSTS
Lu Hunnicutt, Community Manager
Malcolm Rieke, Director - Product Management
Charlie Needelman, Principal - Product Management
Oli Morris, Principal - Developer Evangelist
TOPIC
November’s Product Club covered our brand new BPMN support for Autopilot, enabling business analysts and automation teams to unite forces to accelerate the speed of delivery and increase ROI on new automations for which business process descriptions already exist.
Here’s a rundown of the session:
- Malcolm gives an overview of the Autopilot BPMN feature that will be released in .34.
- Malcolm performs a live demo of the BPMN feature.
- Malcolm, Charlie, and Oli answer live audience questions.
AN AUTOPILOT REFRESHER
Autopilot, which is the first prong in our Automator AI feature set, allows teams to use generative AI to quickly transform process maps into automations, accelerating the automation lifecycle from months to weeks and deliver ROI faster. Autopilot is the component meant to give developers an initial kick start gives with a sense of all the applications that are being automated, the data exchange between them, and the flow of the of the business process.
But, what we've found is that many customers can model or mine their processes with other tools under several different process discovery tools out there, and a lot of those tools have the ability to export the business process model in a format called a business process model and notation. So in .34, we're giving you the ability to leverage that business process model and notation (BPMN) file for faster automation development!
NEW AUTOPILOT SUPPORT FOR BPMN
It takes quite a bit of time to discover and develop automations for many reasons. Some of these might be limited developer resources, difficulty in identifying new, automatable use cases, and/or lack of details about business processes. We know that business units invest heavily in business analysis tools. So, to solve this common customer pain point, we’ve made it possible for those tools to now become a direct pipeline into automation with Autopilot.
Introducing BPMN support - an extension to Autopilot that allows you to import your existing process descriptions in BPMN format and transform them into automation process code outlines that include structure and logic to drive faster time-to-development.
**Note: This feature is only available to cloud customers and requires the Automator AI Platform Base license.
DEMO
A bank wants to extend it’s services to offer loan pre-approvals for auto dealers. Alan, the business analyst, has modeled this this process using BPMN. Alan and the CoE coordinate and hand off that BPMN document to the developer, Marcus.
- First, Alan uploads his BPMN file to the repository. He also uploads an image of the BPMN so the developer can see a visual within Control Room if he likes.
- The developer, Marcus, clicks the three dots to the right of the file name and selects “Generate Automation” from the BPMN file. In the background, the BPMN is submitted to the transformer that utilizes Automation Anywhere’s proprietary model to transform it into a process outline in Control Room.
- Marcus clicks refresh and can now see a process file plus all supporting task automation files have been created. He clicks the process file and is taken to the Control Room to review the automated structure and flow. The BPMN is perfectly represented as an automated process now without Marcus having to do any coding.
- Marcus clicks into one of the tasks to review the task bot outline. With Co-Pilot for Automators, he can start producing code by writing a prompt and having generative AI create a variable. In this case, he prompts Co-Pilot to “Create a string variable named ‘loanIntakeEmailHeader,” then “Create a file variable named ’errorLogFile,” etc.
We are extending what Autopilot can do with BPMN, but right now, the combination of bringing in the whole process flow and breaking it into constituent automation files gives developers a critical head start.
ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION
If you are looking for additional documentation on Autopilot and the workflow for BPMN, as well as the Automator AI feature set as a whole, you can find in-depth information on our docs portal here.
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, Malcolm, Charlie, and Oli, for providing their expertise and responses.
**Please note that all answers were shared live during the November 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: Can you share the BPMN file shown to us?
A: We have this exact BPMN file live on our Automation Anywhere University here.
Q: Where do you begin to learn about BPMN from Ground Zero?
A: Ground Zero would be to go to YouTube and query what is BPMN. I found that many different kind of drawing tools support output in BPMN. Draw.io is a web-based one that integrates with Jira and supports BPMN. You can go to free online tools like the BPMN.io to give it a try. Camuda is a modeling tool and they've got tons of documentation about how to create them. If you're starting from scratch, think about your current task bot architecture or the interrelation between the different task bots that you create today and how those work. Think of taking a task object in BPMN for each one of them and then hooking them together in the order that that the business process flow would go. If you've ever done anything, even in PowerPoint, you've been connecting shapes together to outline a flow, or even Visio, then I think you'll like BPMN because it's just much more structured around all of the events and steps and sub-processes.
Q: So how does the tool perform with complex BPMN diagrams?
A: We're not necessarily going to be able to support all branching structures. We're doing our best to model it to the branching control that we have, which is if/then, else/if and you can nest those as many times as you want.
Q: Can you walk us through the technical process of how a BPMN file is converted into a process and subsequent automations?
A: It’s related to the Co-Pilot transformation process. We have internally modeled data about Automation Anywhere code and we have some best practice static modules. So BPMN is an XML format wherein links between the different task types is represented in the XML. So, we ingest the XML first, we break it into individual tasks, and then for each object in the BPMN, any and all annotation or prose that's available, we transfer that to comments that we insert in the individual files that are represented by each object. And then, if any of the standard business process documents are mentioned in that annotation—say bill of lading, invoice, sales order—then we'll pre-populate variables that match the typical data processing for that document type. And then we'll look at the branching structure and tie it all together with our branching control in the process editor.
Q: Will .VSDX file support for BPMN file?
A: Normally the extension is .BPMN. So that's something we'll have to look into, VSDX. I think that's just a Visio file. If you've got a copy of Microsoft Visio, you'll be able to open that file in Visio and then Visio has an export option or maybe it's file and save as, then you can take that Visio file and export it as a .BPMN file. Then you'll be able to make the most of that.
Q: Is it possible to have a continuous development deployment model? So the business analyst submits V1 of the BPMN, generates the automation, business analyst submits B2V2 - is it going to be able to do differential integration of something that's changed?
A: Not right now. That is a very interesting ask. I don't know whether you were one of the people who expressed interest in in becoming the design partner or not, but we have your name here. I think we can reach out on that.
Q: So can you talk about what's happening behind the scenes?
A: We take the BPMN, break out the individual objects into tasks, and then based upon the prose description related to that object, we insert the comments. Then we insert code and/or the variables that are related to it based upon whether or not that BPMN object mentions one of the standard types of business documents. Then we'll also be able to insert code based upon that later as well.
Q: Licensing requirements?
A: So, explicitly Autopilot is part of the Automator AI features. You purchase Automator AI separately. You can put it on top, you can purchase it in conjunction with the base control route features, and you can purchase it in conjunction with enterprise level of support in the Control Room. You must have the Automator AI SKU to use Autopilot, Co-Pilot for Automators, Suggest Next Action, and Generative Recorder. All of those are bundled together. To anyone that doesn't have that, reach out to your CSM or your account executive and they can talk more about what that looks like.
Q: Are there any beta opportunities on this?
A: No, it’s already available in the GA .34 release.
Q: Is there a plan to use metadata from the BPMN file to create variables?
A: Not in the short roadmap. Most don’t include that level of detail in the BPMN, but it’s good to note for us to consider.
Q: Which tool to be used to create the BPMN file?
A: Most business process modeling software can create BPMN. If you want to try a free online solution just to see what a BPMN might look like you can try this one: https://bpmn.io
Q: Is A360 able to create variables and link them between the task if we show them somehow in the bpmn diagram?
A: Not yet, but that’s a good note for us to consider.
Q: Is this for cloud only?
A: Currently, yes.
Q: What format, file type does the BPMN need to be in? What tool should be used?
A: BPMN is the file format. Many Business Process Modeling tools allow you to expert to BPMN.
Q: Why does it create a Process by default? Or is it optional? I mean if the entire business process can be executed in batch/backend, do we really need a process created?
A: We create a process first as BPMN files usually more align with larger processes, but if it’s really just one node in the BPMN, you would get just a process and one node and can just use the bot if you want.
Q: Can Co-Pilot fill the text within the commands? Ex: Can copilot add comments command and then add some comments to that?
A: Yes, Co-Pilot for Automators can do that.
Q: Will we cover roadmap for enhancements? v1 of this feature looks like supports task bot process nodes. Curious how tailored this will become to the BPMN file.
A: I don’t think we’ll cover roadmap in this session. Much of the support depends on the detail in the BPMN. We are looking into using the text within the BPMN to try to map it to more detailed mapping in the future for API tasks, Document Automation, etc.
Q: When you say "autopilot", are you referring to "Co-Pilot"? Otherwise, please elaborate.
A: Autopilot is the part that converts the BPMN to an automation. Co-Pilot for Automators is the part where you can use chat to then modify or build out the automation further.
Q: Why do we have to upload png image? Is it mandatory?
A: No, it’s not mandatory. You just need to upload the BPMN file. But if the developer wants to see a diagram of the BPMN before the transformation, it’s useful.