The 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 .20 (build 8846).

1. Control Room Switching

   • If you're regularly developing and testing bots, you'll immediately recognize the benefits of this one. The .20 release includes the ability to enable devices to be switched between Control Rooms. SUPER helpful if you're frequently developing and testing in multiple environments and finding yourself needing to delete temp files or do a full uninstall/reinstall every time you swap.
   • To turn on this functionality:
     • Log in as an Admin, and this setting is in Settings > Devices> General.
     • Tip: Be sure that this is enabled on all Automation 360 Control Rooms that you switch between...otherwise you'll still be prompted to uninstall/reinstall on a CR that doesn't have this capability enabled.

2. Discovery Bot Recording Capabilities

   • Several enhancements were made in the .20 release with regards to improving user experiences and outcomes with Discovery Bot.
   • Actions such as double-click, drag-drop, click and hold, and text select when recording a business process can now be captured and notated on the Recordings page.
   • The Discovery Bot package is also now included in the default packages. This enables those performing recordings to get started even more quickly as they set out to use Discovery Bot for the first time.

3. AARI

   • The Automation Anywhere Robotic Interface (AARI) also is seeing its fair share of improvements in the .20 release.
   • The most exciting new AARI features revolve around file handling capabilities.
     • AARI users can now upload files in initial forms or tasks using the Select File element.
     • Additionally, with the new Get Storage File action from the AARI Web package, files can now be downloaded on a bot device.
   • As for the UX side of AARI:
     • Logos can now also be displayed in footers for attended bots so that the AARI forms can contain your company/vendor logos to create a more seamless user experience.
     • An updated AARI management experience similar to the look and feel of the Automation 360 Control Room makes managing processes/AARI users even easier than before.

4. IQ Bot

   • IQ Bot also sees some improvements for bot developers as a part of this .20 release - especially related to the uploading and downloading of files.
   • With the .20 release, you can now do batch downloading of processed files to a local machine without running into timeout issues - regardless of the number of files you wish to download.
   • Similar to the updates on the download side of form processing, the IQ Bot APIs have been enhanced to include returning a file ID of an uploaded file, validating the status of an upload based on that upload ID (yes!!! Finally!!) and file download data in a JSON format for successful files.
   • The Train Classifier action from the IQ Bot Classifier package now provides the option to retrain documents based on an existing model file.

5. Bot Insight

   • With the .20 release, Bot Insight Admin and Bot Insight Expert users now have the ability to modify published dashboards. Using the save-as option to save the production dashboard as a custom production dashboard, users can additionally add widgets to their custom dashboards.
   • Also new with .20, the Power BI connector provides Bot Insight admin access to the bot run data operational API - enabling the use of operational metrics within Power BI.

6. Developer Bonus Tip: Credentials

   • This developer bonus tip is all about the Credential Vault. New in .20, only those Bot Runners and Bot Creators explicitly configured as locker Consumers will have access to Credential Vault values.
   • This is an especially important distinction for those of you who are Credential/Locker owners...being an Owner is not the same as being a Consumer anymore. Be sure that you add your creator/runner account to the role defined in the consumer configuration of your locker! Otherwise, you might see an unexpected access denied message when running your bots.

Conclusion

Every Automation 360 release seems to bring with it a host of meaningful changes for bot developers that can further enhance developer experiences and ultimately automation outcomes. If you haven't had a chance, take a look at the Automation 360 .20 Release notes on the documentation portal. They are helpfully organized by subproduct and by "What's New" vs "What's Changed" - which makes reading through them and understanding the cool new features as painless as possible. Haven't tried out the Automation 360 platform yet? Head over to the Automation 360 product page to learn more about product features, request a demo, or try out a free trial.