The product and development teams at Automation Anywhere have been hard at work to deliver new features and updates with each release. In this post, we’ll dive into some of the most popular and most requested features that were newly added with .24 (build 12350). Side Note: The full release notes for this release are available at the Automation Anywhere Docs Portal. While we’re covering some of our favorite .24 features, there may be others that are particularly meaningful for your use cases/organization – so be sure to check them out for additional features and details.
#1 - Recorder Improvements
- If you’re using Edge in IE mode to support some legacy applications designed for IE, you’re in luck – the Recorder package now supports Conditional Object detection when using Edge in IE Mode
- This includes Loop > Wait action, Wait > For Condition action, and the If package.
- Great for detecting if a page a has fully “loaded” or if an object exists to take some conditional operation
- For those working with cross-domain iFrames – the updated Recorder package now supports capturing and automating objects inside cross-domain IFrames that have multiple IFrames with the same frame source.
- Dealing with in-browser pop-up windows, alert dialog boxes, and confirmation windows hasn’t always been easy. Fortunatley the updated Recorder package now supports automating these different pop-ups/alerts – so you no longer have to find workarounds like simulating keystrokes or image-based clicks.
#2 - Google Document AI Package
- Having new Packages in your Automation 360 Control Room is always exciting – it’s like having new tools at the ready as you automate the manual tasks of your organization.
- The Google Doc AI Package enables organizations to extract text from a variety of image types using Google’s pre-trained document parsers
- The package has a total of 3 actions – Connect, Extract, and Disconnect.
- The extracted document text is returned as an easy-to-read JSON with key-value data for each extracted field. (See favorite feature #1 below for more on parsing that JSON)
#3 - AARI Updates
- AARI (Automation Anywhere’s Robotic Interface) is great way to enable users and bots to work side by side…and this dynamic got even better in the .24 release with the introduction of AARI’s ability to run attended bots in a virtual window.
- This means that a user can kick-off an attended/local bot run, while still having full control of their mouse/keyboard.
- AARI also now includes support for Password-Type fields in the AARI form-builder – enabling AARI forms to now securely include password fields, with the entered data being passed to subsequent bots as a Credential Variable. This enables the bot to securely use an AARI user’s provided login credentials without putting those credentials at risk/exposing them.
#4 - IQ Bot Extraction360 Preview
- Community Edition users are treated to a preview of new IQ Bot functionality in this .24 release.
- Users can now process documents using the IQ Bot Extraction360 capability – which leverages pre-built, pre-trained learning instanced tuned specifically for high-accuracy extraction of data from Invoices.
- Navigate to the Learning Instances section of the Manage tab to create, customize and test your first learning instance using Extraction360
- In addition to being much easier to set up, testing/implementation is significantly easier as well
- Each Extraction360 learning instance creates a corresponding AARI process, form, and bots…that enable you to test the extraction and validate the results in AARI without having to create any bots manually.
#5 - JSON Package
- Our #1 favorite new feature in the .24 release also comes by way of a new package – the JSON package!
- Establish a local or global session using the Start Session action and start parsing JSON config/settings files, the response from REST web service calls, or even document objects from noSQL DBs
- There are separate actions for returning a specific node value as well as returning a list of objects should your JSON contain an array.
Bonus .24 Note: prompt-assignment Variable
For those that have been developing on Automation Anywhere’s platform for some time now, you’re likely quite familiar with the prompt-assignment variable – a default variable created as part of building any new bot. In asking around internally, it seems this variable has been a part of the product going all the way back to Automation Anywhere 2.0 and 3.0 (so… many years ago). Bots created on .24 or above will include 2 new sample variables – SampleNumber and SampleString.
So a sincere thank you to prompt-assignment. You were there for us in v10 and v11 when we’d go through the entire process of setting up an object clone, only to remember we’d forgotten to first create a variable…so prompt-assignment was always there in a pinch!
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 .24 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.