Chapter Two, what is RPA? In this chapter, we'll be understanding the RPA concept, the UiPath perspective, we will understand how to develop a functioning robot, and which tool is best for you. Understanding the RP concept UiPath prospective, corporates couldn't rely on older automation tools, as they didn't serve the purpose of an efficient and reliable work needed. With slower advancements, automation tools were created, which can interact with external applications. By getting info on their UI elements create scalable programs, which can be comprehended by their process owners easily modified to make them generic and scalable and managed through separate layers of controls available within the tool. Today RPA tools and applications can efficiently run on server machines provide impeccable Exception Handling techniques are scalable enough to be leveraged in many operating systems.

Can interact with almost all external applications installed in a system. As mentioned before, robotics Process Automation is simply a software robot that impersonates an IT procedure. Same way as a human would do. The more manual work is involved in the process. Better are the chances for higher throughput and efficiency in implementing a bot. Another positive aspect of implementing bots is that, unlike humans, robots don't require downtime, vacation, increase in wages and complaints.

Theoretically, a software bot can work 24 seven all basic activities, such as clicking on a UI element, taking a screenshot, sending key inputs to a particular element on the screen via keyboard reading data from the display. Typing values to a text box along with others such activities are predefined in the UiPath RPA tool and simply drag it And dropping it into the main program is needed to create the bot. On similar lines, there are activities that are specific to XML application. For instance, in MS Excel, you may need to read data within a particular range from a specific worksheet. The activity to read that data would be different from a normal reading activity, you might use for other application, say a notepad document. To use activities specific to an external application, you need to download the package inheriting its associated activities.

This is same as c++ programming concept, where we need to include header files to use some sort of functionalities in our program. Luckily, UiPath provides an inbuilt capability to search look up and install these packages directly into the tool. Developers all around the world can create and publish these activities which can be used by other programmers To implement the logic. Once installed, the underlying activities of the package are ready to be used. Now how to develop a functioning robot, there's a series of steps developers must follow to make a full functioning robot. These are described in detail here.

Step one, performed the process manually over a couple of times. Before delving into the bot creation process, it is highly recommended to go through the actual process manually over a couple of times. This step has several advantages. Firstly, you'll get a flavor of benefits realization for creating the bot to automate the process rather than manually performing it. Secondly, you'll be able to break the overall process into sub tasks associated with each other, which makes it easier to implement the program. And lastly, the process in hand would become more pure to you with experience can get a fair idea of which activities within UiPath can possibly accomplish this task and also helps conceptualizing possible optimization techniques.

Step two, note down the process steps. Once you have gone through the manual process yourself, the tasks associated in the process must be written in greater detail. In programming language, this process corresponds to algorithm creation. With this, we get an overall idea of the task in hand, possible alternatives available to create the program and also in deciding the best methodology to be followed. Alongside. This step provides scalability for the project.

Consider a program that needs further extension in terms of its capabilities. We shall make appropriate changes to the algorithm first, to achieve conceptual reliability, and then make changes to the bot program accordingly. Step three. Look for possible use cases. To achieve higher efficiency and robustness for your program, you must think of as many use cases as possible. This makes your program consistent and able to execute under different scenarios.

Consider that your program involves division of two numbers. In addition to the simple arithmetic involved in the process, possible use cases could be division, division of a number by zero, division by a negative integer division by an alphabet and others. You would want to think of such possible scenarios beforehand. include them in your algorithm itself, to make sure that your program is able to run without any failures and then make changes to the bot. Step four, exception handling. This is one of the major concepts discussed in any programming language to enhance reliability of the program.

Exception refers to an atypical occurrence That may appear during runtime of a program on its occurrence, it may result in abrupt behavior or untimely termination of the program. such incidents must be handled, managed, and responded appropriately to ensure program flow is intact and dependable, even throwing an appropriate message and ending the program. Awaiting further instructions from the user end is an instance of exception handling. Step five, check for alternative approaches. In many situations, there might be different routes available to achieve your desired solution, which may prove more reliable to the bot. Such options should be thoroughly evaluated and made use of while creating the bot program.

A quick example that we'll be using in this tutorial again and again is passing the values like up of the up arrow of your keyboard The windows key together to maximize a window screen rather than clicking on the maximize button of the title bar. This is because the overall look and feel of a UI element is dependent on the Windows version installed in a particular machine, along with its placement and other color combinations and stuff. using a keyboard shortcut is same across all platforms, and thus provides a better reliability to our solution. We'll get to learn more of these tactics and you know these steps through experience and of course through playing around with the tool. Step six, install UiPath packages briefly touched before. UiPath provides capability to install packages downloaded from its library.

These packages contain activities specific to the enterprise applications, which provides capability to bots to perform actions. Activities are nothing but people defined functions, which when connected logically with each other performs computations, thereby achieving intended automation and result. Step seven. Test the battery. Once the board is ready, there are various testing methods implemented to make sure the program works at all times. The use cases and error handling mechanisms employed during programming of the bot need to be tested thoroughly before handing it over to process owners for their use.

Step it publish the robot and synchronize it to UiPath orchestrator. Once the programming of part is completed and tested thoroughly, it is published. The published program is actually called the robot. This robot is then synchronized to a dedicated server called UiPath orchestrator where it is maintained queued and animate Periodically by the process owner depending on their business requirement. This will be explained in greater detail in the forthcoming chapters of this tutorial. Which tool is best for you?

Selection of the RPA tool should be done with due diligence, keeping in mind the pros and cons of each. Some of the points to consider while making a choice includes relevant technology features, functionalities it provides configuration permissible within the tool, Operation transition to business users and underlying costs involved. Three major vendors which provide their RPA tools for businesses include UiPath, blue prism and automation anywhere. Here's a quick analysis of all these tools UiPath has undergone vast changes since past few years and with the ease of features and capabilities it provides. It certainly is a good starting point in point in delving into robotic process automation. In this tutorial, we'll walk through all the major activities we use in bot creation, starting off with basic programs, and getting to major robots interacting with world class enterprise applications, solving business problems.