Hello World!
Robotic Processing Automation known as RPA is an emerging technology, that automates a process in computer using Software Robots.
Robot is a term that refers to a software or application that replicates the action of user and communicate with the system user interface.
Process is said to be steps or sequence to do certain things.
Automation is doing certain things automatically.
RPA is a process of creating software robots, that could do certain process automatically, without human intervention.
Example:
- Automatic Emails
- Data Scraping
- Automatic Document Creation
How to create?
There are tools available for creating a Robotic Process Automation. Some of popular tools are
- Ui PATH
- Blue Prism
- Automation Anywhere
- Pega
UiPATH
UiPath is the best RPA tool in terms of technology. The community edition of UiPath is free of cost and anyone can download and use it.
UiPATH is built using .NET framework. Hence, we can use functions of C# in it.
Features
Some features of UiPath are
- Code-Free
- Importance is give to Business Logic and not to the code
- Can inherit .NET and C# functions
- Record and Playback feature
How to Use the tool?
UiPATH studio is the IDE that is used to create Robotic Process Automation.
This is how the start page of UiPATH Studio looks like. You can select any of the options to create a process.
The process may be defined in two types
- Sequence
- Flow Charts
Sequence is used when the tasks needs to be done in sequential manner. Flow charts are used when there are multiple branch or conditions.
UiPATH Activities
UiPATH has 300+ inbuilt activities. We can also import packages like Excel, Mail, PDF in addition to the builtin packages. These activities are available in activities pane.
Work Space
UiPATH work space is the place where we actually create sequences or flow charts. The tools allows the user to create variable and store values using the variables pane or using the properties pane. The sequences and flow charts are called as workflows in UiPATH.
Properties Pane
In properties pane, we can give properties and values to components in work flows. Also we can create variables by hitting ctrl + K key in output textbox.
These three are the important panes in UiPATH. The other panes are Output Pane, where we could see the Outputs, Logs and Error Messages and Outline pane, which shows the outline of the project.
Record and Playback
UiPATH has Record and Playback feature. This feature records the actions by humans and make it as a sequence and make it an automated process. There are 4 types of Recordings available in UiPATH
- Basic Recording
- Desktop Recording
- Web Recording
- Citrix Recording
Screen Scraping and Data Scraping
Scraping is getting specific data from a page or application. Screen Scraping is used to scrape data from applications and web pages. Data Scraping is scraping data that is repetitive in structure like query results in Google Search Engine or any tabular content. It has a special wizard called Data Scraping Wizard, that helps to Scrape data. Data Scraping is mainly used in web pages.
UiExplorer
UiExplorer has details about the user interface components and selectors. A selector is basically a plain text that is used to find a particular UI element among the running applications.
Run, Debug and Breakpoints
Run is used to run the Software Robot in UiPATH environment.
Debug is used to analyse the workflows step-by-step.
Break Point is used to pause the debugging at a particular step.
Slow step is used to execute the bot little slower.
Example Sequence
This sequence will open browser and go to google.com
Example Flowchart
This flow chart opens browser and go to google.com and close the browser.
To learn more about RPA and UiPATH, take up a course in UiPATH Academy.
Looking forward for your valuable feedbacks and suggestions.
Thank you!!
