Chapter 1: About Automation Anywhere
Robot Process Automation (RPA) has attracted significant investment from many corporate organizations in recent years. This has opened up many opportunities for using RPA, whether you are an experienced developer wanting to gain additional valuable skills or you're thinking about starting your career as an RPA developer. Not only will you learn what commands and functionality Automation Anywhere (AA) has to offer; you will also gain practical experience of how to use them. You will put everything you learn into practice with plenty of walk-throughs.
In this chapter, we will summarize what Robot Process Automation is. You will learn about what AA is, what it does, and get some initial insights into their RPA tool. There are a number of versions available from AA, you will gain an understanding of the differences between them. This book is based on the latest Community Edition A2019. Besides being the latest version, there are several other reasons for learning RPA with this version. You will get an insight into why this version is ideal for providing actual hands-on experience and starting your journey in building software robots (bots).
Along with building bots, AA also has a number of additional features and components. These include IQ Bot, Bot Insight, Bot Store, Mobile Bot, and Automation Anywhere University. In this chapter, you will get insights into what these are and how you can benefit from these features and components.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- What is robotic process automation?
- Overview of Automation Anywhere
- Automation Anywhere Versions
- Community Edition A2019
Technical requirements
In order to use AA A2019 Community Edition, the following requirements are necessary:
- Windows OS version 7 or higher
- A processor with a minimum speed of 3 GHz
- A minimum of 4 GB RAM
- Internet Explorer v10 or higher, or Chrome v49 or higher
- An internet connection with a minimum speed of 10 Mb/second
What is robotic process automation?
You probably already know what RPA is, but we will go through a quick overview here. The words automation or robot usually conjure up images of a physical machine performing repetitive tasks. We began to see this type of automation years ago, particularly in manufacturing. Physical robotic machines were built to help automate tasks usually done by humans. This form of industrial manufacturing automation was later adopted by many other industries including logistics, distribution, and packaging. This also led to automation being taught in universities at postgraduate level. Many new technology jobs were also created from this, including roles such as robotics engineer, designer, and maintenance operative, as well as automated programmable manufacturing tools such as CNC machinery. Since the widespread adoption of the internet, we have seen the concept of web-controlled automation also being introduced. As an example, large buildings often deploy internet-enabled CCTV, heating controls, and security systems, where all these systems can be managed remotely over the internet. You could have a very fulfilling career as a developer or engineer working in automation.
We can see the same thing happening with RPA. RPA is specifically designed to automate tasks that are performed by humans on desktops. Most jobs have an element that involves tasks that are high volume, repetitive, and tedious. Such tasks tend to drain the enjoyment out of our jobs. This is where RPA can be applied to automate these types of tasks.
We can build bots to perform these types of tasks, and this is specifically what RPA bots have been designed for. Having a bot can give you more time to spend doing the tasks that you actually enjoy and excel at. This in turn would deliver more job satisfaction.
You may be thinking, well, what's the difference between RPA and traditional software development? Well, with traditional development, the developer needs to be proficient in developing the application with it being automated as well. For example, to automate a task in Excel, you would expect the developer to have skills in VBA. To develop web applications, the developer may need skills in Java or HTML. The developer needs to understand how the application is executing the tasks as well as what the user needs to do. It would usually also involve a greater learning curve to master these skills and would involve writing lines of code to build the solutions. RPA is different. It doesn't really matter what application you are working with as it interacts with the user interface. The user only needs to understand how to operate the application they are working with without necessarily understanding how the applications executes the task, and this is all that RPA needs to know. So, no specific expertise is needed to work on multiple applications. It also does not require writing lines of code, as you can build a solution by designing a workflow or using pre-defined drag and drop commands. This makes it an ideal technology to rapidly learn how to build bots and doesn't require years of learning to become a bot developer. See the following comparison:
Figure 1.1 – Comparison of traditional automation against RPA
You can clearly see the benefits of having an RPA bot as opposed to building a new traditional-style software solution. So, what sort of tasks can a bot actually perform? Bots can pretty much do most tasks that involve a human using the desktop. This includes the automation of the tasks shown in the following diagram:
Figure 1.2 – Tasks that can be performed with RPA
You should now have a good understanding of what RPA is. This is a growing market with great demand for RPA skills. We know we can learn these skills far more quickly and easily than those required for traditional development. The scope of the types of tasks that can be automated with RPA is vast and not limited to specific industries.
The number of RPA vendors on the market is growing. As in most industries, only a few become recognized and reputable as market leaders, although we have seen a handful of industry leaders emerging over the last few years. One of the key players has been AA.
Overview of Automation Anywhere
The list of vendors that provide RPA tools is growing constantly. There are three main leaders in this technology. These are UiPath, Blue Prism, and AA. All these vendors provide RPA tools with pretty much the same functionality. You can see the top 10 RPA vendors of 2020 at the following link, created by Horses for Sources: https://www.horsesforsources.com/RPA_Top10_2020_012920.
Although the aforementioned top three do provide similar functionalities, there are some key differences. The following table shows a breakdown of the features available from each provider:
Figure 1.3 – Top vendors' features comparison
We can see that AA and UiPath have the most comprehensive tools and features when compared to Blue Prism.
In this book we will be using AA, as they were the first to release a fully cloud-based RPA tool. This eliminates the need to install AA on your desktops to build, manage, and deploy bots. AA has also won a number of prestigious technology awards and was recently named the market leader in RPA by a Forrester report.
AA also runs a number of annual events, where they host the Bot Games. Here, developers from around the world are challenged against each other to build specific bots. Maybe, once you have gained enough confidence in your own bot development skills, you can be part of these Bot Games.
The mission statement of AA, as published on their website at https://www.automationanywhere.com/company/about-us, is as follows:
"To enable companies to operate with unprecedented productivity and efficiency by automating any part of the enterprise that can be automated with the most intelligent and intuitive robotic process automation platform we call
- The Intelligent Digital Workforce"
We can break this statement down into three distinct elements:
- What AA offers: Giving organizations the opportunity to increase productivity and efficiency.
- How they can offer this: Creating the opportunity to automate any process within the organization by the deployment of intelligent RPA.
- The outcome: This results in building bots that make up the Digital Workforce.
When designing and building an RPA solution, it is essential that a statement relates to the purpose of why RPA is needed. The Digital Workforce has to add value within the organization. This can be measured in terms of cost savings, time reduction, or the reduction of effort. As a developer, understanding why automation is needed can help in designing a robust intelligent solution.
We will take a closer look at some of the additional features and components available with AA. This will show how AA stands out from the crowd of its competitors. We will look at the following features and components:
- The Digital Workforce
- IQ Bot
- Bot Insight
- Bot Stor...
