Book Image

Robotic Process Automation Projects

By : Nandan Mullakara, Arun Kumar Asokan

Book Image

Robotic Process Automation Projects

By: Nandan Mullakara, Arun Kumar Asokan

Overview of this book

Robotic Process automation helps businesses to automate monotonous tasks that can be performed by machines. This project-based guide will help you progress through easy to more advanced RPA projects. You’ll learn the principles of RPA and how to architect solutions to meet the demands of business automation, along with exploring the most popular RPA tools - UiPath and Automation Anywhere. In the first part, you’ll learn how to use UiPath by building a simple helpdesk ticket system. You’ll then automate CRM systems by integrating Excel data with UiPath. After this, the book will guide you through building an AI-based social media moderator using Google Cloud Vision API. In the second part, you’ll learn about Automation Anywhere's latest Cloud RPA platform (A2019) by creating projects such as an automated ERP administration system, an AI bot for order and invoice processing, and an automated emergency notification system for employees. Later, you’ll get hands-on with advanced RPA tasks such as invoking APIs, before covering complex concepts such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in automation to take your understanding of RPA to the next level. By the end of the book, you’ll have a solid foundation in RPA with experience in building real-world projects.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the example code files

Conventions used

Getting Started with Robotic Process Automation

Getting Started with Robotic Process Automation

Technical requirements

A quick definition

Benefits of RPA

Attended automation

Unattended automation

Our RPA tools – UiPath and Automation Anywhere

UiPath Orchestrator

UiPath – an integrated view

Automation Anywhere

Enterprise Control Room

Installation and setup

Installing UiPath

UiPath Studio and Robot

Configuring Automation Anywhere

Registration and setup

Installing the bot agent and verifying the setup

Free Chapter

Help Desk Ticket Generation

Help Desk Ticket Generation

Technical requirements

Project overview

Project groundwork

Creating project folders

Creating an Excel sheet with ticket data

Registering and logging in to Zoho Desk

Configuring the initial part of the main workflow

Reading from Excel

Exception handling

Invoking the Excel workflow from Main

Creating a support ticket in the Zoho Desk ticketing system

Recording ticket creation activities

Configuring the recorded activities

Validating successful ticket creation

Handling exceptions

Putting it all together

Testing the automation

Project enhancements

CRM Automation

Technical requirements

Project overview

Project details

CRM preparation

Setting up the project

Extracting the customer list from CRM

Preparing the browser

Using a Catch block for the Get Customer List Sequence

Looking up customer information

Creating a data table

Looping and creating company URLs

Extracting company details from Crunchbase.com

Invoking the RequestCustomerDetails workflow from the Main workflow

Updating the CRM with customer information

Looping through the data table and updating the CRM

Moderating Social Media Using AI

Moderating Social Media Using AI

Technical requirements

Project overview

Getting started with the project

Project groundwork

Reading parameters from the configuration file

Passing the configuration parameters to the main workflow

Reading image files from the input folder and creating a list

Reading files in the input folder

Reading and writing the image path list to the ImageDetails Excel file

Handling exceptions for the BuildExcelList workflow

Testing the BuildExcelList workflow

Setting up the Google Cloud Vision API's key and credentials

Setting up the Google Cloud Vision API services

Setting up a credential manager

Reading credentials from Windows Credential Manager

Looping through images and invoking the Google Cloud Vision API

Installing the UiPath GoogleVision package from UiPath Go!

Adding SafeSearch to the main workflow

Updating the image sheet with the API results

Passing the parameters and invoking SafeSearch

Moving processed images to the Output folder

Testing the automation

Purchase Order Processing with UiPath ReFramework

Purchase Order Processing with UiPath ReFramework

Technical requirements

Project overview

Robotic Enterprise Framework (ReFramework)

Project groundwork

Creating the PO spreadsheet

Setting up Apptivo

Getting started with the project

Purchase order Dispatcher

Purchase order Performer

Init state changes

Updating the InitAllApplications workflow

Invoking the InitAllApplications workflow

Process state changes

Attaching and activating the PO application

Creating the POs

Preparing to input PO data

Inputting the PO data

Handling PO entry errors

Capturing the PO

Updating the PO in the spreadsheet

Testing the Automation

Completing an RPA Challenge

Completing an RPA Challenge

Technical requirements

Project details

Project groundwork

Completing the challenge with UiPath

Getting started with the UiPath project

Creating the challenge automation

Reading the RPA challenge Excel data

Inputting data into the RPA challenge forms

Testing the UiPath challenge automation

Recapping the UiPath projects

Automation Anywhere A2019

Completing the challenge with Automation Anywhere

Getting started with the Automation Anywhere control room

Creating the RPA challenge automation bot

Reading the RPA challenge Excel data

Preparing the RPA challenge website for input

Looping through each row and column

Iterating through each column and reading headers

Mapping and inputting the challenge data to the website

Testing the Automation Anywhere challenge automation

Sales Order Processing

Sales Order Processing

Technical requirements

Project overview

Project details

Project groundwork

Creating the Parent bot

Exception handling

Opening and reading Excel data

Creating the Child bot for SO processing

Using the recorder to capture SO creation

Filling in customer details for an SO

Filling in item details for an SO

Passing the SO number

Invoking the Child bot and updating the Excel sheet

Looping through rows and invoking the Child bot

Updating Excel with the SO number

Moving the Excel file to the Processed folder

Testing the automation

ERP User Administration

ERP User Administration

Technical requirements

Project overview

Project groundwork

Creating a user request PDF

Signing up for Saas application

Opening the Automation Anywhere A2019 control room

Creating the Parent bot

Exception handling

Extracting user details from PDF

Assigning user data to row variables

Extracting user details with String operations

Validating email addresses with regular expressions

Creating the Child bot for new user creation

Creating a new user in Freshsales

Handling form validation errors

Handling exceptions

Invoking the Child bot and creating the new user

Moving the PDF to the Processed folder on success

Notifying the user in case of insufficient data

Logging errors and sending email notifications

Testing the automation

Employee Emergency Notifications

Employee Emergency Notifications

Technical requirements

Project overview

Project details

Project groundwork

Creating the employee spreadsheet

Signing up for Twilio

Opening the Automation Anywhere A2019 Control Room

Creating a Child bot to send messages

Exception handling

Saving Twilio credentials

Adding variables for the Child bot

Invoking the Twilio REST post method

Returning a response flag to the Parent bot

Unit testing the Child bot

Creating the Parent bot

Initializing Twilio and opening the employee Excel file

Looping through the employee list and sending text messages

Checking and logging responses from the Child bot

Exception handling in the Parent bot

Testing the automation

Using AI and RPA for Invoice Processing

Using AI and RPA for Invoice Processing

Technical requirements

Intelligent document processing

UiPath – Document Understanding

Automation Anywhere – IQ Bot

Project overview

Project details

Project groundwork

Opening the Automation Anywhere A2019 Control Room

Downloading sample invoices

Creating the IQ Bot learning instance

Setting up the initial IQ Bot learning instance

Reviewing and updating field mappings

Uploading invoices to IQ Bot

Downloading structured data from IQ Bot

Checking the automation

Automation Anywhere projects – recap

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Appendix A and B for UiPath

Appendix A – Connecting UiPath Robot to Orchestrator

Getting started

Creating a Standard Robot in Orchestrator

Adding an environment for the Bot

Connecting Orchestrator to the local Robot

Appendix B – Publishing to Orchestrator

Publishing to Orchestrator

Creating a new process

Running the process

Scheduling the process

Appendix: Looking Forward and Next Steps

Appendix: Looking Forward and Next Steps

Hyperautomation

Future technologies and trends

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Document processing

Conversational AI

Process mining and process discovery

RPA as a service

RPA marketplaces

Customer Reviews

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Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere is another top RPA tool. It has a good depth of functionality and features while being mostly user-friendly. You can get started fairly quickly and scale easily with this decently robust tool.

Automation Anywhere started in 2003 with a vision to replace manual scripting applications with process automation that could be designed by the user. Their focus was to support all aspects of automating business processes, including end-to-end processes.

Fast forward to today, and the current version of Automation Anywhere, known as A2019, can be deployed on the cloud or on-premise. It has a web-based Control Room where you can develop and deploy bots. The Control Room connects to a bot agent on your Windows desktop to execute the automation process. We will be using the A2019 cloud-based Community Edition for our projects.

Let's have a look at the primary components of A2019.