Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with UiPATH

Hello World!

Robotic Processing Automation known as RPA is an emerging technology, that automates a process in the computer using Software Robots.

A robot is a term that refers to a software or application that replicates the action of the user and communicates with the system user interface.

The process is said to be steps or sequences to do certain things.

Automation is doing certain things automatically.

RPA is a process of creating software robots, that could do certain processes 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 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 the .NET framework. Hence, we can use the functions of C# in it.

Features

Some features of UiPath are

• Code-Free

• Importance is given 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 what the start page of UiPATH Studio looks like. You can select any of the options to create a process.

The process may be defined into two types

• Sequence

• Flow Charts

Sequence is used when the tasks need to be done in a sequential manner. Flow charts are used when there are multiple branches or conditions.

UiPATH Activities

UiPATH has 300+ inbuilt activities. We can also import packages like Excel, Mail, and PDF in addition to the built-in packages. These activities are available in the activities pane.

Activities Pane

Work Space

UiPATH workspace is the place where we actually create sequences or flow charts. The tools allow the user to create variables and store values using the variables pane or using the properties pane. The sequences and flow charts are called workflows in UiPATH.

Work Space

Variables pane

Properties Pane

In the properties pane, we can give properties and values to components in workflows. Also, we can create variables by hitting the ctrl + K key in the output textbox.

Properties Pane

These three are the important panes in UiPATH. The other panes are the Output Pane, where we could see the Outputs, Logs, and Error Messages, and the Outline pane, which shows the outline of the project.

Record and Playback

UiPATH has a Record and Playback feature. This feature records the actions of humans and makes it a sequenced 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 a 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 plain text that is used to find a particular UI element among the running applications.

Recording, Scraping, and UiExplorer

Run, Debug, and Breakpoints

Run is used to run the Software Robot in the UiPATH environment.

Debug is used to analyze the workflows step-by-step.

Break Point is used to pause the debugging at a particular step.

The slow step is used to execute the bot a little slower.

Run, Debug, Breakpoint, Slow Step

Example Sequence

Example Sequence

This sequence will open the browser and go to google.com

Example Flowchart

Example Flow Chart

This flow chart opens the browser and goes to google.com and closes the browser.

To learn more about RPA and UiPATH, take up a course in UiPATH Academy.

Looking forward to your valuable feedback and suggestions.

Thank you!!