Learning Robotic Process Automation

Learning Robotic Process Automation

by Alok Mani Tripathi
Released March 2018
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781788470940

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Book description

Design RPA solutions to perform a wide range of transactional tasks with minimal cost and maximum ROI

About This Book

  • A beginner's guide to learn Robotic Process Automation and its impact on the modern world
  • Design, test, and perform enterprise automation task with UiPath
  • Create Automation apps and deploy them to all the computers in your department.

Who This Book Is For

If you would like to pursue a career in Robotic Process Automation or improve the efficiency of your businesses by automating common tasks, then this book is perfect for you. Prior programming knowledge of either Visual Basic or C# will be useful.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand Robotic Process Automation technology
  • Learn UiPath programming techniques to deploy robot configurations
  • Explore various data extraction techniques
  • Learn about integrations with various popular applications such as SAP and MS Office
  • Debug a programmed robot including logging and exception handling
  • Maintain code version and source control
  • Deploy and control Bots with UiPath Orchestrator

In Detail

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables automating business processes using software robots. Software robots interpret, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems just like humans do. Robotic processes and intelligent automation tools can help businesses improve the effectiveness of services faster and at a lower cost than current methods.

This book is the perfect start to your automation journey, with a special focus on one of the most popular RPA tools: UiPath.

Learning Robotic Process Automation takes you on a journey from understanding the basics of RPA to advanced implementation techniques. You will become oriented in the UiPath interface and learn about its workflow. Once you are familiar with the environment, we will get hands-on with automating different applications such as Excel, SAP, Windows and web applications, screen and web scraping, working with user events, as well as understanding exceptions and debugging. By the end of the book, you'll not only be able to build your first software bot, but also you'll wire it to perform various automation tasks with the help of best practices for bot deployment.

Style and approach

This book will help you kick-start your automation journey with a special focus on one of the most popular RPA tools: UiPath.

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright and Credits
    1. Learning Robotic Process Automation
  3. Packt Upsell
    1. Why subscribe?
    2. PacktPub.com
  4. Contributors
    1. About the author
    2. About the reviewer
    3. Packt is searching for authors like you
  5. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
      1. Download the color images
      2. Conventions used
    4. Get in touch
      1. Reviews
  6. What is Robotic Process Automation?
    1. Scope and techniques of automation
      1. What should be automated?
      2. What can be automated?
      3. Techniques of automation
    2. Robotic process automation
      1. What can RPA do?
      2. Benefits of RPA
      3. Components of RPA
        1. Recorder
        2. Development studio
        3. Extensions and plugins
        4. Bot runner
        5. Control center
      4. RPA platforms
        1. Automation Anywhere
        2. UiPath
        3. Blue Prism
        4. WorkFusion
        5. Thoughtonomy
        6. KOFAX
    3. About UiPath
      1. UiPath Studio
      2. UiPath Robot
      3. UiPath Orchestrator
    4. The future of automation
    5. Summary
  7. Record and Play
    1. UiPath stack
      1. UiPath Studio
      2. UiPath Robot
        1. Types of Robots
      3. UiPath Orchestrator
    2. Downloading and installing UiPath Studio
    3. Learning UiPath Studio
      1. Projects
      2. The user interface
        1. The Ribbon
        2. The Quick Access Toolbar
        3. Designer panel
        4. Properties panel
        5. Activities panel
        6. Project panel
        7. Outline panel
        8. Output panel
        9. Library panel
        10. Variable panel
        11. Argument
    4. Task recorder
      1. Advanced UI interactions
        1. Input methods
        2. Output methods
    5. Step-by-step examples using the recorder
      1. Emptying trash in Gmail
      2. Emptying Recycle Bin
    6. Summary
  8. Sequence, Flowchart, and Control Flow
    1. Sequencing the workflow
      1. What is a Sequence?
    2. Activities
      1. Using activities with workflows
      2. What Flowcharts are and when to use them
    3. Control flow, various types of loops, and decision making
      1. The Assign activity
      2. The Delay activity
        1. Example
      3. The Break activity
        1. Example
      4. The While activity
        1. Example
      5. The Do while activity
        1. Example
      6. The For each activity
        1. Example
      7. The If activity
      8. The Switch activity
        1. Example
    4. Step-by-step example using Sequence and Flowchart
      1. How to use a Sequence
      2. How to use a Flowchart
    5. Step-by-step example using Sequence and Control flow
    6. Summary
  9. Data Manipulation
    1. Variables and scope
    2. Collections
    3. Arguments – Purpose and use
    4. Data table usage with examples
      1. Building a data table
      2. Building a data table using data scraping (dynamically)
    5. Clipboard management
    6. File operation with step-by-step example
      1. Read cell
      2. Write cell
      3. Read range
      4. Write range
      5. Append range
    7. CSV/Excel to data table and vice versa (with a step-by-step example)
      1. Reading an Excel file and creating a data table by using data from the Excel file
      2. Creating a data table and then writing all its data to an Excel file
    8. Summary
  10. Taking Control of the Controls
    1. Finding and attaching windows
      1. Implementing the Attach Window activity
    2. Finding the control
      1. Anchor base
      2. Element Exists
      3. Element scope
      4. Find children
      5. Find element
      6. Find relative element
      7. Get ancestor
      8. Indicate on screen
    3. Techniques for waiting for a control
      1. Wait Element Vanish
      2. Wait Image Vanish
      3. Wait attribute
    4. Act on controls – mouse and keyboard activities
      1. Mouse activities
        1. The Click activity
        2. The Double-click activity
        3. The Hover activity
      2. Keyboard activities
        1. Send hotkey
        2. Type into activity
        3. Type secure text
    5. Working with UiExplorer
    6. Handling events
      1. Element triggering events
        1. Click trigger
        2. Key press trigger
      2. Image triggering events
      3. System triggering events
        1. Hotkey trigger
        2. Mouse trigger
        3. System trigger
    7. Revisit recorder
      1. Basic recording
      2. Desktop recording
      3. Web recording
      4. Citrix
    8. Screen Scraping
    9. When to use OCR
    10. Types of OCR available
    11. How to use OCR
    12. Avoiding typical failure points
      1. Selectors
      2. Scope of the variable
      3. Delay activity
      4. Element Exists
      5. Try/Catch
      6. toString
    13. Summary
  11. Tame that Application with Plugins and Extensions
    1. Terminal plugin
    2. SAP automation
      1. How SAP Automation affects data entry jobs
      2. Examples where SAP automation is used commonly
    3. Java plugin
      1. Why are we using the Java plugin with UiPath Studio?
    4. Citrix automation
      1. How does the Citrix environment work?
    5. Mail plugin
    6. PDF plugin
    7. Web integration
    8. Excel and Word plugins
      1. Excel plugin
      2. Word plugin
    9. Credential management
    10. Extensions – Java, Chrome, Firefox, and Silverlight
    11. Summary
  12. Handling User Events and Assistant Bots
    1. What are assistant bots?
    2. Monitoring system event triggers
      1. Hotkey trigger
      2. Mouse trigger
      3. System trigger
    3. Monitoring image and element triggers
      1. An example of monitoring email
      2. Example of monitoring a copying event and blocking it
    4. Launching an assistant bot on a keyboard event
    5. Summary
  13. Exception Handling, Debugging, and Logging
    1. Exception handling
    2. Common exceptions and ways to handle them
      1. Unavailability of UI element
      2. Handling runtime exceptions
      3. Orbit reference not set to the instant of an object
      4. Index was outside the bounds of an array. Index out of the range
      5. Image not found in the provided timeout
      6. Click Generic error - cannot use UI CONTROL API on this UI node please use UI Hardware ELEMENTS method
    3. Logging and taking screenshots
      1. Client logging
      2. Server logging
    4. Debugging techniques
      1. Setting breakpoints
      2. Slow step
      3. Highlighting
      4. Break
    5. Collecting crash dumps
      1. Enabling crash dumps
      2. Disabling crash dumps
    6. Error reporting
      1. Enterprise Edition customers
      2. Community Edition users
    7. Summary
  14. Managing and Maintaining the Code
    1. Project organization
      1. Picking an appropriate layout for each workflow
        1. Blank
        2. Simple process
        3. Agent process improvement
        4. Transactional business process
      2. Breaking the process into smaller parts
      3. Using exception handling
      4. Making your workflow readable
      5. Keeping it clean
    2. Nesting workflows
      1. How to nest a workflow inside a single workflow
    3. Reusability of workflows
      1. Invoke workflow file
      2. Templates
        1. Adding a workflow as a template
    4. Commenting techniques
    5. State Machine
    6. When to use Flowcharts, State Machines, or Sequences
    7. Using config files and examples of a config file
    8. Integrating a TFS server
    9. Summary
  15. Deploying and Maintaining the Bot
    1. Publishing using publish utility
      1. How to publish a workflow in UiPath
        1. Writing/editing the published package info into the .json file
    2. Overview of Orchestration Server
      1. Queues
      2. Assets
      3. Process
        1. Deploying a process
    3. Using Orchestration Server to control bots
      1. Robot statuses
      2. Editing the Robot
      3. Deleting the Robot
      4. Displaying logs for a Robot
    4. Using Orchestration Server to deploy bots
      1. Creating a provision Robot from the Orchestrator
        1. Connecting a Robot to Orchestrator
        2. Deploy the Robot to Orchestrator
    5. License management
      1. Activating and uploading a license to Orchestrator
    6. Publishing and managing updates
      1. Packages
      2. Managing packages
        1. Uploading packages
        2. Deleting packages
    7. Summary
  16. Other Books You May Enjoy
    1. Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Product information

  • Title: Learning Robotic Process Automation
  • Author(s): Alok Mani Tripathi
  • Release date: March 2018
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781788470940