Different Types of Automation

While breaking an automation into subsections, main focus must be put on:

• Collaborate workflow on separate files.
• Develop and test automation.
• Reuse workflows within and across projects.
• Put environment settings in separate files.

Excel and Data Tables Automation

Workbooks represent Excel files and their format. Data Tables are the simplest worksheets with rows and columns.

Excel Application Scope – It handles work on each and every Excel activity. The files are specified with .xlsx, and after that work is carried out.

Most popular Excel activities include: Read Range, Append Range, Write Cell, and Read Cell.

Popular DataTable activities are: Add Data Row, Output Data Table, Build Data Table.

Data Manipulation:

Data of all kinds are stored in variables. Studio handles several types of working variables. They are usually classified into 3 types:

Scalar – Handles Characters, Booleans and Numbers.

Collections – Collection of characters and dictionaries. These are used while extracting data from queues. Ex: Arrays, Strings, etc.

Tables – Two dimensional structure which hold indexed data by rows and columns.

Generic Value Variable – It is a unique variable which makes activities easier. It represent basic types of data, text, numbers.

User Interface Automation:

Recording

There are generally 5 types of Recorders:

Basic – Generates selector for each activity with zero containers. The output is a bit slow.

Desktop – Suitable for multiple actions and desktop applications. It generates container which stores activities, with partial selectors storing each one.

Web – Suitable for web applications and browsers. It generates containers.

Citrix – Records virtualized environments. It permits an image, text and handles explicit positioning.

Related Page: Introduction To UiPath

Advanced UI Automation:

Input Methods

Default – Uses Mouse and Keyboard to stimulate human operations. It works all the time to make the application active. It is recommended to first work with this method and later change to other methods.

Simulate Type/Click – It works quickly in the background- but it doesn’t support keyboard shortcuts. Uses technology application to simulate either type or click.

Window Messages - Convert text to lowercase. It sends a message directly to target application while performing an action.

Output Methods

Fulltext – It is the default method which is fast, accurate and works in the background.

Native – It is capable enough to extract data of each word or character.

OCR – It is not 100% accurate. But it comes to rescue under the conditions where direct methods cannot give intended results.

Selectors

Selectors are the essential part of UiPath Studio and UiPath Automation. It develops dependable processes by generating reliable sectors. Selectors store attributes in the form of XML fragment. This makes identification of elements easy in a window or a page. Many of the times, Selectors are generated automatically by Studio and doesn’t require any further input.

Citrix Automation:

Most used Activities:

Click Image – Click on mostly anything, whether it is menus, text, buttons, etc.

Click Text – Extracts text and clicks. Uses OCR to scan the virtual machine screen.

Select & Copy – Easiest output method for selectable text i.e. text boxes.

Scrape Relative – Scrapes a portion of image.

Keyboard Actions – Actions include navigating with the Tab key, shortcuts to activate application functions.

Advanced Citrix Automation:

Find Image – Detects image by selecting Selection Marquee on the screen. Execution process is stopped until an image is found. Continues with the workflow only when an indicated image is displayed.

Automate virtual machines with keyboard commands for quick automation process.

PDF Automation:

Extracts Data and Information from PDF. Generally, Studio incorporates PDF activities pack. These special activities are dealt with large text and elements in PDF.

Read PDF Text – Used for full documents and provides output in the form of Strings.

Read PDF with OCR – Used specifically for text images. Outputs as a string variable and mainly prefers OCR Engine.

Get Text – Extracts text from UI elements.

Anchor Base – Extract a same structure fluctuating value from one or multiple PDF files.

Email Automation:

Includes email interactions into the automation process. From an RPA perspective, two situations have been identified for Email interactions:

Input – Names and IDs in the Subject or body, Input files as attachments.

Output – Progress reports to managers, Exception alerts.

UiPath.Mail.Activities incorporates all the e-mail related activities. They send emails via SMTP protocol and read them via POP3 one.

Internet Message Access Protocol – Used for receiving e-mails, mark them as read, move them between folders.

Exchange – Sending, Receiving and moving emails among folders and deleting them is easy.

Outlook Activities – Easy to configure. Work with API of the desktop applications and their Outlook accounts.

Email Activities - They save messages as .eml files and other attachments to the local drive.

SAP Automation:

SAP is an enterprise software popularly known for its business operations and customer relations. SAP GUI elements are considered one block. The techniques employed for automating processes within Studio in SAP, are fairly standard and mainly focus on SAP-specific approaches.

SAP Scripting is enables on both local machine and on the server. All these techniques when combined result in easy SAP automation with Studio.

Call Center Automation:

UiPath has launched two types of Robots:

Back-office Robot – Is autonomous. Can work independently without any necessity for inputs from humans.

User-Assisted Robot – Run only when user actions are triggered.

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