UiPath Associate Certification Guide E-Book

Niyaz Ahmed

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 415

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

UiPath is the most popular vendor in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) industry. If you're an RPA enthusiast or citizen developer who wants to succeed in the industry, achieving this certification can help you get accredited and ready for real-world challenges using UiPath.
UiPath Associate Certification Guide offers complete, up-to-date coverage of the UiPath RPA Associate certification exam to help you pass on the first attempt and get certified. The book is written in a clear, succinct way with self-assessment questions, quizzes with answers at the end of each chapter, exam tips, and mock exams with detailed answers and explanations. You'll start by getting to grips with the basic concepts of UiPath RPA, and then progress to an in-depth discussion of all the concepts required for Associate certification. Finally, you'll develop UiPath skills by gaining the required knowledge and implement these skills using sample business cases.
By the end of this UiPath book, you'll have covered everything you need to pass the exam, gained the knowledge you need to work on real-world case studies, and learned how to apply the various concepts to build enterprise-level use cases.

Leseprobe

UiPath Associate Certification Guide

The go-to guide to passing the Associate certification exam with the help of mock tests and quizzes

Niyaz Ahmed

Lahiru Fernando

Rajaneesh Balakrishnan

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

UiPath Associate Certification Guide

Copyright © 2022 Packt Publishing

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To my father – your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.

– Niyaz Ahmed

I'd like to thank my father, Sesha, my wife, Mihiri, and my daughter, Emmie, for holding my hand throughout all the hardships of my life. Also, special thanks go to my two amazing mentors, Erik Gillet and Lucas Pimenta, for always motivating and guiding me. Lastly, I would like to thank the entire UiPath Community, the UiPath team, my team at Boundaryless Group, and all my friends for all the opportunities and for helping me change my life in many ways.

– Lahiru Fernando

To anyone who wants to pass the UiPath Associate certification, start learning UiPath, change to a career in UiPath, or simply know about the technology – I'm sure this book will undoubtedly help you achieve your UiPath goals. Thanks to the amazing team efforts by the co-authors, reviewers, and the Packt Publishing team in creating the contents in the most simplified way to help anyone learn UiPath and earn the UiPath Associate Certification.

To my wife, Anusree, son, Saijesh, and daughter, Dakshya, for kindly letting me experience the writing process of this book.

– Rajaneesh Balakrishnan

Contributors

About the authors

Niyaz Ahmed is a technical program manager at UiPath, where he is working toward enabling the future and current workforce for the automation-ready world. He manages the UiPath Academic Alliance and Learning Partner program by working with leading institutions, including universities, colleges, and high schools. He is also an instructor at Udacity for the RPA Developer Nanodegree program. In addition, he continues to evangelize RPA by mentoring learners to develop professional-level skills focused on developing and deploying software robots.

A special thanks to Alok Shrivastava, Rajesh Nambiar, and all my colleagues at UiPath who have helped me in the different phases of the book.

Lahiru Fernando is a UiPath MVP, executive team lead for RPA, UiPath community leader, mentor, lecturer, and public speaker, and has over 11+ years of experience in the IT industry. He started his career in 2011 after completing a degree in specialized software engineering at Staffordshire University. He has been engaged in multiple business intelligence projects in the banking, finance, market research, and agriculture sectors. Moving into RPA in 2019, he has led multiple successful RPA projects in the finance, retail, banking, child welfare, oil and gas, telecommunication, and apparel sectors as a lead RPA solution architect. He also leads the RPA enablement and training fronts for Boundaryless Automation.

Rajaneesh Balakrishnan is the founder of 2AutomateAnything and has been a UiPath Advanced Certified RPA developer and UiPath MVP since 2020. He started his career as a quality analyst, progressed to become a software testing practice lead, and then became an RPA lead with immense automation tool implementation and multiple domain experience, including BFSI. Having over 15 years of experience in IT, he has successfully implemented RPA in UiPath for many reputable clients and has saved a significant amount of time and cost to organizations. He is also a passionate teacher, conducting various corporate and personalized training events and guiding the careers of many toward RPA in UiPath. He used to share educational content on YouTube, Udemy, and LinkedIn to support the UiPath community.

About the reviewers

After earning his master's degree in computer science, MukeshKala started his career as a software developer. He has over 8 years of professional experience and presently works as a senior RPA analyst, automating work in the banking and financial services industry.

A strong believer in the power of learning and knowledge sharing, Mukesh regularly attends UiPath community events, training and helping out beginners in technology. Mukesh was recognized as a UiPath MVP in 2021 and is behind the YouTube channel Tutorials by Mukesh Kala. In his leisure time, he loves to read books and speedcubing.

Andy Menon is a UiPath MVP for 2021. In his day job, he is an integrations engineer, with experience in integrating systems for the enterprise.

Andy is also the founder of RPA Vanguard and the namesake channel on YouTube, teaching RPA with real-world examples. His Udemy course on enterprise RPA is ranked amongst the top 20% of almost 100,000 courses on CourseMarks!

In his free time, Andy dabbles in hobby electronics, 3D printing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), experimenting with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and the ESP8266 family of microcontrollers.

Andy is also a Kindle-published author of the book Give Yourself IoT Super Powers.

He has published several of his hobby projects and designs online at Instructables and Thingiverse.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Importance of RPA

Chapter 1: The Automation Journey and Identifying Suitable Business Processes

Technical requirements

Understanding why automation is driving digital transformation

Implementing RPA in business

Payroll processing

Client information management

Invoice processing

Financial statement reconciliation

Call center automation

Loan processing

What can RPA automate?

Identifying processes for RPA

Understanding the stages of an RPA journey

Discovery

Build

Manage

Run

Engage

Measure

Knowing the RPA resources and responsibilities in an RPA project

RPA solution architect

RPA developer

BA

Implementation manager

Infrastructure engineer/manager

RPA support

Summary

Chapter 2: UiPath Ecosystem

Technical requirements

An overview of the UiPath Enterprise RPA platform

Discover

Build

Manage

Run

Engage

Setting up UiPath Studio

Exploring the different editions

Installing UiPath Studio

Exploring the UiPath Studio interface

The Designer panel

The Project panel

The Activities panel

The Properties panel

The Variables panel

The Argument panel

The Output panel

The Outline panel

Summary

Chapter 3: Introducing UiPath Orchestrator

Technical requirements

Creating your first cloud Orchestrator instance

Introducing the UiPath Cloud platform

Home screen and Resource Center

Actions

Apps

Processes

Data Service

AI Fabric

Admin

Introducing UiPath Orchestrator

Understanding the fundamental concepts of UiPath Orchestrator

Robots

Folders

Environment

Organizational units

Packages

Processes

Job

Triggers

Assets

Queues

Summary

Chapter 4: Create, Deploy, and Execute RPA Process on the UiPath Ecosystem

Technical requirements

Connecting a robot to Orchestrator

Creating a machine template in Orchestrator

Creating a Robot account

Creating your first RPA process

Creating your second RPA process

Prerequisite

Managing packages in Orchestrator

Using the latest version of the published package

Creating an automation process

Running the process from UiPath Assistant

Summary

Part 2: UiPath Studio

Chapter 5: Learning about Variables and Arguments

Technical requirements

Exploring variables

Properties of a variable

Creating variables in UiPath

Practicing variable creation

Exploring arguments

Properties of an argument

Creating arguments in UiPath

Practicing argument creation

Understanding data types

Summary

Chapter 6: Understanding Different Control Flows

Technical requirements

Overview of control flows

What are sequences?

Example of a sequence

What are flowcharts?

Example of a flowchart

Exploring decisions and types of decisions

Example of an If activity

Exploring loops and types of loops

Do While

While

For Each

Summary

Chapter 7: Manipulating Data Using UiPath

Technical requirements

Explaining the concept of data manipulation

Understanding string manipulation

Concat function

Contains function

Format function

Replace function

IndexOf function

SubString function

Split function

Join function

Understanding date and time manipulation

Understanding list manipulation

Declaring list variables

Adding items to a list

Merging list variables

Removing data in lists

Modifying data in lists

Understanding numeric calculations

Understanding dictionary manipulation

Initialization of dictionaries

Adding new items to a dictionary

Extracting data from Dictionary variables

Understanding pattern-based data extraction with regexes

Summary

Chapter 8: Exploring UiPath Selectors

Technical requirements

Tags and attributes of selectors

Selector Editor

UI Explorer

Types of selectors

Partial selectors

Full selectors

Dynamic selectors

Summary

Chapter 9: Learning the Uses of Data Tables and Exploring Excel Automation

Technical requirements

Exploring data tables

Creating and customizing data tables

Creating data tables

Creating and customizing data table variables

Interacting with Excel files

Excel Application Scope

Practicing Excel automation

Summary

Chapter 10: Exploring User Interfaces and User/Robot Interactions

Technical requirements

Introducing UI interactions

Foreground versus background automation

Activities

Properties

Methods of recording the GUI

Basic

Desktop

Web

When to use which types of recording?

Advanced UI Automation tools

Input actions and methods

Default or hardware events

SendWindowMessages

SimulateType

Output actions and methods

FullText

Native

OCR

Summary

Chapter 11: Automating PDF Data Extraction

Technical requirements

Creating robots that read PDF files

Extracting text from a PDF using the Extract PDF Text and Extract PDF with OCR activities

Extracting PDF text using Screen Scraping

Extracting single dynamic values from PDF files

Extracting individual values using the Anchor Base activity

Summary

Chapter 12: Exploring UiPath Email Automation

Technical requirements

Exploring email activities

Extracting email contents using Receive Messages

Automating sending email messages

Automating filter and download attachments from an email

Summary

Part 3: Use Case and Exam Preparation

Chapter 13: Debugging

Technical requirements

Understanding the debugging actions

Debug File

Stop

Step Into

Step Over

Step Out

Retry

Ignore

Restart

Break

Focus

Slow Step

Execution Trail

Highlight Elements

Continue on Exception

Open Logs

Working with the debugging panels

The Locals panel

The Watch panel

The Immediate panel

The Call Stack panel

The Breakpoints panel

Testing activities

Test Activity

Create Test Bench

Run to this Activity

Run from this Activity

Fixing the workflow

Summary

Chapter 14: Invoice Processing – Dispatcher

Technical requirements

The project overview

Setting up the project

Downloading the invoice

Reading the invoice

Extracting customer details

Extracting invoice particulars

Uploading the invoice data to the Orchestrator queues

Assembling Main.xaml

Summary

Chapter 15: Invoice Processing – Performer

Technical requirements

Project overview

Setting up the project

Starting the CRM

Processing the queue

Retrieving data from the transaction item

Entering the customer details

Entering the invoice particulars

Setting the transaction item status

Closing and opening the CRM

Assembling the Main.xaml file

Summary

Chapter 16: How to Prepare and What to Expect

Introducing the UiRPA and its target audience

Exam sections and topics

Exam sections

Exam topics

Question types and available practice tests

Exam details and exam registration

Exam details

Exam registration

Managing your certification

Summary

Chapter 17: Mock Exam 1

Chapter 18: Mock Exam 2

Appendix

Mock Paper 1 Answers

Mock Paper 2 Answers

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

UiPath is the most popular vendor in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) industry. If you're an RPA enthusiast or citizen developer who wants to succeed in the industry, achieving this certification can help you get accredited and ready for real-world challenges using UiPath.

UiPath Associate Certification Guide offers complete, up-to-date coverage of the UiPath RPA Associate certification exam to help you pass on the first attempt and get certified. The book is written in a clear, succinct way with self-assessment questions, quizzes with answers at the end of each lesson, exam tips, and mock exams with detailed answers and explanations. You'll start by getting to grips with the basic concepts of UiPath RPA, and then progress to an in-depth discussion of all the concepts required for Associate certification. Finally, you'll develop UiPath skills by gaining the required knowledge and implement these skills using sample business cases.

By the end of this UiPath book, you'll have covered everything you need to pass the exam, gained the knowledge you need to work on real-world case studies, and learned how to apply various concepts to build enterprise-level use cases.

Who this book is for

This RPA book is for those in technical and semi-technical roles such as citizen RPA developers, junior RPA developers, RPA developers, solution architects, business analysts, system administrators, college or university students and graduates, and UiPath and partner employees in pre-sales, services, support, and so on. If you are looking to get certified and meet the industry standard with the largest RPA vendor, then this book is for you.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Automation Journey and Identifying Suitable Business Processes, explores the importance of digital transformation and what factors drive it. The chapter also illustrates some RPA use cases in business, followed by the essential steps needed to identify a suitable automation process. Knowledge of these points is necessary before starting the RPA journey, as the topics addressed in this chapter give you an idea about the current state of process automation in the world, why it is important, and the critical resources involved.

Chapter 2, UiPath Ecosystem, provides an overview of each and every component of the UiPath Enterprise RPA platform for building simple to complex automation using UiPath Studio. Information about installing UiPath and setting up the UiPath Studio profile is also included in this chapter.

Chapter 3, Introducing UiPath Orchestrator, focuses on introducing the UiPath cloud platform and UiPath Orchestrator. UiPath Orchestrator plays a significant role in automation as it acts as the central controlling unit for all deployed robots and processes. Hence, it is crucial to understand the use and concepts of Orchestrator to manage your virtual workforce.

Chapter 4, Create, Deploy, and Execute RPA Process on the UiPath Ecosystem, provides step-by-step instructions to create a robot and establish a connection between the robot and UiPath Orchestrator. A sample automation project is created in UiPath Studio and then published to Orchestrator and executed by the Robots using the UiPath Assistant and attended automation.

Chapter 4, Learning about Variables and Arguments, looks at variables and arguments – two crucial components of any programming language. This chapter introduces you to how UiPath Studio works with variables and arguments, along with the most common data types used.

Chapter 6, Understanding Different Control Flows, covers control flows, which give more power to the robot to make crucial decisions while evaluating any business conditions. Various control flow activities, such as sequences, flowcharts, and loops, are explored using real-time examples for better understanding.

Chapter 7, Manipulating Data Using UiPath, focuses on data – the most critical resource in every organization. We need to modify, structure, format, and sort data to convert it into meaningful information. This chapter introduces different methods of manipulating data based on various data types.

Chapter 8, Exploring UiPath Selectors, looks at one of the major important topics when it comes to automation – selectors. Various selector types, such as full selector, partial selector, static selector, and dynamic selector are discussed with examples. Certain selector tools, such as UI Explorer and Selector Editor, are also used effectively for optimal usage of selector features.

Chapter 9, Learning the Uses of Data Tables and Exploring Excel Automation, homes in on Microsoft Excel – used almost every day to perform different functions. The data we process in Excel is more structured in a tabular form. In this chapter, we focus on learning how to automate Excel using UiPath, and how we can use data table variables to support our Excel automation.

Chapter 10, Exploring User Interfaces and User/Robot Interactions, looks at the automation of the user interface. Automation of UI elements such as windows, text fields, buttons, dropdowns, checkboxes, textboxes, and so on are discussed in this chapter. Various input actions and output actions are explored for effective automation. Some advanced UI automation such as image automation and text automation is also discussed.

Chapter 11, Automating PDF Data Extraction, covers PDF files – widely used across organizations to share information. This chapter focuses on learning how to automate PDF files using UiPath, and what activities are available to build a successful PDF automation.

Chapter 12, Exploring UiPath Email Automation, focuses on email – one of the most often used forms of digital communication by individuals and organizations. This chapter explores how to automatically send emails, receive emails, respond to emails, attach and download document attachments, and use defined message templates for emails. Various email activities and email features are explored with real-time examples for better clarity.

Chapter 13, Debugging, shows you how to debug a process that involves identifying and removing bugs from a given project to make it function correctly.

Chapter 14, Invoice Processing – Dispatcher, shows you how to design the dispatcher model of invoice processing to extract relevant details from the invoice and upload it to Orchestrator queues.

Chapter 15, Invoice Processing – Performer, shows you how to design the performer model of invoice processing by retrieving transaction items from Orchestrator queues and entering the invoice data onto the CRM.

Chapter 16, How to Prepare and What to Expect, helps you understand more about the exam and the certification credential.

Chapter 17, Mock Exam 1, is a practice test designed to help you prepare for the UiPath RPA Associate v1.0 exam. The practice test tests your knowledge and helps you get a feel for what the actual exam is like.

Chapter 18, Mock Exam 2, is a practice test designed to help you prepare for the UiPath RPA Associate v1.0 exam. The practice test tests your knowledge and helps you get a feel for what the actual exam is like.

To get the most out of this book

In this book, we use UiPath Studio, UiPath Orchestrator, and the UiPath Assistant, so ensure that you have the correct version installed.

You also need access to a few applications, as documented in the Technical requirements section of each chapter.

This book is compatible with the latest version of UiPath Studio, Orchestrator, and Assistant at the time of publishing (UiPath 202X.X).

The entire UiPath Associate Certification is based on the Classic Design experience of UiPath Studio. The Modern Design experience is not a part of the certification; hence, the book is also based on the Classic Design experience.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/UiPath-Associate-Certification-Guide. If there's an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801072731_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “Create the EmailAddress, Password, FirstName, LastName, and TermsAndConditions variables of the String type, and have the default values of EmailAddress, FirstName, and LastName.”

A block of code is set as follows:

“Hello ” + In_UserName + “, It's nice to see you. This is my first attempt to join two workflows.”

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “Click on the DataTable… button on the activity to open the Build Data Table screen. This screen can be used to add columns, rows, and change column properties.”

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

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Part 1: Importance of RPA

In this part, we will discuss the importance of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and how we can use it to support the automation journey. The main objective of this section is to better understand the concepts behind automation and what factors to consider to identify the best processes for it. This is the most important aspect of any automation project. Furthermore, we will also be focusing on understanding the entire ecosystem of UiPath to get started with deep-dive sessions.

In this part, we will cover the following chapters:

Chapter 1, The Automation Journey and Identifying Suitable Business ProcessesChapter 2, UiPath EcosystemChapter 3, Introducing UiPath OrchestratorChapter 4, Create, Deploy, and Execute RPA Process on the UiPath Ecosystem

Chapter 1: The Automation Journey and Identifying Suitable Business Processes

Digital transformation is one of the big buzzwords of the day, as robotic process automation (RPA) is currently transforming the way we work.

UiPath, the leading vendor in RPA, provides a state-of-the-art (SOTA) platform for process automation. The UiPath automation platform includes more than 20 different products addressing different automation requirements. Compared to other RPA tools, the SOTA capabilities that UiPath offers are one reason the company has become the market leader. In addition, UiPath offers a high-stakes certification program and a learning platform to help users harness the technology's power.

The UiPath Certified Professional program offers two certification exams that include an Advanced-level certification and an Associate-level certification. The Associate certification is suitable for junior RPA developers, solution architects, business analysts (BAs), and any business user who wants to pursue their career in RPA. The Advanced certification assesses a deeper level of RPA expertise and is designed for advanced developers. This book primarily focuses on providing a guide for the UiPath Associate certification by offering information on all required aspects of the exam.

In this chapter, we will explore the importance of digital transformation and which factors drive it. The chapter also illustrates some RPA use cases in business, followed by the essential steps needed to identify a suitable automation process. Knowing and understanding this information is essential before starting the RPA journey. The topics addressed in this chapter will give you an idea about the current state of process automation in the world, why it is important, and the critical resources involved.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Understanding why automation is driving the digital transformationImplementing RPA in businessWhat can RPA automate?Identifying processes for RPAUnderstanding the stages of an RPA journeyKnowing the RPA resources and responsibilities in an RPA project

Technical requirements

We will be covering theoretical content in this chapter, so there are no technical requirements.

Understanding why automation is driving digital transformation

The way people work has changed over many years. People used to do a lot of complex activities manually before the era of computers; however, with the introduction of computers, people slowly moved into a digital way of working. Today, every employee in this world interacts with some software applications to get their daily work done. All these actions still have us (that is, humans) as the central point of contact. Therefore, although we developed many software applications to take care of our day-to-day activities, we were still busy doing the same mundane and repetitive actions. Over time, work started piling up again and people got into a standard set of repetitive tasks to work like robots every day.

What is the solution to get out of these repetitive actions? RPA is the answer.

RPA is a technology that has evolved over many years. During the initial stages, there were automation workflows that were specific and dependent on an application, such as macros in Microsoft Excel. These automation scripts worked only within the application's scope and automated some time-consuming manual activities. This technology slowly evolved, and next, we were able to use tools that replicate actual user activity, which increased the capabilities of automation and increased the efficiency of the tasks performed. The software industry is a fast-growing industry, and you will come across many new technologies every day. The evolution of the latest technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Microsoft, Google, and other cognitive services—helped to widen robots' capabilities. Today, RPA combines multiple technologies such as workflow automation, ML, AI, intelligent character recognition (ICR), and so on.

RPA is a technology that automates tasks previously performed by humans in a digital interface. This software uses a computer robot to run applications the same way a person would do by interacting with the software user interface (UI). In addition to mimicking human interaction, RPA includes capabilities to consume background services such as application programming interfaces (APIs), databases, and many more to efficiently and accurately perform actions. RPA aims to replace repetitive tasks performed by humans with a digital workforce, to focus on more value-added activities in an organization. The software robot acts as your virtual assistant that will simply use your existing applications with no change in its existing infrastructure to perform its actions, documenting every step consistently for reporting and maintenance purposes. Such robots are capable of interacting with any software application, mimicking human actions.

Further, robots can work 24/7 without any errors and with minimal or no human intervention. RPA primarily targets highly manual, repetitive, rule-based processes with low exception rates and standard electronic readable input. These robots are considered virtual workforces where the business and the information technology (IT) teams manage their operations.

Not only is RPA a type of automation today, but it is also one of the most popular technologies available in the industry. RPA gained popularity because of its unique capabilities that made it the technology driving digital transformation. Some of those unique features of RPA are described in more detail here:

RPA is a non-invasive technology: Using RPA in your organization does not require any significant changes in the existing IT infrastructure or deep integrations with existing software applications. RPA is a technology capable of providing a reliable, fast, and cost-effective solution for automating processes.RPA is easy to scale: RPA implementations are usually not limited to a specific process. Further, automated business processes are also subject to change over time. Organizations that implement RPA usually look for ways to quickly scale up and scale down, depending on their future requirements. Hence, RPA solutions are built in a way where they can be easily scaled without much hassle.RPA is future-proof: The automation solutions built today use the technology that is available today. However, these robots are easily extensible to use the technology that would be available tomorrow.Customer expectations: Every day, the demand for services increases. However, to meet the increasing demand, organizations have to spend a lot on costly resources. Using RPA helps organizations reduce the cost they pay on new resources as RPA brings with it a virtual workforce's power to meet the growing demand quickly. Apart from that, the utilization of a virtual workforce increases the efficiency and the reliability of the process, as robots can deliver a high accuracy rate.Compliance and regulations: Every organization has to adhere to government rules and regulations. Meeting compliance and regulations requires a lot of manual effort as there any many tasks to be done. However, using a virtual workforce helps comply with rules and regulations as robots generate execution logs for compliance reporting.

Digital transformation is an essential topic today because RPA is changing the way we work in our personal lives and at work. These virtual workforces can quickly meet customer expectations, compliance, and regulatory requirements with future-proof technology. It is essential to know that robots' capabilities have expanded over time, enabling them to mimic almost all the actions performed on a digital platform. Such robots today are being used in multiple industries at a large scale.

Implementing RPA in business

RPA in business enables the creation of partnerships between robots and human workers, allowing humans to focus on what they can do best. Once RPA is implemented in an organization, the first question that surfaces is this: What will robots do and what will human workers do when their tasks are automated? Robots are best at handling tedious, repetitive, and high-volume tasks that are automated with a high efficiency and accuracy level. While robots take care of manual tasks, human workers can stop worrying about painful mundane activities and can instead focus on face-to-face discussions with people to develop strategic solutions to manage the business. In addition, human workers can focus on upskilling themselves to better fit management-level opportunities within the organization.

Someone may ask whether the introduction of RPA will cause them to lose their job. RPA is not a replacement for human workers. RPA only handles repetitive and mundane activities that people used to do before. As a result, the introduction of RPA eliminates some of the tasks that people did before, allowing people to have more free time to focus on strategic activities rather than repetitive operations. Although robots have AI to take care of specific actions, when it comes to strategic decisions, robots cannot replace the experience and complex reasoning abilities people have accumulated over many years.

Today, organizations in different industries have already implemented RPA to automate their processes. The following screenshot illustrates some of the functions already automated in other sectors:

Figure 1.1 – RPA examples in business

More processes are also suitable for automation in every industry, outside of what is included in the table shown in Figure 1.1.

The preceding list illustrates some of the most popular use cases for automation. Some of these processes are explained in detail next.

Payroll processing

Payroll is a typical process in any organization. Payroll refers to actions taken to keep track of employees' attendance and salary (or incentive payments), done every month. Payroll calculations are quite time-consuming as payroll is calculated based on different factors—for example, to derive the total monthly salary, the respective person should figure out the number of hours/days worked, number of paydays, taxes, bonuses, allowances, and more. Performing this check for each employee is complicated and highly manual.

Further, there are sometimes scenarios where employees do not correctly update their attendance. In such cases, the human resources (HR) representative has to contact them personally, either via email or a phone call, and request they update their attendance before performing this operation. RPA can automatically access HR applications or even manually maintained timesheets to capture the required information and complete payroll calculations. The process could also be further automated by automating actual bank transfers to transfer money to employee salary accounts.

Client information management

One of the main objectives of a company is to maintain a good client relationship. Maintaining a good relationship requires every record related to clients to be accessible in a central system, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) application. However, large-scale companies are spread across different geographies; hence, this makes it challenging to maintain a proper CRM system, and it requires a lot of data entry and frequent updates. Maintaining and updating such information in CRM applications is now performed by introducing RPA. Robots connected to various data sources capture the required information and easily update the CRM without any human intervention.

Invoice processing

Almost all organizations have to deal with documents, one of the most common types being invoices. Organizations receive invoices in different ways, such as soft copies or hard copies. Further, some of these invoices are handwritten, and some are computer-generated to add to the complexity. Data-entry operators have to extract the critical information from these invoices and update downstream applications to maintain financial records on time. Usually, organizations receive many invoices per day that require on-time data entry, verification from management, and system updates, all of which take many human hours. Introducing RPA to such processes provides many benefits in terms of data accuracy, efficiency, and reliability. Robots have the intelligence to extract the required critical information from invoices, perform verification based on a predefined set of rules, and update downstream applications with minimal human involvement.

Financial statement reconciliation

Financial statement reconciliation covers a significant portion of a finance team's operations, including matching orders, payments, losses, margins, and so on with internal accounts and financial statements that it receives at the end of the month. This is a very time-consuming task that involves many finance employees, as the accounts they work with go through a considerable number of transactions every day. To make sure financial statements are ready by the end of the month, the finance team works hard every day, completing and matching the financial statements of prior days to reduce the workload at the end of the month. Introducing RPA into such processes has shown a significant improvement. Robots can perform the same operation much faster and accurately for all reconciliations that the finance team manages.

Call center automation

Call centers perform a significant role in providing better and faster customer support to their valuable customers. Once a call center agent receives a customer call, they must perform initial checks to validate and recognize the customer before providing a service. Let's take the call center of a bank as an example. In that case, a customer may reach out for queries such as requesting account information, complaints about credit/debit card faults, enabling and disabling services, or something else. The call center agent must access multiple systems, retrieve the required information to perform initial validation, and provide the customer with an essential service. Performing the aforementioned actions takes time, and it takes attention away from the discussion the agent is having with the customer. The introduction of RPA to such processes allows a robot to understand the conversation between the two parties. Based on the understanding, the robot performs the required data retrieval from the systems. The robot finally shows the information onscreen automatically, allowing the agent to focus on the conversation to provide a better service.

Loan processing

Though banks and financial institutes use many software applications to perform their activities, some processes such as loan processing activities still require a lot of manual processing. Further, some financial organizations still use paper-based loan application forms. Once the customer fills out an application form and submits an application with any other required documents, the bank representative verifies the submitted data. The data verification usually includes validating the customer's personal information, cross-checking for other facilities obtained from other banks, repayment capabilities, and so on. Such checks are done by connecting to multiple external applications, which usually takes a long time. After the background checks, approval is carried out by the manager of the bank, based on specific criteria. The introduction of RPA for loan processing has brought a lot of benefits as most of these functions—such as reading the application form, performing background checks, calculating the grantable loan amount, and so on—are easily automated.

As well as the processes mentioned, there are many more exciting processes out in the world that robots take care of, allowing them to focus on more value-added activities.

Important Note

RPA in businesses allows employees to focus on more strategic initiatives while robots take care of transactional activities. This section of the chapter covered some of the commonly automated processes across multiple organizations around the world. Most business processes that require automation are complex and require many steps to be carried out. It is essential to understand all the activities that an RPA robot can perform to meet such complex business requirements. The simple actions performed by RPA robots sometimes require a combination of multiple technologies.

What can RPA automate?

As we discussed in the previous sections, RPA robots can mimic human interactions in a digital platform. Listed here are some of the very few actions that RPA robots can manage:

Automated reading, sending emails and attachmentsLogging in to web and enterprise applicationsMoving files and foldersCopying and pasting dataFilling out forms in web/desktop applicationsReading and writing data into databasesReporting across multiple systemsScraping data from the webInternet of Things (IoT) data collection and analysisPerforming simple-to-complex calculationsExtracting data from scanned and computer-generated documents that are structured or semi-structuredCollecting social media statistics and performing different analytics on themAutomated customer serviceStandard letter writing

Given the technological advancements and the expansion of RPA robots' capabilities, robots could perform many more functionalities other than those seen in the preceding list. Today, new technological improvements have taken RPA to another level, known as hyperautomation. The concept of hyperautomation covers many more functions such as AI skills, ML, long-running workflows, process mining, native integrations, and advanced analytics.

The use of RPA with AI capabilities such as natural language processing (NLP), ICR, optical character recognition (OCR), and AI computer vision enables robots to perform more advanced and complex tasks. The use of AI also allows robots to learn by themselves through ML. The ability to train robots over time helps improve their accuracy and reliability. Further, with the concept of long-running workflows, robots can work on more diverse business scenarios, with humans interacting with the robots at specific decision points seamlessly without worrying about what is happening before and after the decision point.

We, as humans, interact with software applications by simple mouse or keyboard actions. However, we perform these steps in different environments such as our desktop or laptop computers and remote or virtual machines (VMs). Today's technology has allowed RPA robots to mimic the same actions with higher precision, irrespective of the environment in which they are working. All activities performed by robots require monitoring to ensure the best utilization of the digital workforce. Also, monitoring allows administrators to track and monitor execution times and failures and track the idle times of robots. Today's data analytics power provides precise tracking and analysis of such data to calculate the return on investment (ROI), utilization, robot idle times, and so on. Hyperautomation is a concept that not only covers the development and monitoring of robots but also enables organizations to precisely monitor and analyze the business process itself. Business process mining is a concept that hyperautomation offers to explore the process and identify the nature of the process, exceptions, different methods of performing the procedure, steps carried out, bottlenecks, and automation possibilities.

RPA today is not just one technology—it is a combination of multiple technologies such as AI, ML, NLP, ICR, and much more. The combination allows RPA robots to perform various simple-to-complex activities without human intervention. RPA has to be applied wisely to business processes, and there are many factors to consider to identify a business process for automation.

Identifying processes for RPA

There are a few main characteristics we look at when deciding the automation potential of a process. At a high level, we could categorize these characteristics into two main segments, as follows:

Process fitnessAutomation complexity

A few factors are involved in the process of calculating the fitness of a process for automation. The following table illustrates the factors considered in identifying the fitness of a process:

Figure 1.2 – Process fitness factors in identifying a process for automation

A business process should meet all the factors listed in Figure 1.2 to qualify for automation. In addition to the process fitness factors, the automation complexity is also one crucial aspect of identifying a suitable automation process. The following screenshot illustrates the required characteristics to consider to determine the process automation complexity:

Figure 1.3 – Process complexity factors in identifying a process for automation

Deciding on the automation suitability of a process requires consideration of all the factors discussed. The process is mapped into a process assessment matrix based on the results of the factors discussed to compare and identify the best process. The following diagram illustrates a process assessment matrix that each process is mapped onto after assessment. Each process is assessed based on the complexity and benefits it generates after automation and is mapped into the matrix's respective box. The matrix shown here plays a significant role in prioritizing and categorizing the assessed processes:

Figure 1.4 – Process assessment matrix

Having identified which bucket the process falls into, the organization can prioritize the automation initiatives based on the previous matrix. Organizations can prioritize quick-win processes in the initial stages, as those are less complicated and provide the highest benefits within a shorter period. Low-hanging fruits are the best to start off with and demonstrate how automation improved the way people work. The processes that fall into the long-term improvements bucket are usually ignored in automation since they do not offer a significant advantage compared to the effort required. The processes that fall into the low-hanging fruits and must-do improvements categories get prioritized for RPA based on the organization's strategic plans. Additionally, the processes that fall into the must-do improvements category usually require standardization to improve the process. The improved processes are assessed again and prioritized based on the bucket they fall into after the assessment.

It is not a good practice to automate every process in the organization or the department. It is important to identify the benefits gained, efforts and resources needed, and the suitability of the process itself for automation before implementing RPA. The inability to perform process assessment and standardization where necessary may lead to more inefficiencies and high costs after applying RPA without a proper strategy. Hence, the following assessment strategy is crucial in any RPA project.

Understanding the stages of an RPA journey

Analyzing the processes and correctly categorizing them can result in obtaining quick wins in RPA projects; however, not all functions are quick wins. To achieve long-term effects from these projects, the organization must have the proper mindset, proper resources, and reasonable goals to get the best outcome. Hence, every RPA project requires the involvement of multiple essential resources during different stages of the journey.

Every RPA project needs to go through six stages during its automation journey. These stages are depicted in the following diagram:

Figure 1.5 – RPA journey

The following sections describe each stage in more detail.

Discovery

Discovery is the initial phase of any RPA project. This phase's primary goal is to spread the word about automation within the organization and find the most suitable process candidates for automation. There are two approaches to perform discovery, as follows:

The organization already knows the process that requires automation.Discover all possible candidate processes for automation.

If the organization does know the process that requires automation, the scope of the discovery phase will be limited to the already identified processes. Critical resources in the RPA team, such as BAs and RPA solution architects, can sit together with the business team to understand the process in detail. The RPA experts and the business teams conduct multiple requirement-gathering sessions to capture all the information needed to understand the process. The teams' tasks include process assessment and detailed mapping of the as-is process. The BAs draw the as-is process in detail, explaining all the subprocesses involved. The process map helps to discover standardization requirements and the steps that require automation. The RPA team documents all the information and presents two standard documents, as outlined here:

Process definition document (PDD): This contains details about the as-is process and how it is standardized and automated. Solution design document (SDD): This contains all the technical details of the automated solution.

However, if the organization does not have a specific process that requires automation, it requires a thorough analysis of all the available functions to identify possible candidates. In such scenarios, the RPA experts such as BAs and solution architects sit together with all the critical business people to understand the existing processes and identify suitable automation opportunities. The team follows the same steps as those explained previously to carry out the assessment. All the analyzed processes are documented and put into the assessment matrix discussed in the previous section. Once the assessment matrix is updated, the most important and the most suitable business processes are selected based on different factors such as cost, ROI, and so on. The rest of the functions are kept in the automation pipeline to keep track of the identified processes that require automation over the next couple of months. All these processes go through some level of standardization and governance procedures to improve the process before automating.

Build

Development of the automation opportunities identified in the discovery phase takes place in the build phase. There are two different approaches to carry out the development of the automation project, as outlined here:

Center of Excellence (CoE)-driven: The core development team consists of RPA experts such as RPA solution architects, RPA developers, and experienced BAs who carry out discovering and developing automation solutions. The RPA team works with the business users throughout the automation journey to ensure successful delivery.Democratized approach: With this approach, business users carry out the development by themselves. Not all business users may have technical experience, hence they are enabled to perform actions using tools that do not require specialized or programming knowledge.

Once development is complete, all the automation solutions will undergo rigorous testing to ensure efficiency, accuracy, reliability, and that coding meets development standards and best practices.

Manage

The automation solutions that are built are required to be deployed and updated from time to time. It is vital to keep track of each deployment and update carried out for the project for many reasons, such as the following:

Keeping track of the changes carried outComparing different versions when needed for bug fixingRolling back to previous versions in an emergencyMonitoring the usage of automation solutions createdAccessing management of the solutions

Run

The run stage is crucial in every automation project. Robots execute the solutions deployed in this stage. The execution and allocation of robots are configured based on organizational requirements. Depending on the organization's needs, the robots execute the processes developed in the user's machine or virtual environments without human intervention.

Engage

Every business process includes steps that require decision-making by the users who perform it. Some of these decisions are rule-based, but some require expertise and user experience (UX). In such scenarios, the robot and the user must work together to perform certain steps while the robot takes care of the most complex activities. This concept is called "human in the loop", whereby robots assign tasks for the user, and once the user completes these, the robot takes over control of the rest of the activities.

Measure

Introducing RPA makes an impact within the organization. The effect created requires measurement to understand how to scale RPA initiatives. These measures provide insights into the automation outcomes and the impact made to align the RPA strategy to achieve organizational goals.

Similar to any software development project, RPA projects also have a life cycle. Every RPA project must go through a mandatory set of steps during its life cycle to ensure efficient and worthy delivery. Each stage of the life cycle requires different resources. The following section explains the resources needed during an RPA project and the responsibilities of each resource.

Knowing the RPA resources and responsibilities in an RPA project

As we discuss the different phases of the RPA journey, we also encounter many experts in various projects. These experts perform several tasks depending on their expertise to ensure high-quality and on-time delivery of RPA projects, and we'll now look at them in more detail.

RPA solution architect

The solution architect is in charge of designing the RPA solution's architecture for the proposed business process. The solution architect works alongside the BA to capture the requirement and translate the identified business scenario into a technical solution. The solution architect transfers the technical architecture knowledge to the BA, the business users, and the RPA developers to finalize the solution before development. The solution architect also acts as the development team lead (but does not perform code development) to ensure code quality and standards. The architect is involved from the first stage of the process until the solution is accepted and deployed.

RPA developer

The RPA developer is