Learning Robotic Process Automation

Create Software robots and automate business processes with the leading RPA tool - UiPath

Alok Mani Tripathi

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BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: What is Robotic Process Automation? 7 Scope and techniques of automation 8

What should be automated? 8 What can be automated? 9 Techniques of automation 9

Robotic process automation 10 What can RPA do? 12 Benefits of RPA 12 Components of RPA 16

Recorder 16 Development studio 17 Extensions and plugins 17 Bot runner 17 Control center 17

RPA platforms 18 Automation Anywhere 18 UiPath 19 Blue Prism 19 WorkFusion 20 Thoughtonomy 20 KOFAX 21

About UiPath 21 UiPath Studio 22 UiPath Robot 22 UiPath Orchestrator 22

The future of automation 22 Summary 23

Chapter 2: Record and Play 25 UiPath stack 25

UiPath Studio 26 UiPath Robot 27

Types of Robots 27 UiPath Orchestrator 28

Downloading and installing UiPath Studio 29 Learning UiPath Studio 34

Projects 34 The user interface 36

The Ribbon 38

Table of Contents

The Quick Access Toolbar Designer panel Properties panel Activities panel Project panel Outline panel Output panel Library panel Variable panel Argument

Task recorder Advanced Ul interactions

Input methods Output methods

Step-by-step examples using the recorder Emptying trash in Gmail Emptying Recycle Bin

Summary

Chapter 3: Sequence, Flowchart, and Control Flow Sequencing the workflow

What is a Sequence? Activities

Using activities with workflows What Flowcharts are and when to use them

Control flow, various types of loops, and decision making The Assign activity The Delay activity

Example The Break activity

Example The While activity

Example The Do while activity

Example The For each activity

Example The If activity The Switch activity

Example Step-by-step example using Sequence and Flowchart

How to use a Sequence How to use a Flowchart

Step-by-step example using Sequence and Control flow Summary

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Chapter 4: Data Manipulation 107

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Variables and scope Collections Arguments - Purpose and use Data table usage with examples

Building a data table Building a data table using data scraping (dynamically)

Clipboard management File operation with step-by-step example

Read cell Write cell Read range Write range Append range

CSV/Excel to data table and vice versa (with a step-by-step example)

Reading an Excel file and creating a data table by using data from the Excel file Creating a data table and then writing all its data to an Excel file

Summary

Chapter 5: Taking Control of the Controls Finding and attaching windows

Implementing the Attach Window activity Finding the control

Anchor base Element Exists Element scope Find children Find element Find relative element Get ancestor Indicate on screen

Techniques for waiting for a control Wait Element Vanish Wait Image Vanish Wait attribute

Act on controls - mouse and keyboard activities Mouse activities

The Click activity The Double-click activity The Hover activity

Keyboard activities Send hotkey Type into activity Type secure text

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Table of Contents

Working with UiExplorer 176 Handling events 17g

Element triggering events 179 Click trigger 179 Key press trigger 180

Image triggering events 181 System triggering events 182

Hotkey trigger 182 Mouse trigger 182 System trigger 182

Revisit recorder 183 Basic recording 183 Desktop recording 184 Web recording 185 Citrix 189

Screen Scraping 190 When to use OCR 192 Types of OCR available 194 How to use OCR 195 Avoiding typical failure points 198

Selectors 198 Scope of the variable 199 Delay activity 199 Element Exists 199

Try/Catch 200 toString 200

Summary 200

Chapter 6: Tame that Application with Plugins and Extensions 201 Terminal plugin 202 SAP automation 203

How SAP Automation affects data entry jobs 205 Examples where SAP automation is used commonly 205

Java plugin 206 Why are we using the Java plugin with UiPath Studio? 206

Citrix automation 207 How does the Citrix environment work? 210

Mail plugin 214 PDF plugin 216 Web integration 218 Excel and Word plugins 221

Excel plugin 221 Word plugin 222

Credential management 224

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Extensions - Java, Chrome, Firefox, and Silverlight 225 Summary 227

Chapter 7: Handling User Events and Assistant Bots 22g What are assistant bots? 230 Monitoring system event triggers 233

Hotkey trigger 233 Mouse trigger 234 System trigger 234

Monitoring image and element triggers 235 An example of monitoring email 236 Example of monitoring a copying event and blocking it 246

Launching an assistant bot on a keyboard event 250 Summary 253

Chapter 8: Exception Handling, Debugging, and Logging 255 Exception handling 255 Common exceptions and ways to handle them 261

Unavailability of Ul element 262 Handling runtime exceptions 263 Orbit reference not set to the instant of an object 263 Index was outside the bounds of an array. Index out of the range 263 Image not found in the provided timeout 264 Click Generic error - cannot use Ul CONTROL API on this Ul node please use Ul Hardware ELEMENTS method 265

Logging and taking Screenshots 265 Client logging 265 Server logging 266

Debugging techniques 266 Setting breakpoints 268 Slow step 270 Highlighting 270 Break 271

Collecting crash dumps 272 Enabling crash dumps 273 Disabling crash dumps 273

Error reporting 273 Enterprise Edition customers 274 Community Edition users 274

Summary 275

Chapter 9: Managing and Maintaining the Code 277 Project organization 278

Picking an appropriate layout for each workflow 278 Blank 279

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Simple process 280 Agent process improvement 280 Transactional business process 281

Breaking the process into smaller parts 283 Using exception handling 284 Making your workflow readable 284 Keeping it clean 285

Nesting workf lows 285 How to nest a workflow inside a single workflow 286

Reusability of workf lows 287 Invoke workflow file 288 Templates 289

Adding a workflow as a template 289 Commenting techniques 290 State Machine 291 When to use Flowcharts, State Machines, or Sequences 294 Using config files and examples of a config file 296 Integrating a TFS server 303 Summary 303

Chapter 10: Deploying and Maintaining the Bot 305 Publishing using publish utility 305

How to publish a workflow in UiPath 306 Writing/editing the published package info into the json file 308

Overview of Orchestration Server 309 Queues 311 Assets 312 Process 314

Deploying a process 316 Using Orchestration Server to control bots 317

Robot statuses 318 Editing the Robot 318 Deleting the Robot 319 Displaying logs for a Robot 319

Using Orchestration Server to deploy bots 320 Creating a provision Robot from the Orchestrator 320

Connecting a Robot to Orchestrator 322 Deploy the Robot to Orchestrator 324

License management 328 Activating and uploading a license to Orchestrator 328

Publishing and managing updates 330 Packages 330 Managing packages 332

Uploading packages 332 Deleting packages 333

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Summary 334

Other Books You May Enjoy 335

Index 339

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