Robotic Process Automation Projects

Robotic Process Automation Projects

by Nandan Mullakara, Arun Kumar Asokan
Released May 2020
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781839217357

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Book description

Learn RPA by building business solutions such as ERP and CRM automation, software robots, and intelligent process automation from scratch

Key Features

  • Use popular RPA tools Automation Anywhere A2019 and UiPath, for real-world task automation
  • Build automation solutions for domains such as System Administration, Finance, HR, Supply Chain, and Customer Relations
  • Extend your RPA capabilities by implementing Intelligent process automation with APIs and AI

Book Description

Robotic Process automation helps businesses to automate monotonous tasks that can be performed by machines.

This project-based guide will help you progress through easy to more advanced RPA projects. You'll learn the principles of RPA and how to architect solutions to meet the demands of business automation, along with exploring the most popular RPA tools - UiPath and Automation Anywhere. In the first part, you'll learn how to use UiPath by building a simple helpdesk ticket system. You'll then automate CRM systems by integrating Excel data with UiPath. After this, the book will guide you through building an AI-based social media moderator using Google Cloud Vision API. In the second part, you'll learn about Automation Anywhere's latest Cloud RPA platform (A2019) by creating projects such as an automated ERP administration system, an AI bot for order and invoice processing, and an automated emergency notification system for employees. Later, you'll get hands-on with advanced RPA tasks such as invoking APIs, before covering complex concepts such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in automation to take your understanding of RPA to the next level.

By the end of the book, you'll have a solid foundation in RPA with experience in building real-world projects.

What you will learn

  • Explore RPA principles, techniques, and tools using an example-driven approach
  • Understand the basics of UiPath by building a helpdesk ticket generation system
  • Automate read and write operations from Excel in a CRM system using UiPath
  • Build an AI-based social media moderator platform using Google Cloud Vision API with UiPath
  • Explore how to use Automation Anywhere by building a simple sales order processing system
  • Build an automated employee emergency reporting system using Automation Anywhere
  • Test your knowledge of building an automated workflow through fun exercises

Who this book is for

This RPA book is for enterprise application developers, software developers, business analysts, or any professional who wants to implement RPA across various domains of the business. The book assumes some understanding of enterprise systems. Computer programming experience will also be beneficial.

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright and Credits
    1. Robotic Process Automation Projects
  3. Dedication
  4. Contributors
    1. About the authors
    2. About the reviewer
    3. Packt is searching for authors like you
  5. About Packt
    1. Why subscribe?
  6. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
    4. Download the example code files
    5. Code in Action
    6. Conventions used
    7. Get in touch
    8. Reviews
  7. Getting Started with Robotic Process Automation
    1. Technical requirements
    2. What is RPA? 
    3. A quick definition
    4. Benefits of RPA
    5. Types of RPA
    6. Attended automation
    7. Unattended automation
    8. Our RPA tools – UiPath and Automation Anywhere
    9. UiPath 
    10. UiPath Studio
    11. UiPath Orchestrator
    12. UiPath Robot
    13. UiPath – an integrated view
    14. Automation Anywhere
    15. Enterprise Control Room
    16. Build
    17. Manage
    18. Analyze
    19. IQ Bot
    20. Our projects 
    21. Installation and setup
    22. Installing UiPath
    23. UiPath Studio and Robot
    24. Configuring Automation Anywhere
    25. Registration and setup
    26. Installing the bot agent and verifying the setup
    27. Summary
  8. Help Desk Ticket Generation
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview
    3. Project detail
    4. Project groundwork
    5. Creating project folders
    6. Creating an Excel sheet with ticket data
    7. Registering and logging in to Zoho Desk
    8. Main workflow
    9. Project setup
    10. Configuring the initial part of the main workflow
    11. Reading from Excel
    12. Exception handling
    13. Invoking the Excel workflow from Main
    14. Creating a support ticket in the Zoho Desk ticketing system
    15. Recording ticket creation activities
    16. Configuring the recorded activities
    17. Validating successful ticket creation
    18. Handling exceptions
    19. Putting it all together
    20. Testing the automation
    21. Project enhancements 
    22. Summary
  9. CRM Automation
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview
    3. Project details
    4. CRM preparation
    5. Setting up the project
    6. Extracting the customer list from CRM
    7. Preparing the browser
    8. Web recording
    9. Data scraping
    10. Using a Catch block for the Get Customer List Sequence
    11. Looking up customer information
    12. Creating a data table
    13. Looping and creating company URLs
    14. Extracting company details from Crunchbase.com
    15. Invoking the RequestCustomerDetails workflow from the Main workflow
    16. Updating the CRM with customer information
    17. Looping through the data table and updating the CRM
    18. Summary
  10. Moderating Social Media Using AI
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview
    3. Project detail
    4. Getting started with the project
    5. Project groundwork
    6. Reading parameters from the configuration file
    7. Passing the configuration parameters to the main workflow
    8. Reading image files from the input folder and creating a list
    9. Reading files in the input folder
    10. Reading and writing the image path list to the ImageDetails Excel file
    11. Handling exceptions for the BuildExcelList workflow
    12. Testing the BuildExcelList workflow
    13. Setting up the Google Cloud Vision API's key and credentials
    14. Setting up the Google Cloud Vision API services
    15. Setting up a credential manager
    16. Reading credentials from Windows Credential Manager
    17. Looping through images and invoking the Google Cloud Vision API
    18. Installing the UiPath GoogleVision package from UiPath Go!
    19. Adding SafeSearch to the main workflow
    20. Updating the image sheet with the API results
    21. Passing the parameters and invoking SafeSearch 
    22. Moving processed images to the Output folder 
    23. Testing the automation 
    24. Summary
  11. Purchase Order Processing with UiPath ReFramework
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview
    3. Robotic Enterprise Framework (ReFramework)
    4. Project detail
    5. Project groundwork
    6. Creating the PO spreadsheet
    7. Setting up Apptivo
    8. Getting started with the project
    9. Purchase order Dispatcher
    10. Purchase order Performer
    11. Init state changes
    12. Updating the InitAllApplications workflow
    13. Invoking the InitAllApplications workflow
    14. Process state changes
    15. Attaching and activating the PO application
    16. Creating the POs
    17. Preparing to input PO data
    18. Inputting the PO data
    19. Handling PO entry errors 
    20. Capturing the PO
    21. Updating the PO in the spreadsheet
    22. Testing the Automation
    23. Summary
  12. Completing an RPA Challenge
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project details
    3. Project groundwork
    4. Completing the challenge with UiPath
    5. Getting started with the UiPath project
    6. Creating the challenge automation
    7. Reading the RPA challenge Excel data
    8. Inputting data into the RPA challenge forms
    9. Testing the UiPath challenge automation
    10. Recapping the UiPath projects
    11. Automation Anywhere A2019
    12. Completing the challenge with Automation Anywhere
    13. Getting started with the Automation Anywhere control room
    14. Creating the RPA challenge automation bot
    15. Reading the RPA challenge Excel data
    16. Preparing the RPA challenge website for input
    17. Looping through each row and column
    18. Iterating through each column and reading headers
    19. Mapping and inputting the challenge data to the website
    20. Testing the Automation Anywhere challenge automation 
    21. Summary
  13. Sales Order Processing
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview 
    3. Project details
    4. Project groundwork
    5. Creating the Parent bot 
    6. Exception handling 
    7. Opening and reading Excel data
    8. Creating the Child bot for SO processing
    9. Using the recorder to capture SO creation
    10. Filling in customer details for an SO
    11. Filling in item details for an SO
    12. Passing the SO number 
    13. Invoking the Child bot and updating the Excel sheet 
    14. Looping through rows and invoking the Child bot
    15. Updating Excel with the SO number
    16. Moving the Excel file to the Processed folder
    17. Testing the automation
    18. Summary
  14. ERP User Administration
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview 
    3. Project detail
    4. Project groundwork
    5. Creating a user request PDF
    6. Signing up for Saas application 
    7. Opening the Automation Anywhere A2019 control room
    8. Creating the Parent bot
    9. Exception handling 
    10. Extracting user details from PDF
    11. Assigning user data to row variables
    12. Extracting user details with String operations
    13. Validating email addresses with regular expressions
    14. Creating the Child bot for new user creation
    15. Creating a new user in Freshsales
    16. Handling form validation errors
    17. Handling exceptions 
    18. Invoking the Child bot and creating the new user
    19. Moving the PDF to the Processed folder on success
    20. Notifying the user in case of insufficient data
    21. Logging errors and sending email notifications
    22. Triggers
    23. Testing the automation
    24. Summary
  15. Employee Emergency Notifications
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Project overview 
    3. Twilio
    4. Project details
    5. Project groundwork
    6. Creating the employee spreadsheet 
    7. Signing up for Twilio
    8. Opening the Automation Anywhere A2019 Control Room
    9. Creating a Child bot to send messages
    10. Exception handling 
    11. Saving Twilio credentials
    12. Adding variables for the Child bot
    13. Invoking the Twilio REST post method
    14. Returning a response flag to the Parent bot
    15. Unit testing the Child bot
    16. Creating the Parent bot
    17. Initializing Twilio and opening the employee Excel file
    18. Looping through the employee list and sending text messages 
    19. Checking and logging responses from the Child bot
    20. Exception handling in the Parent bot
    21. Testing the automation
    22. Summary
  16. Using AI and RPA for Invoice Processing
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Intelligent document processing
    3. UiPath – Document Understanding
    4. Automation Anywhere – IQ Bot
    5. Project overview 
    6. Project details
    7. Project groundwork
    8. Opening the Automation Anywhere A2019 Control Room
    9. Downloading sample invoices
    10. Creating the IQ Bot learning instance 
    11. Setting up the initial IQ Bot learning instance
    12. Reviewing and updating field mappings
    13. Uploading invoices to IQ Bot 
    14. Downloading structured data from IQ Bot
    15. Checking the automation
    16. Automation Anywhere projects – recap
    17. Summary
  17. Appendix A and B for UiPath
    1. Appendix A – Connecting UiPath Robot to Orchestrator
    2. Getting started
    3. Creating a Standard Robot in Orchestrator
    4. Adding an environment for the Bot
    5. Connecting Orchestrator to the local Robot
    6. Appendix B – Publishing to Orchestrator
    7. Publishing to Orchestrator
    8. Creating a new process
    9. Running the process
    10. Scheduling the process
  18. Appendix: Looking Forward and Next Steps
    1. Future of RPA
    2. Hyperautomation
    3. Future technologies and trends
    4. Artificial intelligence (AI)
    5. Document processing
    6. Conversational AI
    7. Process mining and process discovery
    8. RPA as a service
    9. RPA marketplaces
    10. Conclusion
  19. Other Books You May Enjoy
    1. Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Product information

  • Title: Robotic Process Automation Projects
  • Author(s): Nandan Mullakara, Arun Kumar Asokan
  • Release date: May 2020
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781839217357