Month: October 2020

Thinking like a robot

Marky Roden PSC, RPA, UI Flows

In this article we will look at what it takes to plan and think like a robot. Being able to articulate how a Robot Process Automation should work, document a process and execute on a sound implementation plan, requires us to think, most times, not like a human.

Thinking like a robot
People are wonderfully complex and talented things, but they are not as good at documenting their processes as they think. At the same time we should also acknowledge and amaze at how efficient most of are at doing our jobs. Working with clients and RPA we often find people who would say – well I just look at the sheet and I know it is X, Y or Z. At my initial glance my reaction is wow……

The Subject Matter Expert has been repetitively looking at this sheet and others like it, ever day, for years…. and they just know by instinct. Unfortunately robots are not instinctual and they need to be written in very strict methodical steps which make the most sense.

If I ask you how do you open an excel file on your computer, five different people would give five different answers.

  • My dad clicks on the windows icon, scrolls down to the office folder, opens the folder and then clicks on the excel icon and opens Excel
  • My Kid Clicks Windows key, waits for the search box, Hits E, Hits C Hits, C and because he is presented with Excel as the main option hits Enter and opens Excel.

A robot on the other hand would like to know exactly where Excel lives within the operating system and just opens it directly. Robots need predictability and both methods of my dad and kid are dependent on outside variables not changing.

For example if someone installed a program called Excalibur on my kids computer it might come up alphabetically before Excel and if a windows upgrade moved my dad’s icon he would surely have conniptions and declare someone has stolen Excel.

Either way there is an element of chance in the process and the process is therefore not as predictable and repeatable as we would like.

Rules Based
Robot Process Automation is intrinsically something which has to be rules based and devoid of chance or possibility.

Getting people to consider their processes as being “chance based” or “less than optimal” is something to get used to. It’s called consulting.

Creating your first UI Flow

Marky Roden Power Automate, RPA, UI Flows , , ,

In this article we will look how to simply copy data from a cell in excel into a word document. It is short an simple, but nicely highlights the concept and the ability to automate moving data from one place to another.

Introduction
Robot Process Automation (RPA) and Microsoft’s new UI Flow capability are allowing Microsoft 365 users to automate processes which were previously though to be out of reach.

To create UI Flows you must have access to Microsoft 365 and a Power Automate license. If you don’t then you can always sign up for the free Office 365 developer account and you can have your own me.sharepoint.com tenant allocated for learning and exploration.

Installing Power Automate Desktop
From within Power Automate you can find the UI Flows under the New icon at the top

Select Power Automate Desktop

Select a name and Launch App – If you do not have it installed you will be prompted to download and install it

A simple test excel sheet
I created an excel file locally and left a simple message inside the message is in cell d4. The file is located at C:\Users\mroden\Desktop\temp\RPATest\RPATest.xslx

Power Automate Desktop
Back in the desktop tool I am going to start to build the robot. There are many different ways to achieve the same thing. being efficient is one thing that is important for robots, but that’s for another day. These are the steps we want to automate the moving of text in an excel cell to a word document.

  • Open the Excel file
  • Get the current Sheet
  • Go to Cell D4
  • Copy the Cell
  • Open Word
  • Execute a Paste.

So let’s start. Within Power Automate Desktop we are able to find the open to “Launch Excel” and from the resulting dialog select the path to the excel file we want to open.

We then add steps to Read from Excel worksheet – selecting and copying cell D4.

NOTE – the variable produced is “ExcelData” we will use this later once word is opened.

We are going to be good robot writers and now close the excel sheet again so that we don’t leave copies of excel all over the place.

Next we will open word and paste the ExcelData variable into the new book. We will do this by running a program and opening a test word document (blank) file – RPATest.docx.

Once open we then have to click into the window to make it active.

We do this using a Click UI action. We have to have the word document first open so that we can direct the Desktop app to pick where to click.

We select to add a new UI element and then the mouse highlights different aspects of the applications open. We mouse over the Word document and select CTRL-Click to record

The final step is to then send the text of the copied Excel cell back to the Word document. We can do this using SendKeys, and then selecting the ExcelData variable to be sent.

The final bot is finished and while it is simple it demonstrates how we can integrate multiple applications without having to write any code.

Running the robot…..we get this…. 🙂 You will see from the video that the variables are being stored and shown on the screen.

Conclusion
In this article we have seen how to install Power Automate Desktop and create out first simple bot. It’s takes a little time to get used to the interface but is pretty simple and worth having a go at yourself.

NOTE – This article is written in October 2020 and the content is likely to change over time as the platform evolves. It is written to help people wanting to get started with the preview version of Power Automate Desktop

Power Automate – UI flows

Marky Roden Just Marky , ,

Power Automate acts like the glue holding together the interconnected web of Microsoft 365 and the broader partner eco-system. With the ability to trigger a “Flow” from hundreds of events on the platform, to perform thousands of potential actions, Power Automate is a compelling investment for companies looking seriously at no/low-code application integration.

Microsoft have extended Power Automate beyond the platform and onto the desktop with the addition of the UI Flows capability. Robot Process Automation (RPA) is the new kid on the block for companies trying to squeeze even more automation and productivity out of what’s left of their business processes.

For companies who are automating their business processes on the Microsoft 365 platform, adding RPA to the mix makes a lot of sense. Automating modern API based platforms to work together has been the theme of cloud platform delivery for years now. But it has never been able to achieve full integration with the manual repetitive processes which can consume many companies.

UI Flows are only in preview, but already Microsoft has released a significant capability for building Robots, the Power Automate Desktop. Using this tool anyone can start to build automation into their daily business processes.

My hope it to be able to start to write about Power Automate Desktop, learn about it’s features and create some compelling examples for our customers so that when it is finally released we will be able to provide the quality consulting that I know our customers have come to love about working with PSC………

Robot Process Automation

Marky Roden Just Marky

Robot Process Automation (RPA) as a technology group enables the automation of repetitive manual human tasks.

Imagine how much easier Excel Macros make an accounting process whereby a multi-stage process can be automated with the push of a button. Now imagine a multi-stage process where a human has to take data from Excel, or worse a paper document, and move it to another application such as a web site. RPA can do that for you.

– RPA can do that –

In an idea world where every system has a beautifully architected API integration layer, every system would be able to easily and quickly talk to every other system. In reality this is far from the case and a sleek and effective integration is either impossible or prohibitively expensive. RPA can do that for you.

Examples
Many companies have to go through a process of converting paper based data to electronic format. Whether it is incoming invoices, logistics documentation or even waste disposal profiles, there are thousands of people who’s role is to type data from paper into a website.

Through a relatively simple process of connecting the dots, a Robot can be configured to be responsible for:

  • Collecting the data from an Automated OCR process
  • Open a web browser and log into the ERP system
  • Map the data from the form to fields on a web form
  • Submit the web form

Reducing Risk
RPA Robots aren’t error prone. Robots will do exactly what is expected of them. In an business, mistakes cost money and in especially heavily regulated environments the consequences of putting the wrong value in fields can be significant.

Increasing productivity for everyone
Robots are also quicker than people, reducing the time taken for process completion. This then also frees up the people to be able to work in other areas of a business and bring their experience to bear in other ways.

There are many vendors in the RPA space, and Microsoft has entered the foray by extending their Microsoft 365 Power Automate platform to include UI-Flows. https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/ui-flows/ I am going to write about Power Automate and ui-flows specifically as I believe it will be a significant game changer for our client in the future.