Free RPA (Robot Process Automation) programs

At this point, not enough video’s to show how it can be useful. Come back in the future.

What is RPA?

I’m not sure if you need a listener or if you just run an automation when you need something to happen. I think the autonomy is the key here. It acts when certain events happen. So I’d put Automation Workshopinto this category.

There is then the next step for intelligent automation that can have if/else/ etc and also learn and improve with ML or AI. I’ll not bother with that at present.

Long Term Bots

I think the idea of RPA is that something sits in the background and when triggered goes through all the steps in the workflow to deliver a consistent output. So the thinking is different from how I’m using AutoHotKeys as a day to day shortcut tool to automate daily tasks, this on the other hand is a more complex process in that it tries to do a whole workflow without human intervention, or at least as much as is possible. So a bigger picture workflow. Like responding to customer queries or processing invoices.

ArchSmarter 3T’s

Michael talks about Revit task being:

Which is something to look for and analyse in a process to see if its suitable for RPA.

Free RPA software references

I found this video and was interested with the Free RPA software. I did an article on Open RPA that has an interface similar to UiPath but I found it a bit buggy. On reviewing the other free RPA programs I recognised their methods abit more after the last time I visited the RPA area.

A list of free ones Free RPA programs

Interfaces are variable

When I saw the Open RPA one I recognised the layout as being similar to UiPath, apparently what is under the hood is the same software structure, hence them looking similar.

What I did find surprising was that the interface of Tag UI looked very similar to AutoHotKeys , so I thought that was interesting. Tag UI from Singapore, that has government backing

Robot Framework look a bit like code structure too with lines showing steps, what I did like about this was you are able to comment out in the middle of the code, so its easy to put in an explainer about what you are trying to do.

Combining programs

I’m wondering if you can have an overall listener like OpenRPA and then get it to call AutoHotKey scripts? That may be a nice way to be able to fine tune the actual activity using AutoHotKey to do a lot of the individual steps with the Open RPA doing the overarching process triggering. So you could template the Open RPA and just call sub routines in AutoHotKey.

I did start looking at the XML files from OpenRPA and I was wondering if you could cut/paste small amounts of it from one bit of code to another.

This is something to explore, using the strengths of some programs to compensate for weaknesses in others.