Robotics Process Automation with Tosca

Hi All,

Few good notes on RPA front, which  come across during the RPA training. Reference taken from Tricientis training notes.

what is the difference between robotic process automation and test automation? Why do we need a dedicated tool for each task?

Both test automation and robotic process automation share one common goal: automating manual activities.

Conceptually, these two similar processes both demand fast releases, time and cost efficiency, correctness, quality assurance, reduced human intervention and, of course, automation

Test automation is about automating tests done by a team of manual testers.

Consider a test case in test automation. It is normally a very linear, step by step activity. Why? Because the goal of a test is that you verify certain business requirements or acceptance criteria. You do this by entering defined data into your system under test.

For example, say you want to test the login procedure of your application, or see whether age or city criteria work. You enter John Doe living in New York, aged 37 into your application because this allows you to verify exactly those aspects in your application. The goal of test automation is to see where the application fails and to make informed decisions about whether an application is too risky to release. That I s why tests are very linear. 

RPA, on the other hand, is about automating manual activities done by business users on a day-to-day basis, activities that can be quite repetitive or administrative in nature.

RPA focuses on automating processes typically found in HR, accounting, finance, back office operations such as processing invoices, transactions, calculations, evaluations etc.

RPA also works on live business data found in these types of production environments.

With RPA, the approach is quite different as you are automating work flows with business rules. These business rules are based on different data variants that you encounter in real life.

Consider a typical example: processing invoices for your company. So, let’s say that 60 to 70 percent of your invoices are always processed or treated in the same way. However, you will surely encounter a situation where you have special agreements with a company, where you are required to enter the data slightly different. In fact, many of your customer companies can request different data requirements when processing the invoices – we call these data variants. This is how RPA works. With the RPA process, you can automate 80 to 90 percent of your invoices however, you may also come up with 20, 30, 50 different variants on how to enter the data. All of these variants or business rules depend on how you input the data. 

This means RPA’s focus is on implementing business rules and therefore needs a clear and better visualization of those rules.

RPA Studio

RPA Studio doesn’t have separate sections for different object types. Everything is part of the RPA Folder

Ribbon menu having all the basic functionalities are located

Project tree – having  all the objects in your workspace, such as folders, Bots and Modules

Flowchart, which is a sequence of actions that you want your Bot to perform

Details view which contains the data and instructions to steer the Bot

Configuration view, the Configuration Parameters can be placed here

To run the Bot. We can click on the Run Bot button in the Ribbon or the Start button on the flowchart. If the Bot is executed successfully, all the Steps will be shown as green. Click on a Step to see the specific result

business process

A business process relies on a clear understanding of the business rules. If you don’t define the business rules and the decisions you have to make from the user perspective, you won’t be successful in implementing the business process. Implementing a Test Case on the other hand, relies on the requirements and acceptance criteria. Bots rely on processes and the rules behind it. This phase of design is therefore very important you should get it right. Always check with your business expert if that what you have designed is what the user would do if he or she would perform the process manually

the term Bot to describe the sequence of actions that you want to perform. We call these actionsSteps and they are part of the Flowchart.

In the RPA Studio, you can switch between two modes: the Design mode and the Results mode.

two types of Modules:

1) Modules you create by scanning your application

2) Modules provided in the RPA subset (Standard Modules and Demo App Modules)

create a separate Bot for each of these common processes. Bot-in-a-Bot. If you know that you will have to perform the same set of Steps in multiple Bots, create a separate Bot for this set of Steps. This will save time from having to recreate the steps from scratch and also reduce complexity.

Moreover, this makes maintenance easier if that particular process changes. You only have to change that one Bot. Please note that unlike using references in Tricentis Tosca, the changes cannot be resolved for Bots. Therefore, any change you make to a referenced Bot will also made in all the Bots that use it.

In RPA, we can use clean-up procedures to increase the stability and resilience of ours Bots. Note that clean-ups do not fix the error. However, clean-up procedures reset the environment so that the next Bot can navigate the automation process. Clean-ups consist of the Steps that you define

only use one Exception Handler per Bot at a time.When you add an Exception Handler, RPA Studio automatically adds the Configuration Parameters to your Bot.

The first type, an OnDialogFailure triggers a clean-up due to failed interactions with your application. For instance, your Bot cannot find a particular menu or a link in the application in question.

The second type, OnExceptionFailure, relates to a clean-up due to unforeseen environment issues that can happen, such as your website or server being down, which stops your Bot from running the Steps.

Finally, there is OnVerificationFailure, which triggers a clean-up in case of unexpected content in your application or other tools. For instance, if a cell in your data source contains a different value than expected, or is simply missing or false, this will lead to a verification failure.

In exception handler, two layers are there. Folder and inner bell icon. On bell icon there will be property call “AfterHandling”. , which can be set as “StopBot” or “RestartBot”.

As the name suggests, after the Bot encounters a failure and runs the Steps defined in the Exception Handler, “StopBot” will stop the Bot entirely.

Refer my Antwak profile on RPA:

https://www.antwak.com/author/1473-trupti-jethva 

Cheers.