Robotic Process Automation 18CS745 PDF

# Robotic Process Automation ## 18CS745 ### **Module 5** ### **Exception Handling, Debugging, and Logging** #### **Introduction** Sometimes, automation programs may fail to execute. To deal with such cases, we use exception handling activities. In this chapter, we start with the various types of ex...

# Robotic Process Automation ## 18CS745 ### **Module 5** ### **Exception Handling, Debugging, and Logging** #### **Introduction** Sometimes, automation programs may fail to execute. To deal with such cases, we use exception handling activities. In this chapter, we start with the various types of exception handling methods available in UiPath, the exceptions that you may encounter, and how to deal with them. We will also learn about logging. An important topic covered in this chapter is debugging to check whether workflows are working properly or not and to rectify any errors. #### **5.1 Exception handling** * Exception handling is a way to handle exceptions for a process that the program or the procedure has failed to execute. For handling exceptions in a program, the best practice considered is to use the Try catch activity. * The Try catch activity can be found in the Activities panel. By dragging and dropping the Try catch activity into the workspace, we can handle exceptions. * For handling errors in the Try catch block, we can divide the whole process into four parts just to make it simpler: * Drag and drop the Try catch activity * Try block * Catch block * Finally block Let’s build a Try catch block to handle exceptions, in the following steps: * Drag and drop the Try catch activity. Create a blank project. Drag and drop the flowchart activity into the Designer panel. Search for the Try catch activity in the Activities panel and drag it into the flowchart. Set it as the start node. * Try. When we double-click on the Try catch activity, dragged and dropped inside the workspace, space for the Try activity appears. * Inside the Try block, we have to drop the activity we want to perform. Drop a Write line activity to test the working of Try Catch block. * Catches. Inside the Catches activity, first we have to click on Add new Catch and then click on Add Exception option, from which we have to select the type of exception. In most cases System.Exception is preferred. The following screenshot shows the types of exception. There are many more exceptions which can be viewed by clicking on the Browse for Types option. * Say the execution fails. For example, the Click activity is unable to be executed because of the unavailability of a UI element. In such a case, we can use the Catches block in order to either view the error that has occurred or for an alternative method to be used if that particular error occurs. As shown in the following screenshot, we will drop the activity in the Catches block. To print a message, we use a Message box. * When we click on Add new catch, we are asked to select the type of exception. We have selected System.Exception. Now inside the exception block, we have dropped a Message box activity. Entering exception.ToString will display the error that occurred during execution. * Finally. When we have defined the exception for our sequence, the Finally block will always work, regardless of whether the execution was successful or not. Suppose we want to display a message to the user notifying that the process is complete. To make sure that the whole Try catch activity is executed, we will just drop a Message box activity in the area provided in the Finally block. #### **5.2 Common exceptions and ways to handle them** Implementing exception handling enables the robot to work in every possible situation and tackle any exception that may arise. There are some common exceptions that we usually face while working on UiPath. * Unavailability of UI element * Handling runtime exceptions * Orbit reference not set to the instant of an object * Index was outside the bounds of an array. Index out of the range * Image not found in the provided timeout * Click Generic error - cannot use UI CONTROL API on this UI node please use UI Hardware ELEMENTS method * Logging and taking screenshots ##### **Unavailability of UI element** * When working on UiPath, especially on the web, we may encounter this type of error. * This is because the UI element was not found due to the dynamic behavior of the web page. * To handle this exception, we have to make changes in the selector attributes or we have to add new attributes to the selector so that the UI element can be easily found. * For example, if we have a variable which is dynamically changing, we can use a wildcard so that it can be easily found by the robot. As shown in the following screenshot, we can edit the dynamic attribute of the selector using wildcard characters (in our case, * ). Another way is to attach it to the live element. ##### **Handling runtime exceptions** * We may encounter runtime errors while working in UiPath. * To rectify these errors, one of the best practices is to use the Try catch activity, which can be used to handle exceptions at runtime. * By keeping an alternative inside the catch block, we can also overcome the error which we encountered before. * So placing your sequence or workflow inside the Try catch activity will help you handle runtime exceptions. ##### **Orbit reference not set to the instant of an object** * This type of error usually occurs when the default value required for some variable is not provided. * In that case, we are required to give a default value to the required variable, as shown in the following screenshot. * In the empty area indicated in the following screenshot, just type the default value of the variable in order to overcome this error: ##### **Index was outside the bounds of an array. Index out of the range** * This error occurs when we try to iterate array elements by an index which is out of range. * This happens when we are not aware of the size of the array and we just randomly type the index to access the element. * To resolve this, we must check the size of the indexes of the array or the collective list. ##### **Image not found in the provided timeout** * This type of exception is thrown because the image was not found. * This may be due to a change of environment, such as resolution or theme settings. * In this case, using some a selector attribute or indicating an anchor will work well. ##### **Click Generic error - cannot use UI CONTROL API on this UI node please use UI HardwareELEMENTS method** * This type of error occurs when the environment in which we are trying to use the Click activity does not support Simulate or Send message activity (used by us to click the UI element). * Sometimes, either SimulateClick or the SendWindowMessages may be checked. In both cases, when an exception is thrown we just have to uncheck the appropriate box. ##### **Logging and taking screenshots** * UiPath has a multi-process architecture that offers to execute each workflow separately in the executor. Executors are managed by UI robots. So, if any executor stops working, then the entire process will not be affected. ### 5.3 Client Logging and Server Logging #### **5.3.1 Client logging** * Client logs basically enable a server to record connections. * These logs can be used by content providers in various scenarios, such as to generate billing, to trace media server usage, or to deliver suitable quality content depending on the speed of the client’s server. * For client logging in UiPath, we have an NLog configuration file which makes it easy and flexible to integrate with databases, servers, or any other NLog targets. * Logging can be configured with this NLog.cofig file. * UiPath Studio, Robot, and workflow execution generate log messages on the client side. * Messages which are produced by the workflow execution are logged with the execution logging source. * Messages produced by UiPath Studio are logged as Studio Source and those produced by UiPath Robot are logged as Robot logging Source. * We can also access these logs from UiPath Studio. * We can access the stored logs by clicking on Open Logs in the EXECUTE option. * By default, these Logs are saved in %Local App%\Uipath\Logs: * The automatic logging mechanism for all errors generated, including values of variables and arguments, may be enabled in the UiRobot.exe config file, which is present in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\UiPath\app-17.1.6435, by setting the Log parameter from 0 to 1 inside the <Switches>section. * We have two activities that can be used for logging and these are the Log message and WriteLine activities. #### **5.3.2 Server logging** * If you have configured the UiPath server, then all logs generated by the execution are also sent to the server. * You can take a screenshot anytime by pressing Ctrl + PrtScrn. ### 5.4 Debugging techniques * There are various techniques provided by UiPath Studio for debugging in order to check whether the workflow is running successfully or to find out errors in order to rectify them. * At the top of the UiPath window, we can see various available methods of debugging inside the EXECUTE block, as shown in the following screenshot. * As shown in the preceding screenshot, there are various techniques for debugging. They are: * Setting breakpoints * Slow step * Highlighting * Break ##### **Setting breakpoints** * While debugging a workflow, we can set breakpoints in between if we want to run the program up to a specific location. * This is useful when we have to stop before an activity ends completely. In such a case, we should use a breakpoint on the previous activity, as shown in the following screenshot: * The highlighted region indicates the breakpoint since the execution stops just after the breakpoint. In order to continue any further, we have to click on the Continue button on the top corner indicated by the arrow: * When we click on Step into, the relevant part will start to execute; after we click on Step over, execution will jump to the next part, and so on. ##### **Slow step** * This is an activity in the EXECUTE block through which we can reduce the execution speed of a particular process or activity. This way, we can identify each and every process and keep an eye on where to find the error. In the Output panel, all activities or steps can be viewed. The following screenshot shows how to use the Slow step activity: * As indicated by the arrow in the preceding screenshot, when we click on Slow step the execution time for this particular step increases. ##### **Highlighting** * Highlighting is used to highlight the steps we have taken during automation and to identify each and every step in the workflow. It is very useful while debugging and its panel can be found in the Options menu of the Execute section in the Ribbon: ##### **Break** * The Break activity is used to break a process at a certain point. Suppose we have a sequence performing seven activities together and we want to break the execution at a certain activity. For this, we can use the Break activity, as shown in the following screenshot: * While debugging, an option for Break is available (indicated by the arrow in the preceding screenshot). We can break at any point we want to. If we want to continue any further, we just have to click on Continue, as indicated by the arrow in the following screenshot: * Or we can stop the execution at that point by clicking on the Stop option. ### 5.5 Collecting crash dumps * Collecting crash dumps basically refers to collecting information when your UiPath Studio crashes. * We can enable and disable crash dumps. * These dumps provide us with information regarding the UiPath crash. * Memory dumps are of two types full dumps and minidumps. * Full dumps provide us with complete information about the encountered crash * minidumps provide us with just the main information regarding the crash. * When a crash is encountered, we first have to identify the process which has crashed. * **Note:** Usually, a dialog will appear on the screen indicating the nature of the crash and the application involved. A UiPath process could crash, such as Uistudio.exe, Uiexplorer.exe, or Uilauncher.exe, or the target application you want to automate may crash. #### **Enabling crash dumps** * To enable crash dumps, we first have to download the EnableFullDump.erg file for full dumps from [https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/416323/QuickAnswers/EnableFullDump.reg?t=1513326308120](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/416323/QuickAnswers/EnableFullDump.reg?t=1513326308120) or the EnableMinDump.erg file from [https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/416323/QuickAnswers/EnableMinDump.reg?t=1513326308120](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/416323/QuickAnswers/EnableMinDump.reg?t=1513326308120). * Double-click the file and click Yes. Administrator rights are needed to access the registry settings * The dumps folder is %TEMP% whose complete path is like C:\\users2; username\AppData\Local\TEMP * When the application crashes, you will find the dmp file in the TEMP folder. For example, if UiExplorer crashes then a file such as UiExplorer.exe.7429.dmp will be found in the TEMP folder #### **Disabling crash dumps** * To disable crash dumps, perform the following steps: * Download the DisableDump.reg file from [https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/416323/QuickAnswers/DisableDump.reg?t=1513326308120](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/416323/QuickAnswers/DisableDump.reg?t=1513326308120). * Double-click the file and click Yes to disable crash dumps, Administration rights are needed for this action. ### 5.6 Error reporting * A user may encounter an error in UiPath and want to report it. As mentioned before, there are two types of customer for UiPath: * Enterprise Edition customers * Community Edition customers #### **Enterprise Edition customers** * If you are an Enterprise customer, then you can report the error to the UiPath community in a very simple way: * Just go to this link: [https://www.UiPath.com/contact-technical-and-activations](https://www.UiPath.com/contact-technical-and-activations) * You will be re-directed to a page where you have to fill out a simple form containing some basic details and then upload the file in which the error is encountered, as shown in the following screenshot. * After uploading, just click on the Submit button. UiPath will respond to you with the proper solution. #### **Community Edition users** * Since the Community Edition is free, UiPath does not provide support to Community Edition users. However, all solutions to errors encountered can be found by going to the UiPath forum. All types of errors and their solutions are properly discussed in the forum. You can also go to the resources page and find the solution to your problem. * For this, visit [https://forum.Uipath.com/](https://forum.Uipath.com/) ### 5.7 Future of RPA #### **A Look at the Next Few Years** * Back in 1965, when computers were still in the formative stages of development, Gordon Moore came up with “Moore’s Law" that postulated that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years. While it was somewhat off- the timing is usually about 18 months or so – it was still revolutionary. * Moore’s Law showed the incredible transformative power of computers. Of course, Moore would go on to start one of the world’s most iconic companies, Intel. * But there was something else about his law – that is, it is one of the few things in the technology world that has been highly predictable. The pace of change and innovation can be mind-boggling. * Keep in mind that many of the top tech founders and visionaries have been wide off the mark on their predictions. For example, when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had this to say: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." * Or how about the time when Digital Equipment Corp. president Ken Olsen said in 1977: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." So yes, making predictions about the future is a hazardous activity! But then again, it is important to try. There needs to be ongoing debate to help fuel innovation. In this chapter, we’ll take out the crystal ball and make some predictions about RPA. #### **Consolidation and IPOS** * With over 70 RPA vendors on the market - and with perhaps more that will be formed because of the interest of venture capitalists – there will likely be increased consolidation * It will be difficult for many of these players to stand out and get the attention of potential customers. As seen with operators like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, there has already been a pickup in acquisitions. Yet this is likely to accelerate. It certainly helps that the large companies have substantial amounts of cash on their balance sheets. * The acquisitions will be essentially to help expand the RPA technology stack, to move into new industries, and pick up customers. “RPA vendors need to diversify beyond their own niche technologies and core products to grow their position in the industry,” said Dr. Gero Decker, who is the CEO of Signavio. “Specifically, vendors will need to better examine the use cases and capabilities that automation can do, therefore expanding the reach and capabilities behind their automation. They also need to make it easier to implement automation, and automate capabilities beyond older, redundant tasks." * There will also likely be some IPOs. Currently, the only pure-play public company is Blue Prism. But in the next few years, we will likely see Automation Anywhere and UiPath pull off IPOs. This will not just be about raising capital, either. After all, there has been little trouble with this. But being public provides other benefits, including the following: * Prestige: Not many companies have what it takes to be public. Often, there must be high levels of revenues, a diverse customer base, an extensive product line, and a path to profitability. Being public also raises a company's visibility with the media and analysts. * Liquidity: Employees may have taken lower salaries in exchange for equity in a company. Because of this, they eventually want to see a return on this – which is much easier when a company is publicly traded. * Transparency: With many RPA companies private, it is difficult to gauge the industry. What really are the revenues? Is there customer concentration? Any issues with the core infrastructure? For the most part, a public company is legally required to provide full disclosure of material information. This not only makes it easier to evaluate a company's prospects but builds confidence with larger customers. #### **Microsoft** * Historically, Microsoft has been a follower when it comes to new technologies. This was the case, for example, with the GUI-based operating system as well as the Internet browser. It also took several interactions to get these products to a place that was competitive. But when it did, the results were incredible, as seen with Windows 3.0. Then again, Microsoft has enormous advantages: seemingly unlimited capital, a trusted global brand, a strong ecosystem of partners, and a massive customer base. * So what about RPA? Yes, it's now becoming a priority. * At the Ignite conference in November 2019, Microsoft announced its official foray into the market. The company leveraged its Power Platform – which allows for BI, low code, and workflow management to create Power Automate. It also uses Selenium, which is an open source application that allows for the recording and automating of web applications. It comes with more than 275 prebuilt connectors to apps and services. There are also AI capabilities and of course native integrations with Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure. While there is some coding needed, it is still high level and there is a drag-and-drop system to create the workflows. Interestingly enough, when it comes to creating alerts and triggers, you can seamlessly use Microsoft Teams. * Power Automate is definitely a solid offering. However, it still lacks enterprise-grade features, such as identity management. But such things will likely be added in the next couple years. * If anything, Power Automate will allow Microsoft to learn and iterate on RPA systems. And given the company's deep reservoir of talent and financial resources, it seems like a good bet that the progress will be rapid #### **Attended Automation** * RPA technology has been mostly about unattended automation. And this should not be surprising. This type of automation is easier to handle. Hey, there is no involvement with people! But attended automation has much potential for making a huge difference. An employee, for example, can leverage the intelligence of a bot while using his or her own skills to solve problems. Attended automation should lead to much synergy – the best of humans and machines. * The good news is that the technology is starting to get better, especially with improved integration and AI. "We'll see more businesses pivot their attention toward attended automation," said Francis Carden, who is the VP of digital automation and robotics at PEGA. “They will start to recognize how combining bots and humans together can produce optimal outcomes in a faster and more agile way. They will realize that in many use cases, such as in call centers and large front and back offices, attended RPA can be rapidly deployed to many more users for the most common tasks and delivers a much faster and more valuable route to ROI." * Barry Cooper, who is the enterprise group president at NICE, agrees with this thesis. “We're starting to see a shift as enterprises are beginning to understand and embrace the benefits of automation and view it as a way to improve the overall workload and performance of their employees," he said. "This is especially true when providing employees with their own personal robotic assistant. Attended bots are programmed to provide employees with the guidance and assistance they require, in real time directly from their desktops, and automate anything which is repetitive and doesn't require their special skills. Enterprises are realizing that attended automation will have a positive impact on their employee's adoption of automation and ultimately on the service they provide to their customers.” * To get a sense of this, consider Automation Anywhere, which has acquired Klevops, a start-up based in Paris. According to the deal's press release: “Automation Anywhere fast forwards the RPA category to Attended Automation 2.0, where managers can easily orchestrate workstreams across a team of employees and bots, driving a higher level of employee productivity and improved customer experience. * This enables customers to automate more processes than ever before, with the same level of central governance, security and analytic capability for which Automation Anywhere has always been known. This approach is likely to see much traction in industries that rely heavily on contact centers, such as banks and telecom companies. #### **The RPA Career** * Even though the emergence of the Internet has resulted in the reduction of certain jobs, there have been new professions created like digital marketing. * Something similar is happening with RPA. “Hiring for RPA skills will explode across all industries and job functions," said Prince Kohli, who is the CTO of Automation Anywhere. “With more than 5,000 RPA jobs in the U.S., there is already incredibly high demand for RPA specialists. Starting salaries will skyrocket." * This will not just be for developers, business analysts, and managers. There will also be growth for those who have experience in verticals, such as IT, BPO, HR, education, and insurance. * But for those companies that implement RPA, there will be a need on how to transition existing workers. This is certainly an opportunity – but will not be easy. Companies must rethink the traditional approaches to talent management. * According to research from Leslie Willcocks, Mary Lacity, and John Hindle, change management is the most seriously under-recognized and underfunded component of successful RPA implementations. * "We will see more companies embracing training opportunities to upskill their employees for RPA jobs, opening the doors for new career opportunities and growth," said Barry Cooper, who is the enterprise group president at NICE. * To do this, companies must go beyond just offering training courses. There will need to be a focus on areas like providing interesting opportunities and incentives. #### **Scaling RPA** * While the early stages of an RPA implementation are generally successful, it usually gets more difficult to scale the technology. What winds up happening is that there is a hodgepodge of bots throughout an organization, which often means not getting the maximum results. * "As more and more organizations adopt RPA, we have yet to see an enterprise-wide adoption of more than 50– 100 bots," said Harel Tayeb, who is the CEO of Kryon Systems. * To help improve things, RPA vendors are retooling their systems to help achieve scale, such as by adding AI and process mining. “With the benefits of RPA, corporations are looking for scalability and are struggling in two areas related directly to processes - inability to identify candidates for automation after tackling the 'low hanging fruit' and dealing with bad processes,” said Ray LeBlanc, who is the product strategy manager at Verint. * "Process mining is the logical solution; however, the solutions are expensive, still take considerable time, and don't truly align with RPA. We are starting to see solutions that are targeted to a smaller sample size, that is, number of users, but also are focused on actual workflow on the desktop, that are focused on discovering processes that are suitable to benefit from RPA." * There will also be a move toward using Business Process Management solutions. * "RPA began as a stand-alone technology but the future of RPA is clearly integration into larger end-to-end process automation platforms and programs," said Michael Beckely, who is the CTO of Appian. "When unified with human workflow, BPM, API integrations, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning services, and RPA can be efficiently orchestrated with humans and other systems to maximum benefit. The so-called 'problems' with RPA really become features when viewed within the greater context of an overall Automation project." He notes that the financial services industry – which was an early adopter of RPA – is already shifting toward a holistic approach. * "Whereas RPA was sometimes started as a way to bypass overburdened IT departments, as RPA projects scale, IT is increasingly taking charge,” said Beckely. His company has built a system, called the Robotic Workforce Manager, that uses low code to enable the scaling of RPA projects to hundreds and even thousands of bots. For example, Union Bank one of the largest banks in the Philippines - has used this, along with UiPath, for the unification of its automation initiatives. * The company was able to deploy over 400 automated applications in under three months and accelerated processing times by 300%. “Through this process of digital transformation, UBP achieved 97% digitization,” said Beckely. “Business executives require real-time visibility into robotic workforce operations so they can analyze bot value by process and department and achieve greater business impact through end-to-end automation. * RPA business users need better ways to automate human-in-the-loop activities and self-service controls to start and schedule robotic processes on-demand. With end-to-end process visibility across people and robots, users can confidently tackle much greater workloads than ever before." #### **Vertical-Specific Companies** * In general, most of the RPA vendors have solutions that span multiple industries. Yet the companies still usually have specialties. Actually, as RPA starts to mature, there will likely be more vertical-based players. * Customers will want a more specialized approach, as there will usually be unique use cases. * Just look at Olive, which is targeting the healthcare industry. * The founder and CEO Sean Lane actually has an interesting background. He started his career as an intelligence officer in the Air Force working at the National Security Agency. There he had valuable experience dealing with enormous engineering challenges. He even completed five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. But when he returned home, he saw another devastation: the impact of the opioid addiction crisis. To do something about this, he looked at how he could leverage his experience with finding insights from data. * When he started learning about the healthcare system, he realized the enterprise systems were highly proprietary and would not talk to each other. The technologies were also unintuitive and often required hiring consultants and outsourcing firms to add new capabilities. This made it particularly difficult to do cutting-edge initiatives like AI. Because of this, he saw there was an opportunity to bring automation to the industry. * "My focus was on building an AI-powered digital workforce,” said Lane. “Instead of building new software to replace disparate systems, we would create the first health care specific digital employee to automate robotic, error-prone workflows, emulating the manual tasks employees had once done – only faster and more accurately. With Olive, I've set out to carve a trillion dollars out of the cost of healthcare while improving the human experience." * The name Olive is the "digital person" that provides the automation. She is quick and does her work in a confidential manner, helping with tasks like collections, coding, and credentials. There is also a deep understanding of the complex language of healthcare as well as the EHRs, patient accounting systems, and third-party clearinghouses. * "If something breaks?” said Lane, “Olive proactively fixes it. If a payer portal changes? Olive will adapt her workflow. * And if Olive gleans a cost-saving insight from the large amounts of data she's processing? She'll surface it and e-mail her manager about it. This allin- one approach makes it so automations work for our customers. They don't work for their automations. * What's most exciting is that every Olive is able to learn collectively, like a network, so that hospitals never have to solve the same problem twice. I ultimately see Olive’s digital workforce as a way to build global awareness – a true internet of healthcare." * The healthcare industry is certainly a prime target for RPA. Note that an estimated $1 trillion in spending in the United States goes to administration. And unfortunately, an employee will engage in mundane tasks like filing folders or moving data across a myriad of systems and interfaces. In light of this, is it any wonder that burnout and boredom are the leading causes of turnover and that attrition in the healthcare industry is so high? * "Imagine what we could accomplish if we eliminated even 1% of the burden of time and cost," said Lane. "The research that could be funded, the treatments that could be developed, the cures that could be found." #### **Hype Factor** * Back in 1995, Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn developed the “Hype Cycle,” which caught a lot of attention. The irony is that her framework was, well, hyped quite a bit! Her premise: Major technologies undergo fairly predictable cycles. * In fact, the Hype Cycle has five of them, which include the following: * The Technology Trigger: There emerges a transformative technology that quickly gets the attention of the media, entrepreneurs, and VCs. There are some prototypes for proof of concepts. But the commercial viability of the technology has yet to be established. * Peak of Inflated Expectations: At this stage, the technology has shown to be effective and this gins up lots of excitement. This can happen rapidly, especially with the power of social media and the availability of huge amounts of cash to fund new technologies. As should be no surprise, the hype gets to giddy levels. You will hear things like "game changer," "inflection point," and so on. * Trough of Disillusionment: There begin to be signs that the enthusiasm is evaporating. Some of the companies in the space are failing or not meeting expectations. Stock prices are getting hit. Customers are realizing that the new technology is not generating the promised ROI. * Slope of Enlightenment: Despite the issues and problems, the technology nonetheless gets more refined. The result is that the impact gets stronger. But the media no longer shows much interest and is focused on other red- hot categories. * Plateau of Productivity: Here the technology becomes mainstream and there are standards of its use. It is really just a natural part of the business world. This framework is far from perfect. * Consider that Gartner has had some flubs with its own predictions, such as with BPM and cloud computing. But the 5-step cycle is still useful. It's a way to allow for a longer-term perspective and to avoid being too early when it comes to adopting technologies. * According to Gartner: “If there are too many unanswered questions around the commercial viability of an emerging technology, it may be better to wait until others have been able to deliver tangible value." * Then where is RPA on the Gartner Hype Cycle? This is definitely tough to answer! One of the things to note is that RPA has been around for two decades and it was not until six or seven years ago that it really started to accelerate. But in my opinion, I think the industry is definitely beyond stage two and may actually be entering the early phases of stage three. The media attention is intense. * The funding has been plentiful. But at the same time, there are some signs of disillusionment. As noted in this chapter, there are challenges with scaling RPA as well as combining technologies like AI. * And some of the large players are experiencing growing pains. For example, in late October, Forbes published an interesting article that showed that UiPath laid off around 300 to 400 employees or 11% of the workforce. This is not to imply that UiPath is in big trouble. Far from it. The company remains in a strong position – in terms of its product line, customer base, and financials. But Wall Street is putting much more emphasis on a path to profitability. The implosion of WeWork – which lost billions of dollars in market value and almost went bust – was a wake-up call to many in the tech world. * This will mean that the strategies will likely be moderating in the coming years. As UiPath CEO Daniel Dines noted in the Forbes article, there will be a need to “balance growth ith efficiency." #### **Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Open Source** * RPA software is still mostly on-premise. But there will probably be a transition toward a SaaS model. Part of this will be about having a cloud-native platform, which will make it easier for upgrades and data access (this will be critical for AI applications). * "When the software robot becomes a commodity, we will start to see the next wave of adoption in RPA,” said Antti Karjalainen, who is the founder and CEO of Robocorp. “SMBs (small and medium size businesses) will want to have access to business process automation but they will not always have the required sophistication to adopt the technology. This gives an opening to a new type of service provider, a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) operator, that can help SMEs by automating their business routines and maintaining the software robots for them. These RaaS operators can either focus on certain verticals, like car dealers or real estate agents, or they can work as general automation providers in their local area." * But also expect a change in the business model. As RPA scales, the costs can get prohibitive because of the per-bot fees. So customers will be looking for alternatives, say, a subscription approach. Companies like SAP, Intellibot, and Nintex have been offering lower-priced strategies as a way to get traction in the crowded RPA market, for example. Companies may also look to the open source approach as a way to deal with this as well. * But of course, there are other benefits, such as a strong ecosystem of developers who keep innovating the platform. Granted, the landscape for open source software is fragmented. The projects tend to be small in terms of adoption – and the technology is not extensive. But this is expected to change. As seen with other industries, open source has become ubiquitous. * According to Karjalainen : “The traditional RPA infrastructure hasn't incentivized participation from the developer community to build RPA tools because of the high cost of entry for businesses has essentially limited market-share and profitability. However, as RPA becomes more open-source driven and the user-base grows, developer interest will increase and we'll begin seeing a subset of RPA-exclusive developers that will drive innovative creation of tools. We will identify the 'RPA developer' as a new developer category." * If anything, open source is likely to be critical for the RPA category. “Open source is a central pillar of modern cloud stacks, and if RPA is to have a role in hybrid cloud infrastructure, it must be open source as well,” said Phil Simpson, who is the product marketing manager for process automation at Red Hat. "A number of open source RPA projects are available today, but few at this point can compare to proprietary products in the market currently, particularly around providing enterprise-grade support. * With that said, the industry is moving toward a more open and flexible model, and I anticipate we'll soon see parity between the two models, giving customers the ultimate in flexibility and choice." #### **Chatbots** * Sometimes there is confusion between chatbots and RPA. While both involve the use of software bots, there are clear differences. A chatbot is a system that uses NLP (natural language processing) to communicate with people. In the consumer world, this would be Siri or Cortana. But of course, many companies are using chatbots for handling customer service.