Automation Anywhere Reviews

Use case: Extraction from Main Frame Application

Solution : 

The bot will log in to the email box and then picks the invoice no, order invoice amount, and surcharge details. 

Based on a single line item and multiple line items, the bot will log in to AS400 and feed and check all the information. If there is a discrepancy then the bot will update it based on the tolerance limit. If there is no discrepancy, the bot will accept the orders. The bot will validate costs in Excel and AS400 application and it will allocate cost for each invoice.

Easy to access: Without the need to download and install software on a local machine, we can access the RPA application from virtually anywhere.

Easy to use: Automating a business process is as easy as logging in, clicking, and automating any kind of business.

Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value. We can log in, set up automation, and go live within minutes, giving an immediate return on your investment.

Scalability: With help of Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can deploy a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

1) By using Workload Management in Automation Anywhere a lot of manpower was reduced. 

2) Credential Manager used to keep customer/client information's more secure.

3) The product is dedicated to the business user and comprises advanced capabilities to offer an intuitive interface for the business user and bot developer.

4) This platform is easiest to use, avoids complexity, and ensures fast adoption & rapid deployment. 

5) It not only fulfills the requirement of the digital workforce but also be flexible to evolve with the business needs.

1) Needs some improvement in IQ BOT:

* while uploading input files we are facing issue with grouping even the same kind of PDFs

* consuming of CPU utilization and requiring more RAM

2) It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability.

3) Handwritten documents are still a drawback.

4) Some of the control room GUI can be improved, it is also difficult in terms of control room management.

5) If Excel gets hanged Automation Anywhere does not give any notification.

6) Needs improvement in image recognition.

7) BOT insights taking more CPU utilization.

I have been using AA for three years and five months.  

Automation Anywhere is a stable RPA application.

Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can start small by deploying a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

We are satisfied with their customer service and technical support.

We have used Blue Prism for Automation. Cost wise it is higher than Automation Anywhere.

A2019 has zero installation required.

We didn't look at other options while choosing Automation Anywhere.

UiPath and Kryon.

There is only one option Automation Anywhere for cost-effective RPA.

Our primary use case is to automate the Client's workflow of reading a ticket from ServiceNow and then assign it to different bots which in turn performs the validations of the tickets with respect to different regions of the client's parameters. After the completion of the validations, the bot will update the ticket as per it's status and then send the hourly output report to Client's operations team. In between, if the bot fails, system exceptions or some business exception scenarios, human team will do the rest of the task.

Automation Anywhere has improved my organization in the following ways:

1. Repetitive tasks have been automated and hence the employees work in crucial logical thinking processes.

2. Tasks now don't depend upon the unavailability of certain employees/colleagues to be completed. Also, bots can run all day long which also affects the overall budgets.

3. Centralized Backup, Security & Disaster Recovery, Bot Insights, Workload Management, ROI Calculator in COE Dashboard.

1. IQ Bot, Automation Lifecycle Management, Workload Management, Centralized Backup, Security & Disaster Recovery

2. Image Recognition and OCR activity

3. Drag and Drop activities eases the task to write codes.

4. Control Room is very useful for bot's activity insights

5. Easy to use activities and almost all the artifacts available in the official AA's docs and forums can solve complex codes.

6. Certification exams are too good and almost cover all the required knowledge to be sound in working with Automation Anywhere.

1. User Interface can be simpler.

2. Master Certification now paid (previously it was free of cost) which sometimes creates hesitation to go for it.

3. Though the courses in the certification's learning hub are great and awesome, there is some more space for adding more explained contents.

4. Citrix automation lacks the perfect end to end automation.

5. Web Automation fails when an automated Screen Resolution is changed to some other resolutions. 

6. Pricing with respect to the competitors is more.

I have been using AA for two years. 

Performance is up to the mark with limited constraints of applications to be used. An application must be of a certain version provided by certain organizations and thus discontinuation of the said applications affects a lot while maintaining the bot.

Scalability is very high. There's no limitation of the number of bots to be used simultaneously and in a single port/machine/ID.

Technical Support provided almost all the solutions we had.

We had used a different solution for the following prominent reasons:

1. Cheaper price for same type of tool.

2. Citrix Automations.

3. Unavailability of required configurations that supports Automation Anywhere

Since the IT team and Infosec looked up for the setup, I don't have much idea about this.

Since the support for IE is discontinuing soon, we are now moving the base code to EDGE Chromium. ROI will be recounted after that. Previously as per the efficiency, we decreased the numbers from the process.

The installation is a bit of hectic process and also the price is more in market compared to other competitors.

UiPath, Blue Prism, AssistEdge

It is primarily used for automating manual processes in Project. Automation was carried out in a two-way process, downloading files from client email and scanning values from PDF file. Post these values were compared with thresholds and return mail is sent. Most of the process is carried out in the Windows environment and the Gmail suite is used as the target output location. It also included SAP application BEx for downloading the file as an Excel sheet and sent as an attachment to an email. This was all implemented in AA, and saved a few man-hours in Project.

It was helpful in managing manual task automations and innovative ways to be introduced to projects. It most benefitted us in converting daily routine tasks into automated processes at minimal cost with available infrastructure. This was the most valuable use, that it didn't cost clients infrastructure. Also, a daily status update of the process is sent through an email easily, updating all stakeholders with daily status. The overall features proved a profitable deal in implementing AA in Project.

AA control room is one central system to manage our tasks. We found it excellent to administrate. It was used for easy scheduling of process/task in Remote desktop. This helped to avoid manual intervention to trigger tasks. 

Also, various features like easy email and file reading eg: PDF, XML, etc were innovatively helpful to scan out values and use as variables in code. 

Another helpful feature is the easy command sidebar provided, where we can easily drag and drop a required command.

The accuracy in Web Recorder needs to be improved, defective outputs found most of the time(not sure if is a website side issue). 

You cannot add dynamic variables in PDF scanned values, hopefully, this can be added as a new feature in future.

Integration with most-used email applications eg: Gmail, Outlook, etc for ease in sending mails without any configuration of port or hostname. This could help to concentrate on actual problems, instead of spending time to figure out port and hostname for sending or receiving emails.

I have been using AA for the last five months. 

Recognizable stability observed in tool with various tasks performed in parallel.

Scalability may vary situation with each situation. According to me, most of the time we will get expected results with substantial capacity of computation in the process.

Customer and technical support both were supportive and were able to provide solutions quickly.

We used Blue Prism and the reason we switched was because we found more ease in using features and less documentation required compared to Blue Prism.

Complex, since there are multiple applications involved, SAP, EMail through Gmail suite. Setting up an application in remote desktop with access to SAP and emails. 

In-house.

Our ROI is 22.81%.

License for AA, before investing in infrastructure list out and analyze the current setup, since AA can be implemented at a minimal cost as well without extra infra/setup.

We previously used Blue Prism.

Primarily we use it for automating back-office operations processes. Some of the most frequent use cases are:

1. Invoice processing and proofing.

2. Reconciliation

3. Automating Timesheets

4. SOW invoice creation.

5. Creation of Credit memos

6. Pulling data from SAP and generating a report.

We use VDIs to deploy. Client & runner environment is mostly Win 10. Most of the bots are scheduled. 

Some organizations still use the manual click on the run button method instead of scheduling or running from CR.

It has definitely helped automating a lot of processes, but it is very difficult to build resilient bots. It is very difficult to find skilled developers in the market, who actually build resilient bots with appropriate error handling. Maintaining the bots is another challenge as the applications keep changing.

It is even more difficult to support a bot than build from scratch. No matter how much you document, things do turn haywire if someone new has to make changes to an existing bot. 

Documenting the AA Solution SDD, PDD is another pain point. It is very common to miss out on a lot of things. 

I feel that in places it is better to create a system to automate rather than use RPA.

Most of the features are valuable. 

1. SAP GUI commands in the latest update is helpful as a lot of processes have SAP involved. 2. APIs are helpful too, but they certainly need more improvement. APIs help in building resiliency.

3. Queues are great but need improvement. They are helpful because most of the automations are transaction-based.

 4. Good old object cloning is always helpful as it is versatile.

5. Metabots help in working with many of the legacy applications. But needs improvement there as well.

6. Credential Vaults are helpful, but needs improvement there too.

1. Excel commands should include more features.

2. Need more variable types for eg. date, amount, number, etc

3. Better API support and more APIs.

4. Queues should be enabled to directly connect to DBs.

5. Managing so many variables is a pain. Some kind of variable initialization mechanism like how Blue Prism has it will be helpful.

6. Input-output variables should be defined for taskbots as well.

7.There are a lot of glitches in AA not fixed since Ver 10. Reach me to know more about them.

8. The commands should help evaluate the current state of variables(like how in Blue prism)

10. Metabots should have command to stop the task. Basically should have all commands of a task bot.

11. No one uses "WorkFlows".

12. The user roles and the Credential Vaults administration, sharing and the whole thing in action is very confusing.

13. Automatic technical logging option should be given by default in all commands like how we have in BP.

4

When it comes to RPA, for every step things should be in the right way at the right time. It is very difficult. So I would rate it as a 5 out of 10 on scalability.

It is scalable, though, in an organizational setup where teams work in silos, I have never seen any organization truly using the scalability to its full potential.

Technical support is okay. At times it takes a lot of email exchanges involved before actually setting up a call and getting help.

AA is all I am using. Blue Prism is used but I prefer AA. Though Blue Prism is better in certain aspects mentioned earlier.

It is the same as how enterprise applications should have in terms of complexity.

We develop RPA solutions for clients.

Costs are ok. IQ Bot is too expensive. Bot Vision should come for free as one can easily use a number of other visualization options for free. There is no point in paying too much for too little.

I have evaluated Blue Prism along with AA

We need some support of documentation methodologies so that the knowledge is easily transferrable through the documents.

I started my career in RPA and the first tool I learned was Automation Anywhere v11.3. Within a month, I learned the tool and was Master Certified in it.

I had noticed that the majority of clients for my company demand developers who know AA well. I wondered why, with so many other tools available, why clients are so interested in AA as the only RPM. This is when I realized that AA is much easier, more reliable, and has value for money also with good and vast customer support.

In the past two years, I have become somewhat of an expert with Automation Anywhere. As a senior RPA developer, I deal with clients alongside my project manager and I always suggest AA. It is worthwhile to know that most of our clients are already aware of this tool, its market popularity, and its capabilities. This makes it easier to solidify a business relationship with them.

Thanks to the benefits of Automation Anywhere, 90% of our clients trust and use this tool.

I love its reliability, ease of use, and the vast customer support that are always present to help us.

In the new cloud-based version, A2019, some good upgrades have been added. I feel that everything has been covered in A2019 that was missing in the older v11.3. These advancements have helped to impress our clients and create new business opportunities with them. As a cloud deployment, it saves clients problems with desktops that occurred with the previous version, v11. There are also more commands and features that have made it more awesome for me to explore and play with new commands.

I love the user interface and the automation commands they have provided in the AA 2019 version.

Especially while using v11, I often experience freezes with OCR extraction from PDF files. It just didn't work properly. I had to work around this using Python scripting. It would be a big improvement to have the inbuilt OCR capability work seamlessly. A perfect OCR would be awesome. 

I have been using the Automation Anywhere tool for the last two years.

The new version offers no compromise regarding stability. 

I will rate this product a ten out of ten for scalability.

I had contacted technical support two or three times and they solved my problem on the same day. I will rate them a ten out of ten on support. In my opinion, they are the best and I hope that they maintain the same.

I started working with AA and have moved to the A2019 version. I never switched to another tool, as AA is one that I have found reliable, and has everything that I need for RPA.

ROI is something my management knows, but as a developer, I cannot say for. However, I am pretty sure that AA has benefited our company.

The cloud-based version comes at an increased cost, although our clients are happy with the new features and have not complained about the pricing. Precious things are valuable, and they know that.

I started with AA and have not evaluated other RPA products.

It has now been two years and I have migrated to AA 2019. I now consider myself an expert in Automation Anywhere. Thanks, AA, for providing such a big and powerful platform to us.

I always recommend this product, and that clients implement AA first.

All of our solutions are implemented mostly for banking.

We have an offline biller, which is for reconciliation & settlement of offline biller data operations. We have similar automation for online billing.

The ATM (Automated Teller Machine) monitoring is automated. This includes the monitoring of operational processes on mutual fund & bonds transactions (upload and reconciliation).

We have a process for reconciliation of the billing statement before sending data to the customer.

DRI: Reconciliation charge back & note for SICS (AS400).

We use eight Bot Creator instances, nine Bot Runners, and two Control Rooms.

To show how Automation Anywhere has improved our business, I will explain one of my solutions in the ATM Monitoring use case. Previously, humans had to monitor the ATM status for 24 hours to find out the status of the ATM in the event of fraud or theft. With the RPA, every hour it will download the ATM status data from the ESQ application and compare it with all problem tickets that are still open. Every time a status mismatch occurs, the RPA will send info to the team via email and WhatsApp.

Process Description: ATM Monitoring

• Recap machine problem data according to status and sort by each vendor automatically.
• Send notification & report via email and WhatsApp.
• Schedule adjustment in sending notifications and reports.

Process Steps:

• The Bot will automatically download problem and faults ticket data from ESQ.
• The Bot will compare problem and faults ticket data automatically and sort each vendor for terminal IDs with tickets that are still open but have no faults.
  
• The Bot will send data that has been recorded and processed automatically to each vendor via email and WhatsApp.
• The Bot has a schedule adjustment function related to sending ticket data to each vendor.

Master Data Bank: 00.00 WIB
Supervisor Mode: 00:10 to 05:00 WIB
No Transaction: 14:00 to 00:00 WIB
Outstanding Ticket: 07:00 to 19:00 WIB

The benefits we get from automation include faster and more accurate matching, running 24x7.

One Control Room, one Bot Runner, and one Bot Creator are required. 

Time saved: 45 minutes per bot, per process, and two hours for three status updates.

Applications involved: Outlook, Excel, Browser.

One very useful feature is the IQ Bot, which is helpful in the operation of the data input process to all of their applications. Initially, humans had to read one per one document, but with the IQ Bot, it is continuous until the input process is complete.

Currently, IQ Bot is implemented by a finance company that is concentrating on motorbike financing. There are many claim documents that must be processed and inputted to their internal application, and using the IQ Bot reduces both cost and time.

My suggestion for version A2019 is to enable the Metabot function because it helps us in a shortcut to the integration process with other applications such as SAP, Oracle, and Cyber​Ark.

It would be helpful if Device Credentials can sync with Active Directory so that for the IT policy case that requires periodic password resetting, there is no need for a human to input manually into each Bot Runner machine.

The quality of the IQ bot can be further refined for scanned documents.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for about two years, since 2018.

After using the A2019 version, I find that it is more stable and features more actions. However, maybe because this is a new version with a change in platform, it still has some bugs.

The support from the AA team was very helpful when I encountered issues that I couldn't solve on my own. The ability of the support team is very good and helpful.

From the start, I have only used Automation Anywhere for RPA.

At the initial project commencement in 2018, it was still complex. With the experience of AA projects, it became easier for us to start them.

We implement using an internal team. To improve development skills, I always suggest taking the AA certification and participating in the training.

We did not evaluate other RPA options.

The current version has a fresher UI and more Excel processing features. That's what I admire.

We use AA for Training and Proof of Concept purposes.

OS: Windows 10 

Task: Automate Excel files consisting of quality data.

Multiple Task Cloning

Automated Email Sender

Object Cloning

The basic requirement was to extract a big Lot of data consisting of many attributes.

We need to extract out a relevant attribute from the DB data set and process it such that it fulfills client Data Quality requirement.

Filter out quality data using Manual intervention was a hectic task and that is why I used AA RPA tool. 

• It reduced a lot of time to process quality data and store in organized Excel files and ledgers.
• AA made Task management simpler.
• Hassle-free development 
• Hassle-free deployment
• Good Community Support

There was a large number of individuals who were doing the data collection and artifacts collection, and they were actually a third-party. The solution improves our situation in terms of time, money, and resources. Plus, when you're dealing with Data Quality information, there are additional complications of privacy concerns. If we can keep that in-house and have a bot or automated code take care of it, then there are fewer human eyes on the private information as well. It's a resource saver, it's a money saver, and it helps us with security, keeping more human eyes away from private or touchy information.

1. Task Bots

2. Smart Recorder

3. Meta Bots

4. IQ bots

5. Task Cloning

6. Ease of coding with drag and drop features.

7. It has a very good analytics package.

It is one of the popular RPA vendors offering powerful & user-friendly RPA capabilities to automate any complex tasks. It is one of the "Revolutionary Technology" that changes the way the enterprise operates. This tool combines conventional RPA with intellectual elements like natural language understanding and reading any unstructured data.

Automation Anywhere allows organizations to automate the processes which are performed by humans. It is a Web-Based Management System which uses a Control Room to run the Automated Tasks. Automation Anywhere tool can automate ends to end business operations for companies.

1. Data Mapping Utilities

2. Console Management

3. Bot Runner need to perform much smoother

4. It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability.

5. Handwritten documents are still a drawback. Also difficult in terms of control room management.

6. A few applications take more time for loading when integrated.

7. Declaring the datatype of variables is challenging.

8. The process of migrating codes from one environment to the next can be automated as a default function.

9. The webpage for the control room could use some retouching or redesign to enhance the user experience.

10. Many little-usable features.

I have been using AA for three months. 

I previously used Ui Path.

First have hands on with Community Version and then figure out your requirements. 

Blue Prism

I have been using A2019 for validating IC reports and scorecards that we publish every month for the client on a portal. As the reports are around 200, it used to take a lot of manual efforts previously to get this done, however now, A2019 has helped in automating the complete validation part. 

Apart from this, the other major use case is validating the child level reports with the parent. Though the underlying reports are generated from the parent itself, validating individual reports just to add another level of the quality check was a tedious task initially, however, A2019 has made it very easy in comparing the two excel based reports end-to-end

Automation Anywhere, specifically A2019, has helped me and my organization in automating the tasks related to quality checks and assurances. As a consulting firm, it is really important to provide correct insights, reports, and deliverables to the client and it involves a lot of QC checks and validations. A2019 has helped us in automating a major chunk of such tasks, thus helped in saving a lot of time, effort, and revenue. There are trainings going on every now and then, to spread the knowledge and access of this tool to other folks in the organization, so that more number of people would be able to implement this in their projects

The best part about A2019 is its ease of use. You don't need to be a coding champ or an expert to use and implement A2019 in automating tasks. It's very easy to learn, tweak, and implement in your day-to-day tasks, especially features like capture/record is completely marvelous. Apart from these, the Excel basic and Excel advanced features are really handy and easy to use. I personally have used them frequently in all my bots as most of my work is related to excel and stuff. Last, but not least, using A2019 for automating the tasks even on the virtual machines, which is one of my favorites.

One of the challenges that I face every now and then while working with A2019, is around the bot agent updates. Every week/alternate weeK, I receive an error while running my bots, that asks me to update the bot agent. I have to download the bot agent every time and reinstall it, in order to get the work done. This thing has also created an issue for me in the past, where I need to present something to my US counterparts, and then the bot was unable to run because the bot agent update notification came few minutes before the meeting. This was really frustrating at that point in time, however, fortunately, I got that resolved within minutes during the meeting by updating the bot agent. Hence, I believe, there should be some facility available, which can help me in running my previously implemented bots, even if there are some updates in the bot agent

I recently got involved in A2019 training organized within my organization as part of motivating folks for Automation. It's been around six months that I have been using this as a part of my day-to-day work.

I have been using this for the past six months and have been already utilizing this for my day-to-day work. The level of involvement of A2019 for me is increasing as time passes, as now, I see things from a point of view, where I try to automate major chunk of my work using this.

This can be used to any level of tasks/processes as it allows the bots to communicate within. This helps in automating major tasks into smaller bots and then coordinating them together to automate the complete process.

I used to have connections with Automation Anywhere folks every week/alternate week and I must say that they were highly professional and learned people. They always guided me before even implementing something and made me aware of all the nuances. Overall, I am really happy to get in contact with such folks, who not even helped me in shaping my imagination for automation, but also showed directions by demonstrating their example bots.

I have a little experience of working on Blue Prism in my previous organization. However, Automation Anywhere is far better it in terms of features and ease of use and implementation.

For me, the setup was quite straightforward. Yes, I did take some online help to get some issues resolved, however, the overall process was pretty easy.

I implemented it in an in-house setup. This has really become a part of my organization's work as the Business Operations vertical is using it very frequently.

I invested around 2-3 weeks in learning this and creating my first bot. Then it took me a week to use it for targeting parts of my day-to-day work. And now, I am using it for the past 6-7 months without any investments and saving a lot of effort on a weekly basis.

The costs are just a one-time cost, but the amount of savings it will generate is uncountable. So it's better to invest in something now, learn and start saving your time, effort, and money in the future.

One of the options was the level of features present in Automation Anywhere. It allows both back-office and front-office bots to automate. However, in the other case, only back-office bots can be automation. I personally like the UI and the overall features present in A2019 and level of ease, with which this can be implemented to any application.

The only con is the frequent updates in the bot agent every now and then. This annoys the user at times and (s)he may land up in some trouble due to this, as the bot would be able to run without installing the updated bot agent.