My primary use case starts with downloading an inventory file in IE and then storing it in the database. This uses DB variables that interact with the banking application.
Through its automating system of generating quotations, it is much easier for us to track back the same customer data. It is giving us a real-time capability for generating reports.
Automation anywhere has equipped us with amazing tools including Bot Insight, IQ Bot, Discovery Bot, etc. The Discovery Bot is used to search the entire task in the system that can be automated. It keeps much value in our organization.
Extracting PDFs is very easy using Automation Anywhere. Its strong points are that it is easy to use, easy to deploy, easy to share, and has multi-user support. Different devices can be used to execute the bot.
The Bot Store provides some utilities for free, which can then be integrated into my workflows easily.
Using automation has reduced between five and eight FTE in our inventory download and update task. This is more generic to the RPA space than AA specifically, but we tried to automate a large, high FTE, end-to-end process as a POC.
AA is user friendly.
The most valuable features are the web recorder, which is used to extract structured table data, the Metabot to handle smart process automation (SPA), Object Cloning, variable assignment, and Message boxes.
IQ Bot is a unique offering from AA that allows you to extract information from semi-structured documents like PDF invoices, using built-in ML. The ability to train documents and easily review any that fall outside of the model is excellent.
AA has good coverage in terms of out-of-the-box functionality for bot development and management. A2019 has some great new features that take this further, such as the ability to create custom commands for your organization, which helps code reuse and development.
Comparing the code from dev to QA or production should be in some easier way.
Pausing the bot and resuming it in Metabot should be easier.
The Control room audit logs should be moved to an archive for those that are more than six months old.
The error handling capability is good but we are facing difficulties when there are multiple tasks in the same project. I want to be able to handle errors that occur in sub-tasks and it would be better to introduce a global error handler so that we can debug all of the relevant tasks.
I would like to have a project sharing hub like GitHub, inside of the tool, which will help to consolidate project files post-deployment.
I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past four years.
We experienced continuous bot disconnections in our environment. Once we validated it with the AA support team, they suggest for version upgrade and it solved our problem.
The technical support team has good knowledge of the product. They understand problems well and then provide solutions.
My recommendation would be to start with some simpler processes. This will build your capability and understanding far more quickly. Automating processes that utilize a lot of different web applications can be tricky without additional input/error checking. Be sure that your code is resilient enough to ensure inputs get transcribed accurately and pages/content are loaded before executing more lines of code.