UiPath Platform Reviews

I have worked on two UiPath use cases. The first use case is for the IT Infrastructure team for submitting server requests. They receive a request from a third-party portal through email, and then my bot reads the email and fills in the details in the company portal.

The second use case is the data extraction from Word documents. The team receives Word documents with some important contract information. I extract those paragraphs and put them in the CSV format given by the customer.

We are using UiPath Studio 2020.10.2, and the Orchestrator version is 2019.

I heard about UiPath RPA in December 2019, and I went to the UiPath Academy website and completed their learning plans. Till March 2020, there was free certification, and I completed the free certification and kept on practicing. I showcased my skills to the management in my company, and I got into RPA projects. The certification has helped me in getting good projects. It has also helped me with my work for the use cases. My position is now better as compared to the previous years, and my work is also good. 

They provide end-to-end solutions. They have UiPath Studio for the development, and they have Orchestrator for package deployment. We can also monitor the performance and execution in Orchestrator. All these are helping us in managing end-to-end automation.

All UI automation activities in UiPath Studio and REFramework are useful. UiPath Orchestrator is also valuable. These features help me a lot in my projects. 

UiPath Studio's UI automation activities help me in easily developing automation. It is difficult for RPA developers to write complex code because no one knows everything about all automation areas. For UI automation, it is not mandatory for a developer to know how to write the code for the element on the screen that needs to be clicked or typed into. The UI automation packages of UiPath provide built-in activities, and developers can directly drag and drop and indicate the element on the screen that needs to be clicked or typed into. 

REFramework is a template using which we can prepare quality workflows for the transactional processes. It has very good error handling, retry, and logging mechanisms.

We can monitor robots in Orchestrator. We can check logs, monitor the performance of each robot, and divide robots into different environments. These features are very helpful for me in managing my work. If I have two or three robots on a set of machines and I want to define my process only for these robots, I can add that process into the environment. My process will be executed only on those robots. This is a good functionality.

For every transaction, there is the queue functionality in Orchestrator. I can go to a queue and add each transaction item to the queue. For every transaction, I can check the logs. I can also check their logs based on the jobs executed. We also have triggers, so we can schedule our jobs with the help of triggers. These features are helping me a lot in managing the performance of my robot and understanding how my robot is performing.

They have UiPath Forum where I can ask any questions. Many UiPath Most Valuable Professionals are on that forum, and they help us a lot. We get quick replies. If anyone is having any challenges, they post their challenges on the UiPath Forum. I can go through them, and if they are already solved, I gain knowledge by reading those solutions. If not, I try to answer them. In addition to gaining the knowledge, I'm getting some visibility in the UiPath Forum. All these things have really helped me a lot in increasing my technical level and expertise and getting good work.

UiPath Studio supports three types of workflows: sequence, flowchart, and state machine. Flowchart and state machine are good. Sequences are also good, and they're for linear workflows. However, in a sequence, as we keep on dragging and dropping the reusable components, the size of the screen increases. If we drag and drop the conditional or looping activities on the site, the screen size increases in length and breadth, and it becomes too complex for a developer to navigate between activities. 

All programming languages, such as C, Java, Python, or Visual Basic, have script-level support. So, we can reuse their functions because they support scripting. For example, if we want to use any reusable components, Python has modules, and there is a way to import packages. For complex automations, if we can write a script, it makes it easy to manage and know the line on which we are getting a syntax error or a runtime error and how is the structure. If I want to modify the logic, it makes it easier to know in which block I need to make the changes. So, it is easy to navigate in the program. Instead of the drag-and-drop blocks, UiPath should have support for scripts such as VBScript and PowerShell. It should support scripting even for complex automation.

The user interface for logging should be improved in Orchestrator. Currently, the logs in Orchestrator show how many hours ago the execution is completed, but it doesn't say how much time it took for a particular execution to complete. It just gives you a rough idea that it started three hours or one hour ago. It doesn't tell you exactly when a particular execution started, and at what time, it stopped. To get a clear idea, I need to click one more button and go to the details of the log. I need to check the start time of the first log and the end time of the last log in the same job, and then I need to calculate the difference to know the exact time it took for completing the job. Instead of doing all that, there should be a column that gives me the exact amount of time in minutes and seconds. It will help me in understanding how much time each execution took and what I should do to improve the speed of the execution.

In my current project, there are no intelligent automation requirements, but I have learned it recently. Just today, I completed the UiPath AI Center course. I also have some basic knowledge of machine learning. They're giving us options to use the out-of-the-box models developed by UiPath and their third-party vendors. With our internal data science, we can also develop our models, integrate them through UiPath AI Center, and deploy them. They're giving us an option to use them as a part of our RPA workflows with the help of the UiPath Studio activity called ML Skill. So, it becomes very easy for RPA developers to integrate machine learning models into their automation workflows, which is very nice, but I feel there should be some more improvement. They should give more visibility into how much time a model takes to finish the training and on how many algorithms it is running. They should also give visibility into which algorithm is best suited for my requirement and which algorithm is giving the best results for my requirement. If they can also give such insights in the same UiPath AI Center, it will help me in picking up the correct model and algorithm for my requirements.

When it comes to intelligent automation, machines use machine learning. No machine learning model can reach 100% accuracy or give 100% accurate output, which is a limitation. However, there is a possibility to increase the accuracy by tuning the parameters. So, UiPath should give more visibility into their models, how the pipeline is running in the AI center, and which factors can improve the accuracy of my model. Such insights will be useful for me in improving the accuracy of my intelligent automation.

In December 2019, I started learning UiPath, and I became an RPA developer in November 2020.

Until now, I have seen good uptime. There were no disruptions in data. I've seen the services running properly 99% of the time. Their logging mechanism, job schedules are also running properly in Orchestrator. So, it is a stable environment.

We're getting good support from UiPath. I would rate them 75 out of 100. Most of the time, I get fast and good replies from the support team. Sometimes, I receive late replies, or they don't understand the question properly, and I need to explain multiple times, but they are mostly good. 

I have worked on different IT process automation tools in the past. Their support did not respond as fast as UiPath's support, and they put the tickets in the suspended mode for a long time. They also didn't understand the question a lot of times and took too much time to analyze the issue. 

I also have the advantage of talking to my Infra team because we've deployed it on-premise. They can act as the first level of support and check if there is anything wrong with the on-premise server. If it is related to UiPath functionality, then we raise a ticket with UiPath support.

It was already set up when I moved to this team. I was working in IT process automation, and I moved to the UiPath development team. The setup and licenses of UiPath Orchestrator are managed by our Infra team members. They provided me with the licenses and links to the UiPath Orchestrator. So, I make use of the resources already deployed by my team. I just build and publish the packages to UiPath Orchestrator.

I have not deployed anything in the live environment, so I cannot comment about the return on investment. I've seen my colleagues deploying it, and with the help of data automation use cases, they have reduced around 10 hours per month for each support team. For my use case, we will be able to reduce at least one or two FTE for the support team when it goes live. I'm able to predict this because I have developed and tested many test cases for my use cases.

I only know about the community version. They give us two robots as a part of the community version, and they are enough for my practice and personal automations. For the office work, my Infra team checks the licenses needed for a particular use case, and my management team manages the pricing and licenses. 

Nine times out of ten, I would recommend others to use UiPath. I have also worked on other IT process automation tools, and none of them provides the functionality, support, and community like UiPath. I had conducted a survey on LinkedIn and asked about the RPA tool that people preferred. I got 60% of the votes for UiPath.

From the development perspective, I've seen a lot of improvement in the UiPath services in the last one year. They're giving more out-of-the-box models for the AI Center, and they are also improving their courses. They are also introducing new functionalities such as the orchestration processes in which you can use persistent activities, and your robot can wait for the human task to finish, and then it can continue its job. If they make any enhancements required for our current automation, we will make use of new UiPath functionalities to enhance our automation.

They have released two new versions of their certifications. One is UiPath Associate Certification, and the other one is UiPath RPA Developer Advanced Certification. I have completed the Associate certification. For these certifications, we have learning plans. There is recommended training, and everything is given on the UiPath Certification Program website. We have the option to check their recommended training and do the practices. They also guide us about how to book the exam from the Pearson website. Going through the recommended training and doing the Associate certification has increased my credibility. I've gained more trust in the company. It has changed my career. So, UiPath has played a prominent role in my career.

It can reduce errors by 100% because a machine can give 100% accuracy and work faster than humans. Just like all RPA tools, UiPath can provide 100% automation accuracy for rule-based automation. You also get better speed because machines are faster than humans. When it comes to intelligent automation, machines use machine learning, so there is a limitation. No machine learning model can reach 100% accuracy in automation.

I would rate UiPath an eight out of 10. 

We are a communications company who works with a lot of clients in our country. Now, we started using automation when working with business clients. Many processes were being done manually, e.g., activation of numbers. In order to alleviate the work of our sales team, this process was automated.

I haven't automated any of my work because the queue for processes that need to be automated is large.

My company uses Studio for our developers and StudioX for attended robots.

It is very important that we can scale automations without having to pay attention to the infrastructure. After one year, we have already automated almost 200 processes. Since the number of automated processes was large, a lot of people's time was freed. This solution is very important because we have a large subscriber base in our country, so we have become very efficient.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring of automation. This is very important to my company because in the future we will have contracts with UiPath to sell licenses and provide the same experience to other companies, helping them automate their process. Therefore, it was very important to implement the entire end-to-end process in our company.

Attended automation has helped to scale RPA benefits in my organization by automating department or role specific processes in sales and HR that require human robot collaboration. This is important to my company. The department who works on automation of internal processes has had a lot of meetings with our employees. They realized that employees could be against their automation processes and sabotage them. This didn't happen, but they have effectively implemented the attended robots for our employees' work by explaining to them that the robots are not a threat to their job. They would only be helping them, allowing employees to do something more important than doing repetitive tasks on their computers.

UiPath has helped reduce human error. We are working with clients where it is very important to provide them their necessary services. We are a telecom company, so we are providing activation of numbers, etc. If people are doing this manually, it can cause inconveniences for our clients, but it might also put the reputation at stake. For example, because when people do it manually, they can send out the wrong invoice. This is a huge reputation risk, because sometimes we are working not only with just a person, but with a business. When we work with other companies, it is important to do things accurately. When the robots do things, there is almost a 100% probability that they won't make any mistakes, like typos.   

The most important feature of automation is it can automatically detect things where people are doing things repetitively and spending a lot of time. So, people can actually do their real tasks, like making decisions and talking to clients. Therefore, people's time, which was busy with doing manual tasks, is free now. They can spend it on more interesting and valuable work where they can apply their valuable skills.

UiPath Academy starts at the very beginning with how to set up and navigate in UiPath. I noticed that the Studio and StudioX are both user-friendly. It is suitable for people of different existing levels of programming skills, even with those with zero background.

The process mining feature is not being used because my company had some difficulties with it.

UiPath could improve integration with other platforms, like the SAP platform. I heard that SAP has their own automation processes in their platform and they are trying to avoid integrations with RPA platforms. Sometimes, that can be difficult. UiPath's room for improvement is having the ability to integrate with as many platforms as possible.

I have been using it for about three weeks. I have been practicing some tasks and just started learning, but I don't have any advanced development skills.

My company has been using it for a year.

We have automated hundreds of processes.

There are about 30 people on our sales team who are using it. The HR team also uses it.

We didn't use another automation before UiPath.

The initial setup is straightforward, based on what I have seen from UiPath Academy. On the platform, there are videos which describe how to set up. You just go to the platform and download the setup package. You have to set it up on your PC, then open the application. Once the application has been opened, you need to sign in with your email. For the first step, you need to add your email to the application, so email is sent automatically to you when you sign in and the signup is complete. Then, you can start using the Studio and StudioX. It is very convenient because both of them are in the same application, like an all in one software. You don't have to set them up separately because everything is in one place. You can just switch between them in settings, which is very easy and straightforward.

We have people studying how to work on UiPath who are developers. Therefore, we have a whole department doing the setup in our company. I don't think that they are asking a third-party to come in and help. 

We freed up a lot of our sales team's time. For example, they can now spend more time with clients. We have successfully implemented attended robots for our sales team. They now spend half the time doing the job which has been automated. This has made our sales team happy. 

It is very costly to implement RPA. However, I think the benefits outweigh the costs over a long-term period.

Building automations is doable. I understand that it is hard. Some processes need to be adjusted to be automated. Even though sometimes it can take time to create processes for automation, it is still possible and useful to apply automation for many processes. 

I didn't have any background in programming previously. I chose the learning plan for beginners in UiPath Academy. It was very convenient that they divided their learning plans for people with different backgrounds, e.g., beginners or developers. The course is very well-structured and concise. It works perfectly for me and I have the ability to study in the solution without any background experience.

Because we managed to successfully implement it in our company, we now want to help other companies to implement their automation processes.

For my country, UiPath is progressive. It is important for people's mindset that they are able to work with robots and understand they are helpful.

A lot of companies in our country refuse to implement it, or they think it is very expensive, and they don't need this thing, but they should definitely go for it.

My biggest lesson was not to be afraid that robots will do my job. I learned that they are very helpful and can save me time that I can spend on something more useful, like obtaining new skills.

I would rate it as eight out of 10 because of its integration limitations with other platforms. It is also expensive.

We mostly use UiPath in the healthcare and banking/finance sectors. Our use cases depend on the different sectors we use it for. A typical use case would be an Excel file with lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of records that we need to filter and apply some business rules to. We may have to check whether numbers are in integer or alphanumeric format so that they can be accepted by a particular application, or whether date data is formatted correctly.

We use it for end-to-end automation. We take all the input from users, regarding the full life cycle of a process, and use UiPath to create a business solution. An end-to-end project can include taking an Excel file and putting the data into a data table. Based on that, we create some business rules, check things with validations, and then create some templates. We upload the templates for different legacy applications so that they can be automated. A bot will run these scenarios in the backend, in either attended or unattended mode.

We may take student records and place those records into a particular template which we then upload to an application, whether a web application or a desktop application. If a human was involved in doing this, it would take days to filter the Excel and create a template based on a particular record. But by setting up some business rules through UiPath coding, it automatically applies those rules to create the template and upload it to the application. We can then send a notification to the user by email, because we have connectivity with Gmail, Outlook, and SMTP.

A human being can work eight hours or nine hours per day on average, but a robot can run 24/7. With automation, we can save time and money by continuously running things on the same machine without any errors. The accuracy can be 90 or even 100 percent, depending on the logic of the code. It also helps the communication between clients, users, and our organization, improving the partnership. It definitely reduces human error because it's automated and well-tested. It increases work volume because it's very fast. In terms of the amount of time it saves, for repetitive tasks it can save 90 percent of an employee's time. Employee satisfaction has definitely increased.

UiPath is also helping us to increase the number of tasks we can do. For example, if a human being is reading an Excel, doing some operations and validations within it, it will take hours or days to complete. But using a UiPath robot, we can simply create the set of necessary instructions in our code so that it will run within minutes or even seconds sometimes. It is very fast.

We use every component of UiPath, from Studio to Orchestrator. It's very helpful and it is very fast. Orchestrator is very beneficial because we only need to create a particular robot once and then we can simply connect it to machines. It definitely saves time because we only need to maintain the versions of a package and the code, and that can be done locally or via Studio. Because there is a chance code could be deleted on a local machine, the fact that Orchestrator is in the cloud means we can definitely retrieve it from there.

Orchestrator also helps save time because there are scenarios where we have multiple stages of input, where something depends on a value. As developers, we don't need to provide the particular input and again publish the same package. We just go to the cloud, check the process, check the assets, change the value, and it will automatically update. It's a robust solution. Like its name, Orchestrator really does help us orchestrate things.

Also, non-technical people, the users, can see what is happening in their jobs. They can check the status of particular scheduled jobs and see whether they are running or busy, and how many bots there are.

Attended robots are also helpful because sometimes we have a scenario where a user cannot share credentials because everything must be secure. In that type of situation, we need attended automation that can be run on a particular machine in front of the user. While it's running, they can do other work on the same machine. That kind of implementation enables us to automate while keeping things more secure. This is important to us because security is a main concern. It allows users to keep their information safe, rather than making it available on other machines. It's their intellectual property and we respect that.

The most valuable features are some of the panels in UiPath Studio. For example, there is a debugging panel and a Designer panel. The debugging panel is useful because without it we could not solve any problems. The debugging panel provides functionality such as Step Into and Step Out, and we have highlight buttons. It helps us to analyze our code, what is wrong in a solution, and debug from the start to the end, to make the solution better.

The Designer panel is where we create a workflow or step-by-step process, the place where a developer develops the code.

Within UiPath Automation Cloud, we are using Orchestrator in which we can

• deploy the bots and maintain services
• create attended and unattended robots for different versions of machines and manage which robot runs in a particular environment
• use the queue to manually configure the times that bots repeatedly run. Using Orchestrator, we can simply schedule the target application. The queue also has a retry mechanism so that it will automatically take input, and we can specify the number of retries
• store a user's ID and password credentials in the Orchestrator database
• check the Orchestrator home page for what processes and jobs are running, and see any feedback on them, as well as the output
• see the logs in Orchestrator.

They are currently working on most of the things I have thought about that need improvement, such as connectivity with other software and AI/ML capabilities.

But one area for improvement is connected to the fact that it's completely based on Visual Basic .NET and C#. I would like to see some more basic activities that are particular to the VB.NET code, as well as activities based on LINQ queries because that is one of the fastest and most integrated languages. I would like to see pre-written activities so that we could simply drag and drop them into place and use them frequently. It would be better to not have to go into the syntax for that particular language code. I would prefer if we could use activities from the Activities panel, and just provide the input and output, and they would work in the backend.

I have been using UiPath for the past two years. I have very good experience in this particular tool, as an RPA developer. I have created enterprise solutions and business solutions from end-to-end.

The solution is stable because it has been developed precisely and it's already optimized. It depends on the user's input and on the architecture and the environments. We have very good stability.

UiPath is very scalable. It depends on the user's requirements and on the approach we follow. A modular approach makes it more scalable. For example, if we have different VMs, different accounts, or different licenses for the machines on which we are running, we can simply create one package and we can deploy it on the various machines, if we have the licenses for those robots. 

You can create one set of code or a package and run it anywhere, if it is suitable and the requirements are met. That's one reason the scalability is very good. 

We have a huge market and a huge environment. We can continuously run with a multi-bot architecture. If the code is developed that way, it will definitely increase the scalability.

UiPath is used by many users in our company. Their roles are varied. They could be in data analytics or they could just be doing some tedious task.

The business side is happy with the solution because it is decreasing tedious and repetitive tasks. They are happy with the time and money savings. As a result, they want to do other things via UiPath robots. They want to find other processes where the work can be done more productively.

UiPath support enables us to manage issues by creating non-production and production tickets. We can discuss issues in calls and show them examples of the particular issue or activity under discussion. They provide us with support. Sometimes, when activities are not working, we can upgrade and downgrade the version of that particular activity. We can even send logs to them so that they can analyze and troubleshoot issues. It definitely helps.

I have only used UiPath for RPA. I have read about tools like Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere,  but I cannot compare them. They all have their own advantages and disadvantages. I like UiPath because it's user-friendly and it has a very big community in the forums. We can learn from the community. And the UiPath Academy provides training, certification, and diplomas so that a person can learn and develop the ability to create a solution.

The initial setup is a little complex. You need high-end knowledge. You need to create the Studio setup on the different VM environments, deal with the licenses, and the Orchestrator setup. All of that requires good knowledge. You need to understand infrastructure and how things are set up. It's complex for regular users. The installation itself is relatively easy, but understanding the infrastructure is challenging. With guidance and training, it definitely becomes easier.

Licenses are costly, but, in the long run, UiPath will definitely help the business. Developing a solution is a one-time investment, which can be completed in a couple of days. But that work will be done next month, and again and again for the next 10 years. It definitely helps with digital transformation because it can connect solutions and create better opportunities.

UiPath is a good investment and return on that investment is very good. We can create robust solutions with UiPath.

Some licenses might be costly but it depends on the type of work involved and the turnaround time required. If you want to include AI/ML bots, it will definitely cost you more. If you want to use some of the latest features, like UiPath Insights, that will cost more.

But for low-level bots and automation and normal use of Orchestrator, the cost is per-bot.

Overall, pricing of the Enterprise Edition is pretty good. And for practice, we have the Community Edition, which is free. They also provide trial robots for two months so that we can use them for learning.

When it comes to implementation, we think about how to make a solution robust so that it can be controlled and configurable. That way, if something changes in the future, we can work on it accordingly. It should be a modular approach.

You need to focus on requirements-gathering so that you can focus on exactly what the user wants, how the application behaves, and what kinds of errors might happen. You need to check all the environmental factors. Those are all lessons I have learned from creating UiPath automations. You also need to analyze things from the business perspective and think about how much money and time is being invested and what the ROI will be in the end.

End-to-end automation, starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring of the automation, is a very important aspect of UiPath. Rather than starting directly with the coding, we analyze the business process so that we know how the business is manually doing something and understand their problems and how much effort they are putting into it. We then start to think about how we can use a bot to save time and money. Each phase of the process life cycle is important because, phase-by-phase, things need to be passed from one to the other as input. After delivering the automation to production, we need to provide monitoring services so that if there is an error or downtime, we can make changes. That is why each phase is important in the life cycle of RPA.

From the business perspective, we check what kind of automation is involved and how much time and money we can save by automating, as these kinds of projects are high-budget. The main goal is to run the business as fast as we can. We analyze whether it is suitable for the business and how it can be profitable. We look for processes where we can save 85 to 95 percent of the time or money involved. We also consider how much human error is involved in the process as it is.

Currently, we are not using the AI/ML functionality. But because I use the Community Edition of UiPath in my personal work, and it has the latest features, I have attended the training for AI Center provided by the UiPath Academy. I tried some analysis with these models, as well as the checking of words by AI/ML, in the Community Edition, and it is one of the excellent features. It's very useful. ML models are amazing. They are using APIs which are connected to Orchestrator and they are running those kinds of models. We can also deploy our own custom models if we know the AI/ML tools.

UiPath is one of the best tools available in RPA and it's currently booming. It's the perfect tool because the UI is very friendly. It is widely used. I believe pretty much everybody in the IT industry is working on an RPA solution, many with the help of UiPath. It depends on the particular business and whether they have the capacity, but everybody wants to increase use of UiPath because it provides cloud-based automation and it's a robust solution. Everybody is happy with the solution. They want to create more automated processes so that they can decrease that time and costs in their overall projects.

I'm working on a supply chain management project, where some of the distributors are eligible for some of their stock to be returned. The beginning of this stock rotation, and the interactions, are through email. It was previously done by representatives, but we are now automating that process so that we interact with the distributors using email. Responses are sent based on the validations that the bot performs. It's an end-to-end process, all automated using the UiPath.

The project I'm working on creates a lot of availability for employees to concentrate on other activities. Human interaction is reduced. Instead of all the management representatives interacting with front-end people, UiPath is interacting through the API. It has increased the time available to our associates who were working on that particular process. If 10 people were working on a particular process, that number has been reduced to three or four, and the other people have been able to concentrate on something else. The stock rotation process itself would usually take a month in a particular region, but that has been reduced to less than 15 days.

We have also automated a few processes that have human and bot interaction, using UiPath Action Center. When there is human interaction in a particular process, it takes a lot of time. But when we integrated a process with the bot through Action Center, the time needed for the human interaction was reduced. It gives time back to the person who would be doing repetitive work. For example, if a value is different from what the bot is expecting, an Action Center task will be triggered and the human will submit the input that is needed. The rest of the process will then be taken care of by the bot. So the time spent on a particular validation is reduced.

Also, if you compare the situation from a couple of years back, when I started using UiPath, and the present, there has been a lot of change in the way UiPath comes up with new products when it comes to document validation, such as Document Understanding. That does speed up the digital transformation process, and I haven't seen any requirements for additional infrastructure as a condition for benefiting from that transformation process.

UiPath has also helped to reduce human error, and that reduces the time that a particular process takes to run.

For beginners, UiPath is a very low-code or no-code experience. They can get started with StudioX. The best place to learn the solution is the UiPath Academy. If they come across any hurdles, the forum is an excellent place to post them and get answers. As a community, UiPath is very encouraging for newcomers. People with no coding experience can automate processes.

Initially, because I was working with Automation Anywhere, the switch was a little bit overwhelming. There are comparatively more Activities in UiPath. The scope is very large; you can automate large processes. But eventually, I have come to feel that building automation is easier in UiPath than with Automation Anywhere.

Also, in my experience using UiPath automation, we have not had to make any changes to infrastructure. It has really been a seamless interaction.

We don't use the UiPath Apps feature yet. I did a PoC on it and it looks like a wonderful product. But when we are using Action Center with Apps, the Action Center stage is built in Orchestrator, but the same field is not built in the Apps. We have to work around that particular process, to make Action Center and Apps work together. Action Center waits for a particular input when a particular task is triggered. This stage is not built in Apps. UiPath Apps should be stepped up in terms of its functionality and integration with other UiPath products.

I have been using UiPath for almost three years.

I did come across an issue very recently where, when I had to update the version of the Activity package I used for a particular deployment, the Data Table Activity, it did not list the way it had been listed. I raised a question in the forum, but there was no clear answer. Apart from that, I haven't seen any other instability with UiPath.

UiPath is scalable. We have deployed bots across many regions. There was no limit in that respect. I haven't seen any issue; the scalability is good.

I work in the automation center of excellence in our company. There are 50 to 60 teammates there, working on UiPath and Automation Anywhere. In UiPath, they work on the automation of SAP. In addition to my work on supply chain automation, there are a couple of projects dealing with our customers' needs. Our organization builds products that are generic and we then customize them to meet those customer needs. There are also some projects where Excel activity is the focus. And we recently started using Document Understanding in a PoC. We generally have two or three developers working on deployment, along with one DevOps person. Not many people are required for deployment.

I haven't contacted UiPath tech support, other than posting that Data Table Activity question in the forum.

I was working with Automation Anywhere for a year or so, but because of the requirements of our company, I had to switch to UiPath. The switch happened because a customer we work for deploys UiPath.

I have been able to learn things like interaction with multiple enterprise systems, including OBI, using API calls. Unlike other automation applications I have used, implementing a process using UiPath is very easy.

In terms of end-to-end automation, there are products that are useful for identifying processes for automation. But for the process I'm working on right now, we did not use UiPath to implement end-to-end automation. Identifying the process for automation was done separately. Only building the bot was done in the UiPath. The process is not end-to-end, except for the bot development. When I think of "end-to-end," it includes identification of the process for automation. From there, you need to build up the process, the documentation, et cetera. End-to-end is important, as it means you aren't switching between multiple tools.

We have a cross-platform infrastructure, where two servers are sitting. We have Orchestrator, which we connect to our virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). In the VDI, we have a UiPath stationed. 

From India, I work for an Australian client. Previously, I worked for a European client. In order to work with the client network, we have a dedicated Wipro laptop. In that Wipro laptop, we log in and connect via the VDI. In that VDI, we have UiPath Studio. Using UiPath Studio, we are doing development for the client and automating functional business processes.

We are extracting data from Salesforce using a particular report that is sent by the business SMEs. We pick exact fields end-to-end, then we put these values into Salesforce. Next, we extract the value and data from Salesforce, putting that into an Excel application. After putting the return to Excel application, we generate a service request for the business and send transaction reports of the bot's performance and accuracy at the end of the day. The business was taking around four to five hours. Our robot takes around eight to nine minutes in order to automate this end-to-end automation.

For another use case, there is an application that submits invoices for an insurance client in Australia. Right now, the business is doing this. Whereas, the bot operations reads a file on the hard drive, picks up that file, and puts it into SharePoint where the bot performs some operations. After doing those operations, the bot will report the status, whether it is valid, invalid, or an exception. When we get the file, we develop the application that submits the invoice. After that, we capture the data from the Excel application and submit a request. This is an end-to-end process. This bot only runs after business hours, five days a week, so it doesn't impact the application. With this process, we send daily transaction reports, the success ratio to the client, and present the entire picture to our peers and business holders.

We have set up our own cloud, which is internal. UiPath has a different cloud. Per our governance, we are not allowed to use another cloud. We are using our hosted internal cloud, which is hosted on our internal servers in Australia.

With our rule-based tasks, we pick the processes which involve a higher transaction volume and run many times in a week or month. Next, we analyze how much time the subject-matter experts (SMEs) uses to do their end-to-end journey. We calculate that, then decide the scope of the operation and whether to use an attended bot or unattended bot. We do analysis to determine which parts of the operation can be attended and unattended. Our preference would be the unattended bot, because it handles a lot of volume and is uninterrupted. 

In our analysis, we thoroughly check the scope of the application, whether it is a legacy or new application, and the dynamic nature of the data. Based on this, we define certain rules. Combining these rules, we design a complete end-to-end solution and give a presentation to the business that this is our commitment, e.g., this is the amount of Average Handle Time (AHT) and FTE that the bot will do. FTE means that if four people are doing a task, then it will give me back four FTEs. We then calculate the cost, meaning how much they are paying to that FTE and the cost of the bot. We compare the two and present our case. If the numbers are good, and the business agrees, then we proceed further in our discussions with them. This is the power of analytics.

We don't need that much infrastructure. If an analyst is doing reporting with an Excel sheet, then we can give him a bot and capture what he is doing without paying attention to the infrastructure. From the captured information, we give them a bot that will help them to do their regular task. This process helps them to understand automation while not investing in infrastructure. 

We design end-to-end solutions. We have different roles, teams, and divisions. I am part of the technical department, so I design the solution. I am responsible for analyzing and developing the solution. Once I develop the solution, I monitor the bot for two weeks, which is the "hypercare period". After the business is satisfied that the bot is performing, we give it to the support team. This is how our RPA lifecycle flows. It has around nine stages, including discovery, analysis, design, development, support, presentation, and solution. 

We have developed a bot process called "Padlock". In "Padlock", there is security development. It is very important that the user input his credentials. Per the governance of the process, we are not allowed to store the credentials on the cloud. It is very dynamic and encrypted. We have deployed about 25 robots for this particular process. The robot does its job after the SME. After a certain point, there is a CAPTCHA. The robot helps the SME do things, and they need to input their credentials and click the CAPTCHA, which happens in real-time. They verify all the information, giving them more confidence in their regular processes. We have deployed a large number of bots using this process. This has brought a lot of value because we have saved on a good number of costs when it comes to attended automation. 

I have found Orchestrator is UiPath's most valued feature. It has the ability to automate different applications, such as, mainframe automation and Excel macros. It is so efficient. We can download up to seven days back in just one click, monitoring errors.

It gives you the ability to efficiently monitor the bot.

With the new updates, a lot of analytics have come from AI Center.

Its features help us showcase what the bot has done and efficiently delivered to the business.

They are improving the OCR feature for reading text and images as well as the operations for automating that. They have integrated third-party OCRs, such as, SharePoint, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and mainframe automation.

The advantage of using StudioX is I can see how long the bot will take or what went wrong for any particular use case.

In the future, I would like new services that can utilize robots as a service (RaaS).

Our legacy applications are a bit old, so we get issues sometimes in automating those. However, modern applications are very compatible with the UiPath tool.

We have seen that UiPath doesn't have the capability to identify unknown pop-ups. This needs improvement.

The API needs a lot of improvements because it does not give proper results. There are always some issues with the logs.

When it comes to real-time scenarios, we see in production that Citrix automation always crashes. This integration could bring a lot of value to UiPath. Our business could save a lot of time and money if we could automate Citrix effectively.

All of our code resides in GitHub, which is our central repository for managing the code. There was a performance issue using GitHub with UiPath; it was slow. They have recently upgraded the performance so we are happy with it now.

I have been using UiPath for more than four years.

We always design a stable unattended solution that helps the business.

If fields are scattered, then the bot might get confused. 

Maintenance is handled by our support team. When something crashes, our dedicated support team monitors the bot. If the application crashes in production, the bot will send an application link to the support team and business stakeholders because the bot has faced some downtime in the application and kindly look into that issue.

Because I have automated a lot of enterprise solutions, I would go with the UiPath tool. They are frequently rolling out updates to the software. It is very stable compared to other tools in the market.

Infrastructure is quite important at an enterprise level. There are a lot of mundane and repetitive tasks. Once we have the infrastructure, then we set up best practices and governance. Based on that infrastructure, everything can scale up. Though, if we are going to build a lot of bots on a personal laptop to automate something small, then infrastructure is not as important with that.

We started with two to three bots. Now, we have around 25-plus bots. There are around 300 to 350 using both attended and unattended automation.

I have spoken a number of times with the UiPath product team. Initially, we were not able to use Excel, so we contacted the UiPath team. They provided a solution. They support the product well. I would rate the tech support as seven out of 10.

I have previously used Selenium. We switch because of scope. The Selenium tool was good with bot automation. With UiPath, we can do various automations, like mainframes, ServiceNow, SharePoint, etc. In order to increase implementation of automation from my end, I started with UiPath. I liked it because of its ability to automate applications. Those are the main reasons that I switched from Selenium to UiPath and SoapUI to UiPath.

The initial setup and deployment are pretty straightforward. They provide free training, which is a good thing. We do the training correctly and religiously. Once we are good with the training along with a little programming knowledge that we have acquired over the years, it is easy to adapt and work on UiPath because it is structured and organized. 

Our setup is a mixture. Orchestrator is hosted on a server and the application is installed on a desktop or system.

In order to use UiPath on servers, we need to set up two servers: one in Australia and the second in New Zealand. 

The implementation is not that big of a task. It is very organized.

It has been a huge monetary benefit. Since the bot has been running for two and half years, it has given my organization a lot of business. When I joined Wipro in 2019, there was one guy who was developing the bot. We named the bot, "win-back". As the name suggests, 'win-back' means winning customers back. That was a maintenance bot which possessed a lot of qualities. If a person was physically doing the task, then we might need to spend $90,000 on them. This is the difference. While the robot has some costs, they are not huge when compared to the salary or compensation that we give to an SME. This is how an organization can scale up, because the bot works accurately 24/7 without any maintenance. Also, seeing the bot's accuracy, as well as the volume that it handles, motivates other business holders to go for automation.

We automated an internal solution because there were long keywords that led to spelling mistakes, since spelling mistakes don't look good on invoices. Therefore, we input this extracted data to an application, using end-to-end automation. This reduced human errors tremendously. For example, with the "win-back" solution, errors tended to happen because the volume is high. Therefore, we wrote a code that has reduced errors for the "win-back" solution.

Because of the bot's accuracy, it has saved us a lot of time and money, making the life of the subject-matter experts easier. It is a win-win situation. They are making the most of the bot, running it continuously. They don't need to wait for a particular report. For example, people, in our organization, work eight hours then send a status mail, which says, "I have done all these tasks." Instead of having us create the report directly, the bot saves a lot of time. 

The bot marks in the report what is successful and unsuccessful as well as the reason for not being successful, e.g., if it was an application, data, or particular element issue. There are a lot of areas that we call "exceptions". Every day, we are getting all these details in one go. Whereas, a person would be frustrated or bored providing all these figures. That is the cost of human error. If you are not paying attention to a particular task, then errors will happen naturally. 

The bot currently performs four times faster than the SMEs for the tasks that we automated.

After three or six months, we send out a survey to different SMEs in various production areas, asking how the bot is doing. From the survey, we have found that the bot is helping them out a lot. They are very satisfied with it.

The solution has reduced our costs by approximately five percent.

I have seen very high ROI from the processes that we automated. It is very good to invest in automation.

There are three leaders in the market: UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism. UiPath is in-between the two. BluePrism is on the higher end when it comes to pricing. Automation Anywhere is on the lower side when it comes to pricing. When comparing the automation of business processes, analyze the amount of work that your organization will save using automation, particularly compared to the pricing.

You will be compensated for buying the product when you see processes automating.

I also evaluated Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and EdgeVerve (which I used in a previous organization).

The trend of the other technologies is moving to the cloud. Other competitors of UiPath, like Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, have already moved their applications onto the cloud. This brings more robustness to the product, because its performance is significantly increased. It is also very scalable when putting in new features. 

I have attended a lot of UiPath's webinars.

We are in the initial stages of using the AI functionality.

The RPA technology is part of our digital transformation. For example, we are doing digital transformation by automating the Salesforce application.

They roll out an update every three months. With every update, we see a lot of new features. We are always exploring using those features so we can automate the stuff.

Don't rely completely on the UiPath tool to achieve automation. You should have some background and knowledge to understand what can be automated. There isn't a magical algorithm for building robots. You educate the robot on what can be automated.

We always rate a product based on other products. I would rate this product as nine and a half out of 10.

We provide RPA services and I am currently working on two different projects.

These projects are for two different clients that are each using a different version of the platform. In both cases, it is an on-premises deployment. Our clients only use the end product and don't do any development themselves.

One of my clients is a retail organization and the primary use case is invoice automation. Previously, the process was totally manual. They have different products and different departments and for each and every department for which they bill, like HR, there are printing and supply chain tasks to be completed. As part of their process, they generate invoices monthly.

To generate invoices, they need to gather data from different sources, such as a database or Excel files. What we have done is fully automated the process. They now only need to work with a consolidated Excel sheet and then email it, once complete.

Once they send the email to a particular email address, the robot retrieves it and reads the attached Excel sheet. After doing some cleaning, consolidation, and validation, it generates invoices each month in a particular template, and then it submits them to the EBS portal.

The manual invoicing task used to take between two and two and a half weeks. Now, they start it at 4:30 when they leave and it works overnight. The process is now fully completed within two days. The time saved is now time that can be used to focus on higher-value work. It has also improved employee satisfaction.

With respect to building automations, UiPath is very easy to use. I have trained people to use this product and it is so easy to use that even on the first day, people are able to start working with it.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation and it starts with features like task mining, process mining, and task capture. Then, we have Orchestrator, where there is a control room that gives you insights, and you can create dashboards using Kibana.

We have done work for a giant logistic firm, and the end-to-end coverage is very important for them. If you are spending and investing money then you should get a return, and the return, in this case, is measured by FTE savings.

Another way that UiPath has improved the way our organization functions is that we have introduced automation to clients that were not even aware of it. For example, we have a client that we have worked with for many years and we were ultimately able to introduce them to RPA. At this point, we have automated many of their processes. Essentially, when you automate a process or task for a company that is not even aware of RPA, they will start using it, which is very helpful for us.

UiPath has definitely helped to minimize the on-premises footprint for our clients. We work with a non-profit organization that we have done some automation for. Since they are non-profit, keeping infrastructure costs down is important. They run events each quarter and in the administration of those events, they have highlighted what they want to have automated and some of the processes include using AI and ML. As a result, the company is growing and creating new products.

I have seen companies that were hesitant about starting with automation because they were worried about the cost. However, in the long run, it saves a great deal in terms of FTEs, effort, and costs. Ultimately, it has helped to reduce the cost of digital transformation for our clients.

This product definitely helps to reduce human error. For example, if there is any human input that is required by the process then UiPath will help to catch these kinds of errors.

UiPath has also helped us to free up employee time. One use case that helped to free employee time was for our client that had to reset lost passwords manually. It was quite common that one of their users lost a password and needed to have it reset, so we created automation for it. The bot interacts with the Unix server to reset the password and the process is now free of manual effort.

Especially for a larger organization, time is money and if you're saving time, it's definitely saving you money. Overall, UiPath has reduced costs for our clients. 

The feature that we use the most is Studio.

Document Understanding is a good feature that is very helpful to us. We have an ongoing project that requires reading PDF files. We need to use different OCR engines and see which ones give us the correct data. Document Understanding allows you to extract the data into different types using different extractors. For example, there is an ML extractor and other types that allow you to pinpoint fields and determine which should be accepted. Based on the confidence level, it gets better every time. In this way, the feature has helped us a lot.

This is the friendliest community and forum that I have ever seen, which is something I see as added value.

I have been using UiPath for close to four years and I have worked with many of the features, but there are still some that I don't know. It is not obvious what all of the features do and it would be helpful to have more information about them.

I have been using UiPath for between three and four years, since 2017.

UiPath is pretty stable. Over time, I have seen them add new features and I have not found anything that wasn't working.

Automations are very easy to scale, regardless of what project you are working on. You don't have to think about the infrastructure, which is helpful. One of the things that make it more scalable is that we can integrate third-party tools and applications.

Our clients are expanding their scope in terms of RPA, so we expect to expand our usage. We will be looking for more use cases and developing more bots.

I have been in contact with technical support and my experience was very good. They responded the same day and resolved the query.

Neither we nor our customers were using a different RPA solution, prior to UiPath.

I have a little bit of experience with Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, although I have not used either of these to implement a bot for production.

The biggest differences between UiPath and these other products are user experience and ease of use. For example, with UiPath Studio, I can easily find things. Even after training on the other solutions, Uipath is still easier, which is a big plus.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It was installed with the MSI installer. I have also installed the Orchestrator, both on-premises and in the cloud, and it is also straightforward.

For Studio, it takes a few minutes to install it, or uninstall and upgrade it. If you have the prerequisites and the AI settings and other configuration options decided, it will take between five and ten minutes to complete.

If you have a reasonable and straightforward process then it can be developed and pushed to production the same day that you install UiPath.

To maintain the Orchestrator and the other components, one or two people would be enough. One person might have the Orchestrator and UiPath knowledge of what settings are required, whereas another person is purely IT and can assist in that regard.  

I have deployed this solution for a client on my own, so a single person is able to do it, without help from a third party.

Based on what my clients have saved in terms of FTEs, they are extending their scope of automation. For example, in one organization, they saved two FTEs and are now automating processes in different departments. I cannot estimate a dollar value but this saving in FTEs is their ROI. Overall, they are finding it very helpful.

The combination of Orchestrator and Studio is a bit on the higher side, price-wise, for some companies.

Overall, I think that the pricing is reasonable and it is similar to competitors. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We have used attended automation for our clients but I have not worked with that functionality. My work has been unattended RPA tasks.

I have tried the Automation Cloud offering but only personally, for learning. The SaaS option is very good and important for some companies because it allows them to save money. Regarding the price, not every organization can afford the Orchestrator, Studio, and everything else that goes with it. These types of companies sometimes want to be service-based, rather than purchasing everything on-premises, and this SaaS offering allows them to save money doing that.

I have implemented the UiPath AI functionality in a PoC, but not in any project as of yet. It is able to handle very complex automations, including those that include third-party integrations, as well as multiple environments on remote machines. We have tried some examples using Excel, Word, and PDF activities and at the same time, interacting with SharePoint, and Microsoft CRM. We are also getting data from the Citrix environment. Applying the AI functionality, it is very much capable of accomplishing complex tasks of these types.

We have not yet used the UiPath Apps feature, although I have explored it. It is a low-code option that you can use to create apps based on where you can see and interact with data, and then use them from Orchestrator. We plan to implement it in one of our projects soon.

There is a myth that when companies develop automations, they will lose jobs. In our experience, there is nothing like that. In fact, we have hired more people since we started working with UiPath.

They have added many features in the time that I have been using UiPath. For example, the AI/ML capabilities have improved to include things like a chatbot. Document Understanding is another new feature that was added, along with an ML Extractor, and AI Center. These packages have a lot of good features that will be helpful for everyone.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using UiPath is that there are a lot of processes in an organization that can be automated, and it is worth investing in RPA because you can reclaim that time for something more important. After using UiPath for some time, I am much better able to recognize processes that can be automated.

My advice for anybody who is thinking about implementing UiPath is definitely to go ahead with it. I recommend using it without thinking about anything else. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case is the automation of many reports, dashboards, and tables that were created manually by some of my colleagues. The tasks involve collecting information from SAP Solution Manager, manipulating some of the data based on business rules that have been implemented, and then storing the data in a specific way that can be used in the next part of the workflow. This includes using Excel and the aim is to create a PDF report that is sent to the top business line managers.

UiPath is the perfect tool to implement a solution like this, with continuous operative tasks between Microsoft native applications such as Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.

Before our UiPath implementation, the organization spent approximately two junior FTE on these tasks, and another 0.2 senior-level FTE in order to guide junior resources.

This process runs every day and if these tasks are executed manually, it means that two resources need to be staffed forever. At the end of the project, the organization gained a boost of two FTE saved and released, able to move on to other projects. This produced real value for the organization.

The efficiency of the process was the key success factor.

UiPath has the simplest low-code user interface that I've seen in my professional life. You simply drag and drop the activity on the flow, in a clear way, with clear names, and manipulating clear variables/arguments based on parameters. These are the key points in my humble opinion.

The library creation platform is really simple to use. Basically, it works like a normal flowchart application and once you've published packages, you can use and re-use these packages like activities in another workflow.

Last but not least, official Microsoft office integration is really useful, although all of the official integrations are very easy to use.

The UiPath Connect! and UiPath Go! communities come to our support every time we need to implement something challenging.

There are features that could be implemented on the coding side; for example, automatically assigning a unique ID for the "activity" used during the flow. As of now, if you use an activity via simple drag and drop, the activity keeps the original name. If you don't change the name of the activity manually then you will lose some information during logging. It would be useful to put a simple incremental ID on each activity, so even if you don't change the activity name, you will know where the process becomes stuck.

During the last update, the connection between robots and the Orchestrator (cloud) changed a lot. It would be a good idea to provide an easy way to use a single type of robot, regardless if it is a standard robot, floating robot, connected user, etc. Basically, have a simpler way to deploy robots in development, testing, and production environments.

I have been working with UiPath since 2017, and I plan to continue.

This product is really stable, and this is true for the on-premises deployment as well as the cloud version.

This solution is really scalable. It can be used in other organizational departments or on other robots in order to boost your automated tasks.

The vendor provides really good support; fast response time and great quality!

UiPath was my first RPA solution.

During the initial setup, care should be taken when configuring the robot connection. If you choose the "modern folder" setup then you could be struggling.

I am part of the vendor team, implementing RPA for other clients.

We have a 300% return on investment.

The price and setup costs need to be supported by a strong business case.

We evaluated Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, WorkFusion, and Selenium (for web automation).

We are using the on-premises UiPath solution for both attended and unattended bots. At this time, we use unattended bots primarily to facilitate integration between applications, and we are not using the attended bot capabilities.

Generally speaking, we develop integrations for our core banking system, which was written in-house and running on a mainframe. It is a highly-developed system that we started using more than 30 years ago. When it was created, we didn't have the integration capabilities that exist in other applications or core systems, today. This means that in order to have external applications communicate with the core system, we need to develop integrations. Examples of this might be web services or other APIs, and that's why it takes time to do.

We have teams to do the integration, but considering that the core banking system is in Turkey and all of our teams are busy, we don't have enough resources to implement all of our integration projects. Now, for the past three years, we have been implementing bots to handle integration by moving data from the applications to the core system, and from the core system to the applications.

The biggest benefit for us is time savings in terms of developing satellite applications for the core banking system. We are developing the robotic API, and we are integrating our internal front-end applications with the core system.

Using this approach, we can easily get and set data from the core system, and we can see the results for each transition. We can learn about what happens in the core system with the help of the bots.

The amount of time that we save depends on the use case. For example, if we implement integration between core banking and the applications instead of native integration through development, it saves a lot of time. I prefer native integration versus using the bots but sometimes, you don't have this opportunity because it will take too long to put into production. Other times, you can't justify undergoing a large development process for just a small integration, so it's enough to solve the problem using the bots.

There is another use case where our operations teams perform repetitive tasks using the bots. For example, when performing the task manually, users have to take the data from one screen and enter it on another screen. We have never tried to calculate how much time we are saving in cases like this, although I'm sure that we are saving a lot of time.

People in the organization have been asking for more projects to be automated because it is easier for them. When their tasks are automated, they are more relaxed and can focus on other more important tasks, as opposed to the repetitive ones. Getting away from repetitive tasks puts you in a position where you can make more decisions and be part of the smart part of the business. This leaves the easier, repetitive tasks for the robots.

There are a lot of really useful features in UiPath including the Orchestrator and the Studio.

The Orchestrator is one of the main tools that I use because I like to help orchestrate the bots. It is the heart of the tool and it gives me a lot of flexibility to automate or manage bots that are in the field. The Orchestration Server is one of the most important features and when you perform a deep dive, you see that it has a lot of functionality. It's great.

The Orchestrator has other features such as computer vision, AI, and machine learning, and it complements the bots and the Studio.

UiPath integrates well with Elasticsearch, which is a great search engine. ElasticSearch is more capable than UiPath for searching logs. I'm filling the gap in log reporting using ElasticSearch, where I'm feeding the logs into it and then creating dashboards, or using the analytics parts of ElasticSearch and Kibana.

The UiPath Academy is a very valuable component of this solution. Many of our employees have used the courses. With it, a person who has a little bit of an analytical mindset can easily learn to do many things. If somebody is willing to develop themselves in RPA, the UiPath academy is more than enough to do so. They will understand the components that make up the ecosystem. The academy is very good, well constructed, and has a lot of labs and exercises to help one learn the system by themself without any help, and very easily.

The logging capability that comes with Orchestrator does not allow you to create smart reports. You have the logs from the bots and what's happening on the machines because you get all of this information from the logs. However, UiPath is more capable when it comes to collecting information about your processes, time saved, or process execution. They have some smart report dashboards.

The installation and initial setup is difficult for non-technical organizations.

We have been using UiPath for more than three years.

Stability is something that we should consider in two parts. The first concerns the bots and how they are running the tasks on the machines. This comes down to what kind of developers we have because if you are developing properly, and implementing all of the exceptional cases that may occur during the execution of the process, it's very good. I haven't had any issues in cases like this.

The second part is the Orchestrator, and I haven't had issues with this either. In the more than three years that we have been using this environment, including the time in production and our test environments, we have never had an issue.

We have had two or three incidents because we didn't have enough space left on the database storage, but that was not related to UiPath. Rather, it is related to the infrastructure. Another time, the SSL certification expired so we had to renew it. Otherwise, stability-wise, we haven't had any problems.

Scalability is very good, although we have not reached a point where we needed to scale the infrastructure. The high availability and scalability are two of the main features in the UiPath environment but we have not needed to go in that direction yet. At this time, we only have five bots in the organization and that is enough.

We are not planning to increase the numbers at this point because the number of bots that we have can be managed on a single node. We don't have clusters or multiple bots because of the criticality of our processes, but these are things that you can add and set up to share the workloads. Although we don't use it, I think that it looks really promising.

In our team, we have a business analyst and developers. Some of the roles for the developers are varied. At most, we have three people on a project who are working with UiPath.

The technical support for UiPath is good. When we first started contacting them between two and three years ago, the support for everybody was the same. However, they're now offering different tiers of support that require a different license and cost. There is one basic technical support, where all customers have the right to open tickets and try to solve the problems. Then, there are different support levels where you can pay extra and you can get more assistance for solving your problems.

Up to this point, all of the problems that I have had are mostly related to upgrades and installations, and they have only been from time to time. So far, I have been able to solve problems with basic technical support. Some of the problems I have solved on my own, whereas with others, I have needed a small bit of help from technical support.

I can say at this point that the support is good, although really, I haven't had any major problems that necessitated a lot of support.

We have used other RPA solutions in the past, but not to the same scale as UiPath.

The initial setup is not very complex, but it depends on the profile and experience of the person who is using it. Considering we had a great deal of deep experience in the project implementation and also the technologies, we are familiar with everything. This includes tasks like installation of the infrastructure, configuring the databases, configuring the virtual machines, and installing the robots' features.

For less technical organizations or people, it will be difficult to implement the UiPath infrastructure. In that case, they will need the help of partners.

It's not so easy, but it's well documented. In fact, one of the good things about UiPath is that everything is very well documented. The deployment takes no more than two or three weeks.

Our implementation strategy started with developing bots using the trial license. We found the bot implementation was very easy. The trial includes everything that you need to develop workflows and the bots that run on the machines. When you get to the point where you need to run multiple bots in production, you need the Orchestration server.

We did not install Orchestrator until between four and six months after we started with the trial. In the beginning, we were testing UiPath and creating some small projects. These were very easy to implement. After that is when we decided to buy the license and move the bots to production.

In terms of maintenance, it is not critical for the bots. It's the Orchestrator that has to be maintained and kept up to date. Every year, you need to upgrade your infrastructure with the latest release, so there is some annual maintenance. If it is on-premises then you also have to maintain the hardware that everything is running on.

Of course, there should be somebody responsible for taking care of the databases and general system maintenance. The operating system, for example, should be maintained by someone. All of these things are layers and sublayers on top of the solution.

If instead, you implement the cloud version of UiPath, then you can get rid of all of the maintenance. In that case, you have only the bots and the Orchestrator, which are hosted on the UiPath cloud, and you don't have to worry about anything. UiPath does the upgrades and performs all of the maintenance, which is nice. In the future, we may go in this direction. However, at this time, maintaining the infrastructure in our organization is easy and not a burden for us.

I can't say that UiPath is expensive but I can't say that it's cheap. The cost that we are allocating for RPA doesn't burden us too heavily, so what we are paying is acceptable compared to the gains that we have in the organization. That said, it is relative because it depends on the size of the organization, the budget, and other factors. From our point of view, considering our budget, it is okay but for another organization, it might be expensive.

There are some features, such as UiPath Insights, that require you to purchase an additional license. The logging capabilities are also a feature that you need to pay extra for.

While we were searching for solutions, we read the documentation for UiPath. We found out that UiPath was originally started as a Romanian company, where we are, so we figured that we would try it since this is where it was first implemented. Our tests showed that UiPath was very promising but we kept investigating other solutions.

We tried Blue Prism and we tried Automation Anywhere, which are both RPA tools. We also did some studying, looked at the Gartner report, and did some further analysis. Ultimately, we decided to buy the licenses from UiPath because it was solving all of our problems.

When you use this system, you are using features from several different modules. It's something like an ecosystem where you have the bots, Studio, and the Orchestrator. If you are not using all of them at the same time then something is missing. They complete each other. If, for example, you don't have the Orchestrator and are only running the bots then it is a different kind of automation.

In the past, as I was using UiPath, I found that there were additional features that I wanted, but regularly and with each product update, they were bringing in new functionalities. At this time, I don't have a project that is waiting and cannot be implemented due to missing features. All of the tools that they deliver, for the time being, together are enough to implement any type of project.

We are not yet using the AI functionality because to this point, although that is because we don't yet have a proper project for it. At the same time, the AI and machine learning functionality are very important to us because we are planning to use them.

We have not used the UiPath Apps feature because it is one of the new features that has come out lately, and we haven't had the time to gain a deep understanding of these technologies. We have some rough ideas about how we can use this feature, but for the time being, we do not have a project that needs to be solved with UiPath Apps.

My advice for anybody who is implementing UiPath is to start with studying the processes and trying to determine whether they are good candidates for RPA. In order to automate a process, you need structured data such that the inputs and outputs are somewhat predictable. Once you know what it is that you want to automate, you have to understand the capacity, and then if you have any candidate processes, you can begin developing.

UiPath is the RPA solution that I recommend. However, it is important to know, before purchasing a solution, which of the processes are good candidates for automation.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.