Building an automation with UI Path

Taking full advantage of modern automation tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) doesn’t require you to have any technical knowledge to get started, but knowing a little bit will help your firm get the most out of the experience.

To help bring you up to speed, I’m going to be explaining general concepts of software engineering as well as common language used by any particular automation system you may be curious about or expect to use in the future.

Today, I want to talk more about the RPA tool, UI Path.

 

The first step when building an automation in UI Path is to create what they refer to as a workflow.  You can think of a workflow as the entire process that you’d like to automate from start to finish.

Let’s use an example to make it easier to understand.  Let’s assume your firm needs to take a TON of data from a spreadsheet and add it into an ERP system (cloud based tool).  Saving your team countless hours of tedious busy work in the process.

The workflow involves every step that needs to be completed to build this automation.

 

The next step is to lay out each sequence of the workflow.  These are the major components of the process.  For example, one sequence might be getting the data from the spreadsheet and another might be adding that data to your other system.

A sequence is a major component of the process that includes smaller individual steps.

Get our awesome product content delivered daily-ish to your inbox

 

The final step is to build all of the activities into a sequence.  For the first sequence (get data out of the spreadsheet), you’d need to find the spreadsheet, open it, point to where the data is and retrieve it.  This example would make 4 distinct activities.

An activity is a specific task in a specific sequence that is only one part of a workflow.

 

To summarize, when using UI Path to build automations you’ll create a workflow that includes sequences that includes activities.  More to come here on how to use this tool and others.

 

PS. You can learn more about UI Path here.

 

Talk soon,
Sean

Find this advice helpful? I send out a short message every day to help accounting firms learn how to boost their profit without needing to hire more CPAs.

Join my growing list of subscribers below