Introduction to UiPath RPA

Introduction to Uipath

Uipath is a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool developed by Romanian entrepreneurs and is headquartered in New York City, USA. It was initially launched in 2005 and is based solely on windows operating systems and aims to automate any repetitive or labor-intensive tasks with ease. It is one of the most powerful RPA tools available in the market and faces strong competition from Blue Prism.

This tool is capable of automating any task in windows as well as in a Citrix environment using bots that mimic human actions. Currently, Uipath has numerous breakthroughs in automating business processes ranging from transaction systems to auditing and data validation. Uipath supports many popular applications as prepackaged automation modules such as excel, Citrix, and SAP

Uipath uses Visual Basic as its core programming language, along with an alternative option of C#.

It constitutes a perfect blend between advanced coding as well as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) driven programming. Hence, it is widely popular among high skilled technical employees as well as for average users. Using a GUI wizard-driven approach, which allows users with less coding skills to create powerful automation bots that are not possible using any native programming languages available in the market. 

There are two versions of Uipath available, one is for organizational use and is termed as the “Enterprise version” whereas the free version is for personal use and is termed as the “Community version”. Further, Uipath has three major components that make it a complete package. It constitutes of the Uipath studio, Uipath Orchestrator, and Uipath Robot.

Uipath studio

This component of Uipath is solely for designing, coding, sequencing automation processes with the help of flowchart, diagrams, and other visual aids. The entire studio is primarily based on pre-built templates, wizard-driven sequences, drag and drop activities, and multiple GUI buttons to perform complex operations with a click.

Uipath Robot

This component of Uipath handles the entire execution process and runs each activity/sequence as per user-defined rules using bots. It acts as a separate process from Uipath studio and works independently on its own. A user can deploy multiple bots at a single time to automate various tasks except for the ones that require interaction with the live screen. Despite the high functionality this bot provides, the resources consumed by it are well below acceptable limits unlike applications like chrome.

Uipath Orchestrator

This component of Uipath acts as a web application that allows us to coordinate Uipath bots to executive various tasks. It allows a user to monitor, create, and deploy assets and resources in an environment. Besides, it is an integrated bridge that connects applications with third-party solutions. Thus, it enables a user to orchestrate a large number of Uipath bots to perform various complex actions in a coordinated way such that it can bring out a fruitful result.

Why Uipath?

Code-free and easy to learn :

  • Uipath is primarily based on VB, but 75% of the entire operation in the application can be performed using GUI elements, pick and drop activities, a universal search that includes all possible activities, and wizard-driven sequences.
  • Also, it has an inbuilt record user action functionality that allows a user to record their actions, which automatically arranges itself into an automaton script that a bot can use to perform the same action without any human intervention.
  • Moreover, it has an advanced text recognition AI along with other available OCR technologies available in the market, which can be used to extract textual information, perform click and type activities as well as scrape huge amount of data in a fraction of seconds.
  • Uipath has a wizard-driven data scrapping functionality that allows users to scrape data from any web page or application into a data table which can then be written into a CSV or excel file.
  • Just like traditional programming languages, it includes all aspects of variable declaration, looping, conditional statements, scope, read/write, debugging, as well as exceptional handling.
  • It comprises many aspects of object-oriented programming (OOP) as well. Another important feature is that it supports user inputs as triggers to execute a certain sequence and this vastly helps to perform complex activities or bypass bot detection with ease.
  • A user can display pop dialog boxes, confirmation messages, or take input from the user, much similar to traditional programming languages.

Free community edition

Uipath is highly community-centric with an ever-active forum that always posts tutorials, tips, questions, and answers that further enhances the overall experience of using this software.

They offer a free community version of their program which has 95% of the entire functionality of the premium version, to any user registering on their website.

Highly versatile

Since Uipath takes all the basic aspects of traditional programming languages, it can be used to perform any activity that a user can think of. 

It is majorly used to automate data entry and data validation in large enterprises for their ERP applications as well as used by sales intelligence to gather and scrape data from the internet.

Apart from its web scrapping abilities, it can also be used to fill up forms, organize data, audit, email, and autofill logs.

Extremely powerful

Currently, Uipath has 5000 customers worldwide and has been successfully implemented in various business processes to replace the human workforce.  A well-developed Uipath automation is capable of working 24X7 with 100% accuracy at a tremendous pace. The huge amount of cost savings and productivity gain along with error-free results has paved the way for Uipath to be the ultimate solution in years to come.