Product Features - AssistEdge RPA

This page helps you to understand the main features of RPA.

Installation & Upgrade

Simplified installation with creating an image of the server side of the product significantly reducing the installation time and improving the product installation experience, making it significantly touch less.

Product offers a simple and secure tool based installation requiring minimal port openings. The migration workbench helps in upgrading product from previous version to newer version. Automation Studio, Robot Agent,  users and Agents using Enterprise Personal Assistant get notified on the tool to consume the updates on the click of a button.

Automation Studio

Web Automation

Web automation support browser versions Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Edge with IE compatibility, IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Selenium 3.5 & above.

Authorization to Office 365 Applications via Graph API 

AssistEdge’s solution to automate MS O365 applications will establish an authenticated connection between AssistEdge studio and MS Office 365 applications. This authenticated connection enables a robot to call the MS Graph API to read and write resources on user’s behalf. To establish an authenticated connection, user first registers MS Office 365 application in the Azure Active Directory (using MS Office 365 account). While registering the application, user should assign the MS Graph API permissions that specify the resources a robot can access on user’s behalf. After registering Office 365 application, Azure Active Directory assigns a unique application (client) ID. The Application ID is used to collect the necessary information about the registered application to initiate authentication. Our solution to automate different O365 applications using Graph API supports OAuth 2.0. As part of OAuth 2.0, different authentication/grant types like – Authorization Code, Implicit, Password Credentials, Client Credentials etc. are also supported. 

Excel 365 Adapter 

Automation studio has a new activity named 0365 excel to automate various office 365 excel operations. Studio user can authenticate via modern auth and then configure automations. 

Onedrive 365 Adapter

Automation studio has an activity named 0365 onedrive to automate onedrive operations. Studio user can authenticate via modern auth and then configure automations.

Outlook 365 Adapter 

Automation Studio provides an open canvas to design and test process automation. It has an intuitive user interface with simple drag and drop workflow activities and user-friendly menus/ tools to create and configure automation.

Sharepoint 365 Adapter 

Automation studio has an activity named 0365 Sharepoint to automate various sharepoint tasks. Studio user can authenticate via modern auth and then configure automations based on the use-case.

LowCode API Integration  in Automation Studio

This feature enables users to invoke AssistEdge Low Code Platform APIs from Automation Studio via newly introduced "LowCodeApps" application type and "Low Code Integration" Activity.

Support for LowCode API’s

This feature allows AssistEdge users to call API's of Low Code Platform in a seamless way via RPA Processes and Bots.

Internet Explorer to MS Edge Conversion Utility 

Assist Edge’s IE to Edge/Chrome process converter utility enables users to convert the automation processes configured on IE browser to Edge/Chrome browser in quick and easy steps with minimal manual efforts.

Studio UI Configurations

This feature lets the users update the Automation Studio basic configurations from UI instead of going to configuration file. Configurations search, elaborative description helps the user and simplifies the configuration update process.

Application level cleanup

Users can kill required process on the bot/agent machine using this new activity. This will help to avoid high CPU and memory utilizations on the server and increase the performance and efficiency. Users can filter out the processes using different conditions for optimum usage. 

Automation Design Studio

Automation Studio provides an open canvas to design and test process automations. It has an intuitive user interface with simple drag and drop workflow activities and user-friendly menus/ tools to create and configure automations.

End-to-end Automation

Automation Studio enables users to create an end to end automation to run business workflows and processes.

Test run process

The Studio provides the capability of testing a process to execute all the steps involved in the process workflow. This helps to ensure that the desired output is received.

Users can setup the environment for the test run. However, if the test run is initiated without setting up the environment, the system automatically sets up the environment.

Execution statistics – After every test run, user can view the execution statistics to know the details related to the process execution like CPU utilization, memory consumed, and time taken for execution of each step.

Accessing or Downloading Automation Studio

AssistEdge provides one-click access to Automation Studio. Users can download and access Automation Studio using the Launch Studio drop-down in the Admin module.

Contextual Assistance for Process Configuration

On-demand contextual help is available to a process designer in automation studio. The activity pane, in addition to activity search capability, provides relevant references to the knowledge base to assist users in process configuration and studio usage. The references comprise of

  1. Step-by-step activity configuration in a use case.
  2. Getting started with Canvas tools.
  3. Contextual help includes instructions on how to use studio activity.
  4. Help content for all features and functionalities in the studio.

The knowledge base is accessible over both online(over the Internet on a website) and offline(locally hosted web page) mediums and are enabled as part of AssistEdge deployment.

Debugging - Studio

Automation Studio provides provision for step level debugging, addition of breakpoints to activities within a process and ability to step-in or step-over particular activities. Execute the process at slower pace (4 different speed levels) in debug mode.

Set Filter

In Studio, while applying a filter on the Processes tab, users can use wildcards - * (asterisk) and ? (question mark) to maximize the search results, providing more flexibility in filtering the required processes. The wild cards are applicable to filter using Application Data.

Marketplace

The Marketplace provides the following capabilities components:

  1. Marketplace tab to search for Marketplace entities.
  2. Unique identifiers for downloaded Marketplace entities.
  3. Specific export functionality for bots to be published in Marketplace.

PDF Extraction

User can extract data from a Scanned PDF and edit the quality of extraction. There is a provision of a comparative view between the extracted data and the original one. User can also assign a confidence score to the accuracy of extraction.

Contextual Intelligence Adapters

Decision Workbench Activity: This activity is used to successfully end the flow of an ongoing process in case inputs are required from process SMEs before the use case can proceed further. There are variety of use-cases such as decision review, data review, document review and exception handling that can be achieved with Decision workbench activity.

Decision Model Activity: The machine learning models which have been designed using machine learning workbench can be configured to be accessed in runtime using “Decision Model” activity in automation studio.

Version Control of Processes

Version control helps to maintain backup of work in progress or published versions of processes. Ease of process rollback to a previous version with Restore feature to seamlessly re-instate a previous version. Studio provides the capability to configure the number of previous versions required.

Citrix Automation

This feature enables AssistEdge RPA and Engage to automate applications seamlessly in Citrix environment including hybrid scenarios with some application in Citrix environment and some in local environment where bots are deployed or is being accessed by users. It works with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop.

Support on Windows Server 2016

The product is supported on Windows Server 2016.

Weekly Triggers

Triggers can be configured to create automation requests on weekly basis.

Multi Modal Configuration

A Multimodal Interface provides multiple modes to interact with the application.

Multimodal Interface helps to automate all the steps involved in the automation process workflow through field configuration using web control, windows control or image based configuration, without docking the application. Users can move the Multimodal Interface as per their convenience across the application window. Every step captured through Multimodal configuration is re-traceable.

The Multimodal configuration UI provides an option of using Image Mode. Users can easily switch to image based automation and OCR without leaving the multimodal configuration experience. It also allows the designer to configure whether to add a Focus Window activity before the current step.

Primary modes available in the Multimodal Interface are:

  • WEB MODE- Captures properties related to the automation of web based application.
  • WINDOWS MODE- Captures properties related to the automation of Windows application.
  • IMAGE MODE- Captures properties related to the automation of image based actions.

Other modes available as per the application being automated are:

  • EXCEL MODE- Captures properties related to the automation of an Excel application.
  • MAINFRAME MODE- Captures properties related to the automation of a Mainframe application.

Cognitive Adapters

The product supports Language, Vision, and Speech related cognitive services from Microsoft/Google, in addition to a generic cognitive service adapter for any cognitive service from these 2 providers.

Web Automation

The Studio provides automation tools to automate web applications and perform actions such as enter keywords for search, trigger search, read search results.

Advanced web automation capabilities include the automation of:

  • iframes and nested iframes
  • Dynamic tables/ grids with the ability to handle different pages from the result set
  • Automating control through JavaScript invocation
  • Support for automation based on additional parameters like, relative XPath or creating manual selectors
  • Data extraction from a web table - Users can extract data from an entire web table in just one step instead of using iterations

Web automations support browser versions IE 5 – IE 7, Chrome v61-68, Firefox v59.0 onwards and Selenium 3.5 & above.

Image-based automation

Image-based/ Surface automation provides an alternate automation approach to find controls, perform an action on them or extract text from fields based on image recognition techniques.

In addition to local environment, Image-based automation is also validated on Citrix Environment and is found to be working fine with few known limitations.

 

Data extraction capability supports:

  • One Note 2013, One Note 2016 OCR engine, MS Vision, Google Computer Vision apart from Tesseract. Choose the Engine for image data extraction.
  • Intuitive UX for image filtering or pre-preprocessing screen.

Excel Automation

The Studio provides multiple options for Excel automation:

  • Excel Apps to automate common Excel actions like Insert Row/Column, Copy, Paste, Get Search, Get cell data, etc.
  • An advanced excel automation recorder to automate all excel automations by recording operations within an excel. Studio supports the automation of all the macro capabilities supported by excel.
  • Excel loop to iterate row-wise over an excel file.

File Operations

The Studio includes tools to automate file operations such as Create, Open, Close, Delete, Save as a file, Copy-Paste, Move, Rename the file, compressing or extracting a folder.

 

The existing file automation capability also includes operations such as file merge and file split. Automating FTP/ SFTP file push, pull and delete operations is also enabled.

File Operations also include splitting of excel files based on the number of files or number of rows apart from sheet name. Some of the actions and parameters in the FTP Activity includes:

  • List Directory - Ability to list all the files and folders available at the FTP or SFTP site location in an excel file.
  • Rename- Ability to rename the file available in the FTP or SFTP site location.
  • Communication Mode - Active or Passive can be selected depending on how the data connection is established between the client and the server.
  • Transfer Mode – Users have the option to select Binary or ASCII (Text) depending on the type of the file to be transferred. Using ASCII (Text) mode, only text type files can be transferred.

SharePoint Operations

Automation Studio includes SharePoint operations such as file upload, download, copy, move, delete.

Outlook Operations

The Studio includes a tool to automate operations in Outlook such as Send, Reply, Forward, Read, Download, Search and Delete emails.

 

The Outlook automation capabilities include operations such as selecting an outlook profile, adding CC or BCC, advanced outlook search operations, setting priority/importance on emails, moving emails to folders and others. User can fetch email body as an argument.

Navigate to

Configure this activity to move the control from an existing URL to a different URL. Additional URLs are configured in application properties or process arguments.

Web Services (REST)

Studio supports automation with Web REST Services using this activity.

Database Adapter

Automation Studio provides support for automation of database operations like connecting to Oracle, SQL, MySQL databases and executing select queries and stored procedures using the DBApps application type.

 

In the same plugin, user can also add an Excel as a data source along with SQL, Oracle and MySQL. As part of automation, user can use Excel as a data source and query the same using SQL queries.

  • Database adapter supports automation and executing SQL queries in MySQL database
  • Emulator agnostic mainframe automation - A Generic Mainframe adapter to perform automation on all emulators supporting EHLLAPI mainframe standard. Support for Bluezone emulator.

SMTP email automation

Ability to connect to an SMTP server to configure and send email, move, search and read emails using SMTP Email activity.

Java Automation

Within Java automation, Studio supports three types of Java files, namely – JAR, JNLP, and JavaApps – Applet files. Users have the ability to enable JAVA automations for multiple user scenarios.

Mainframe Automation

The Studio supports the automation of Mainframe applications. The Mainframe emulators supported are Attachmate Extra Xtreme (9.3.0), Passport, Attachmate Reflection emulator and Rumba Emulator (9.5 series).

SAP BAPI Adapter

  • AssistEdge supports all standard BAPIs for SAP ECC 6 EHP 4 or above.
  • AssistEdge supports customized BAPIs by running an AssistEdge utility (BapiUtility.exe)

SAP Thick Client App Automation

The Studio provides multiple canvas tools to automate an SAP thick client application – the SAP Recorder, the GUI Field Extractor, and the Attach Application activities.

JBPM Adapter

Out-of-the-Box AssistEdge adapter is created for integration of AssistEdge with JBPM. Custom activities are created which can be easily included in JBPM Toolbox. AssistEdge eclipse plugin is created which can be added to a JBPM instance. In a business process created in JBPM, any node can be easily configured using the AssistEdge custom activities to trigger an AssistEdge RPA transaction by invoking an AssistEdge RPA robot.

Process Bots

Studio enables import and export of process automation across environments. Processes are imported along with metadata like Name, image, Readme, Author, Description, Search tags.

Microbot

A Microbot is a micro process or micro automation which can be reused in the Automation Studio. Studio supports the creation of Microbots, import of existing Microbots for reuse and export of Microbots.

Siebel Microbots

The Studio provides the basic capability to support automation of Seibel CRM HI application to configure business flow through Microbots. The underlying system of this Microbot development is Siebel IP15 version, high interactive UI, and e-communications module. Six Microbots are developed out of the box which supports in getting billing or customer details, reading service requests, and trouble tickets from Siebel HI application.

 

NOTE:  

These have been deprecated and is removed as support for Siebel application automation is available through Studio configurations.

 

Siebel HI automation

This capability includes automation support of Siebel HI (High interactive UI) application through configuration. Just like Siebel Open UI, Siebel HI applications are added as web applications in the Automation Studio.

  

Oracle EBS Microbots

The Studio provides out of the-box Oracle Microbots to perform various automations such as launch Oracle forms, navigate menu, search info, read /get field details, read /set radio button value, handle popup events, edit fields, switch forms by selecting tabs in Oracle forms, perform button clicks, launch hyperlink, read grid details, write /update grid details, save form details.

 

NOTE:  

These have been deprecated and is removed as support for Oracle EBS  application automation is available through Studio configurations.

 

Oracle EBS Automation

Automation support for Oracle EBS applications through configuration simplifying it significantly. Oracle EBS applications are added as web applications in Studio.

  

Key Events

The key events activity enables automation using a simulation of keyboard events. It allows users to stimulate a combination or repetition of keyboard events.

Print Screen activity

The Print Screen activity aids in taking a screenshot of an Application state in the process context and use it further in the process as required.

Standalone Studio

AssistEdge RPA provides an offline and light version of the automation studio namely the Standalone Studio which needs its license to run. This Studio can be installed quickly without end to end component installation. It does not need a separate database or web service and hence used offline.

Use the Standalone Studio to create process automations, get a hands-on experience of the product or to give product demonstrations.

Exception Handling

Ability to add exception handling in process flow using a try-catch-finally-throw framework significantly enhancing the exception handling capability during process configuration.

Trigger to support tickets

Automation of raising incidents on ServiceNow (Auto triggering of maintenance ticket to standard tools for application failure/slowness) is validated with the help of advancements in web configuration capabilities and exception handling feature in AssistEdge.

Support for Complex Datatype

Ability to create DataTable and perform CRUD(Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations.

Supported operations are:

 

PDF Automation

Automate PDF documents with the native PDF extraction feature. Define the PDF template from which values need to be read and extracted. This tool enables the user to select the variables that need to be read, and define them. Once a PDF template is created, Studio can read any PDF sent in the defined format and extract the specified information.

This capability supports dynamic data extraction. Users can extract data through different modes of field identification based on either fixed position, or one, two or three reference points.

 

Users can auto-identify column which eases out creating a pdf template. Users can also apply a pdf template creator on a scanned pdf. PDF template sharing among Studio users and passing PDF template name as an argument is allowed.

Citrix Integration

AssistEdge supports RPA deployment in a Citrix environment through a customized solution, wherein the components are deployed on Citrix farms, and communicate via a virtual channel.

Reuse Automation

Reuse capability enables re-use of previously created automations, activities and UI components.

Error Console

This console aids quick issue identification during process configuration and execution. This console is used during the test run to identify errors in process execution. Double click the error and the activity within the process which has the error highlighted.

Warning Console

This console provides details about unexpected behavior of the process, if any. Warning provides a message related to possible future issue. These warning messages are shown for the applications which use any of the components covered by prerequisite checker even if the application has been imported or recorded by the PbE.

Analysis Console

This console lists the potential errors that might occur at the time of process execution. It displays the name of the rule, the related rule description and the priority of the rule that might occur.

Custom Automation

The custom application tool is used for coded automation of an application. Use custom applications for creating automations.

Process decommission

This capability enables rolling back a process after it has been deployed. A decommissioned process is not available to robots for execution. Users can delete a decommissioned process if it is not required.

View Dependency

Users can view whether a process has dependencies on other processes and applications. Processes and Applications which have other processes dependent on them, cannot be deleted.

Code Editor

Utilize any piece of code into automation using the code editor. It provides the customization hook for a process. The selected piece of code must be made available as a DLL. Import this DLL into Studio, which then automatically runs the code and reads the specified variables.

Popup Handler

This feature enables automation of windows popups. Popup Handler activity handles the windows popups that appear in web and excel applications. For example, authentication pop up, confirmation alerts, etc.

 

The Win Pop-up handler handles pop-up in different types of applications such as Web (IE, Chrome, and Firefox), Windows, and Siebel. It can handle browser prompts, alerts, and open/save dialog box.

Ignoring error at the activity Level

Ability to Ignore error of an automation step ((activity) failure, if the failure of the step is not meant to fail the entire process.

 

Automation processes created in versions prior to 17.5 and migrated to the latest version run seamlessly without any need to modify them. It ignores any error that might occur while running the process and ensures that the automation is completed. Additionally, this makes the processes from earlier versions compatible with the latest versions.

Pre and Post activity delays

Ability to configure pre and post activity delays in an activity instead of adding and separate delay activity.

Environment to Environment Migration

Using this feature, the processes created and deployed in Studio is exported along with its dependencies like the dependent applications, code editors, Microbots, search criteria, etc. The export package has all these details of the process. The exported package can be imported from one environment to another environment.

Environment at Studio login

Simplified user experience with the ability to connect to different environments at the time of logging into Studio.

Process Recorder

The Process Recorder capability automates processes through a record and play capability. The Process Recorder is used to record a business process by process demonstration and convert it into an automation process flowchart. Run the recorder while executing the process as done normally. The tool records the process and creates automations for the same, automatically.

 

Recording capability is enabled for web application automation and Windows Desktop Application Automation. If required, update the recording by adding annotations, renaming steps, deleting unwanted steps, etc. Currently, Studio supports Chrome, IE, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox for this capability.

Playback Automation

After recording a process, validate the steps recorded by viewing the recording playback. A recorded process is also used to run the process automatically for a different set of inputs.

Configure Recording in Studio

Open process recordings in the Studio itself. Map the recorded applications and parameters to use them for further automation in the Studio.

Usage tips and Help for each activity

Studio messaging is improved and made more intuitive. Help information on the fly for Studio activities is available which reduces dependency on support or search outside the product.

Intellisense

IntelliSense in Automation Studio is the expression building aid that includes features- List VB Expression and Select Parameter.

List VB Expression - It lists the valid VB expressions once users type the trigger character.

Select Parameters - Users can select the intended parameter that are already defined in Automation Studio, by pressing Ctrl+Space key together from the keyboard.

Search within a process

Ability to do a word like search within a complex or simple process.

Commenting a step

Mark a step to be commented out during test run. This feature is useful for debugging.

Process backup and restore

The system maintains process backups of up to 5 versions of a deployed process for reference. The backed up version of the process is restored at a later point of time using the migration capability.

Advanced Loop (complex iterations)

Use a general loop for complex iterations for excel, data table, csv, plain text files, and n-iteration.

Validation of new types of Data

Add new data types in Studio along with their validation using the regex file inside the dev folder.

PowerShell Script Activity

AssistEdge provides functionality to allow execution of PowerShell script or a PowerShell Cmdlet in an automation process. The script or Cmdlet can be added using PowerShell activity on Studio. This activity can run the scripts with named parameters as well.

XML Activity

AssistEdge provides functionality to create, read and edit any kind of XML configurations for advanced process automations. This is especially helpful for manipulation of SOAP requests and responses.

Activity for Python scripts

AssistEdge provides functionality to allow execution of Python script in an automation process. The script can be added using activity on Studio.

Load Extensions

Third-party Extensions are added into your web browser to provide additional functionality (such as search bars or easy access to your email, make changes in browser cookie).

Application Activity

Launch and SignIn Application

It allows users to launch an application wherever required in the automation process workflow. When an application is closed, this activity can be used to launch the application. Additionally, if sign-in is configured for the intended application during robot setup, this activity automatically sign into it. If the application is a non-sign in application, it only launches the application. If the application is already launched, this activity does not relaunch the application.

 

Close Application

This activity allows closing an application wherever required in the automation process workflow. This helps in closing any application that may not be required for further execution of the process.

Favorite Activities

User can add the frequently used activities to Favorites in the Canvas Tools pane in Automation Studio. This makes the activities easily available instead of having to search for them in the Canvas Tools. The activities marked as Favorite are shown under the Favorites section at the top of the Canvas Tools panel and are saved locally in the Studio.

Process Analysis

A Studio user can analyze the process created in Studio against the pre-defined rules. This helps in reducing the possible runtime errors. The activities used in the process are checked against the rules and the result is shown in the Process Analysis tab, available in the status bar at the bottom of Automation Studio. The rules can be enabled or disabled from the Rules tab in the Admin section of the Automation Studio.

Data Protection

Process input in RPA Dashboards appears plain, masked, or anonymized based on the data protection applied in Studio and access given to a particular role to view PII Data. Data Protection is also available for business arguments configured in business metrics.

Auto Automation

Auto-Automation is a robust capability that collectively simplifies and connects the automation journey starting from AssistEdge Discover to AssistEdge RPA. Users can create an automation process in AssistEdge Automation Studio with minimal manual effort. The process created from the identified tasks in AssistEdge Discover can now be converted to an automation process in a single click.

 

Ability to access help topics for AE automation studio over Web-based interface

AE automation studio provide ability to access knowledge base which contain help topics around how to use different sections, activities and functionalities provided in AE automation studio.

 

This feature allow accessibility of this AE automation studio help content through a publicly hosted website. If studio user do not have access to internet then they can access same content through offline hosted web pages.

 

Automated migration of processes within different environments 

AssistEdge provides an ability to integrate with an external version control system such as, Git, and migrate automation versions across environments seamlessly. The feature lets users deploy or distribute the automation processes to a higher AE environment. AE offers ready-to-integrate Jenkins plugin to move the processes. 


Users can also integrate the AE CLI utility with any CICD pipeline to migrate processes from the UI.

 

Micro-videos

Micro-videos for selected canvas tools have been added, which will enable the citizen developers with basic configuration steps of these canvas tools. 

 

Process Naming & Auto-Save of Processes 

AsssitEdge studio can now be configured to auto-save process configuration to avoid loss of data in case of studio time-out. AE19.0 onwards a user will be prompted to submit process name before starting with process configuration, so that auto-save happens at the background without interrupting a user. The auto-save is performed only when the process is edited that can be identified via the asterisk (*) symbol visible at the process name tab. At any point in time, you can manually save the process by clicking the SAVE button in the Menu bar. The auto-save interval is defined at Automation Studio.exe.config against AutoSaveInterval key. For Sign-in and Reset process, application activity configuration in Automation Studio is prerequisite for auto-save.

 

Suggest Next Best Activity 

The capability suggests the next best activity that a process configurator can use in their processes in conjunction with the selected activity.

Low code Application Platform  

AssistEdge Low code Orchestrator lets citizen developer create enterprise grade web applications using a drag and drop interface, with pre-build connectors to invoke AssistEdge automations, both attended and unattended.
Web application created using AssistEdge Low code Orchestrator are accessible over all types of devices like desktop, laptops, tablet and mobile. 

 

Process Orchestrator   

Process Orchestrator encapsulates the entire business process into a visual process flow, including bots, business rules, Intelligent Bots, ML models, and humans-in-loop, so that customers can orchestrate their business processes with ease. Process Orchestrator allows customers to track the end-to-end process in real time, while letting the bots take care of the heavy lifting. Tasks can also be allocated to different teams, and approvals can be provided on the go by logging into the Process Orchestrator application from a handheld device. 

 

Cognitive Engine

Computer Vision

AssistEdge is integrated with machine learning based computer vision capability from NIA, Google and Microsoft. Computer Vision complements the OCR ability (Tesseract, MS, Google, Abbyy) by providing area of interest or identifying object in an entire digital document over which data extraction can be performed, significantly improving the efficiency of OCR.

Advanced OCR (Printed + Handwritten)

AssistEdge users can access advanced OCR solution and other capabilities of Microsoft Cognitive services or Google Cognitive services within the product.

Smart Resource Management

AssistEdge comes with an ability to intelligently manage the automation resources including digital workers and corresponding VMs. It provides alerts around unresponsiveness or likely performance degradation of robots and robot VMs over the current schedule based on past experience.

 

The performance and health of a bot can depend upon a variety of parameters- underlying hardware, number and nature of systems accessed, data being managed etc.

Contextual ML Models

This capability enables the process designers to design and deploy context based machine learning models as per the business use case. The models can then be called by digital workers in runtime to take contextual decisions. While initially the models may have lower confidence on the decisions made. With continuous learning through feedback from process SMEs, the models are able to provide decision with acceptable confidence and thus extending the automation frontier.

Decision Workbench

This application enables the process SMEs to view the business use case specific information and provide inputs as per the available information. Robots are able to pass on the task to SMEs for getting specific inputs and once the inputs are received from SMEs, the task is sent back to robots for completing the automation. The typical use cases include decision review, data review, document review and exception handling.  

 

Control Tower

AssistEdge Control Tower provides automated provisioning, governance, and actionable analytics. Control Tower is a web-based monitoring system to set-up and manage the robots running on remote machines. The key capabilities within Control Tower includes:

BeyondTrust Integration with Proctor

BeyondTrust Vault - Managed Account, Team Password is now supported in AssistEdge RPA for retrieving credentials for adding/updating Robot Agents via Proctor. 

CyberArk Integration with Proctor

CyberArk Vault integration is now supported to retrieve credentials for Robot Agent creation/update via Proctor.

Day Light Saving Adjustment

While scheduling triggers and Robot schedules from/for time zones affected by Day Light Savings Time (DST) Day light saving capability automatically incorporated and the triggers will be executed based on the DST Time.

Access Control

AssistEdge supports multiple roles. The roles are:

  1. Robot Creator: to monitor and manage the creation of robots.
  2. Process Owner: to manage robots which are assigned to the user.
  3. RPA_Transactions_Analyst: access for the user who is manually handling RPA exceptions or error/failure transactions, with this role access, can handle the error transactions using Assisted Automation.
  4. Manager access: a user with the role with ‘Manager’ access can view Robots for the profile under the assigned role.

Control Tower Dashboard

Control Tower dashboard provides a real-time view of robots, processes and robot farm machines.

Robot View

This feature provides a summarized view of the efficiency of the robot while running the automation process.

  • Ongoing Process Views - Ongoing Transactions View: Monitoring teams allows users to view the processes which are being executed by the robots in real-time. This also enables them to view the real-time details about the steps being executed by the robots.
  • Robot Creation - Create new robots to execute additional process automation requests (subject to license). Select the machine and define robot tags while creating the robot.
  • Robot Lifecycle - Once the robot is created, the robot is assigned to the user who manages and sets up the robot. Robot Assignee can then map one or more profiles to the robot before starting it. Robot creation is supported by CyberArk.
  • Robot Controls - Perform different actions on robots, such as start, stop, update, connect, disconnect, delete, assign, reset and release the selected robots.
  • Robot Scheduling - Robots run on different schedules which are defined by creating a schedule. Define a default schedule for a robot as well as other time-bound schedules for peak loads or specific processes. Schedule robots to be configured for the selected time zone as well.
  • Robot Utilization - Robot Utilization reports which provides the data pertaining to robots’ presence in various statuses such as Available, Setup, Processing, Idle, Stopped, Error, and Unavailability. The data is available in terms of time period and corresponding percentage values and is available in Control Tower as well as Kibana.
  • Multi-Skilled Robots - Robots are scheduled to execute process automation requests from specific profiles during specific defined schedules. Further, within each profile, the robots listen to multiple processes which enables them to process multiple processes which means that the same robot can process multiple processes.
  • Robot Listening Method - The priority and sequence in which process automation requests from different profiles would be executed would depend upon the selected listening method and the order of profiles selected. There are three listening methods available viz. First come first serve basis, round-robin basis, and priority basis.
  • Robot List View - The different list views are available as per the current robot status. View the robots in different list views and further sort and filter the list as per different criteria such as success rate, profiles, etc.
  • Robot Detailed View - View the details of a particular robot in its detailed view. All robot related details such as robot assignee, robot creator, robot owner, robot specific schedules, the activity log is available here. Add new schedules, edit or delete existing schedules from this page.
  • Robot Activity Log - Activity logs provide the details for each process automation request which is executed as per schedule for the robot. Activity logs are available in Robot details view.
  • Dynamic Operational Scaling - In organizations with multiple robots, there is a possibility that priority tasks do not get executed within defined SLA’s while certain robots are working on non-priority tasks. The average time per task could vary based on system performance, flow complexity and other parameters. This feature allows continuous monitoring and alert around potential SLA violation based on probabilistic estimates. Additionally, reallocation of other super-bot to service this queue can be automated in an intelligent or a rule based way.
    • SLA Expiry Prediction - This feature continuously monitors potential process SLA violation and re-prioritizes the super-bot based on probabilistic estimates to handle priority tasks.
      This has 3 key components:
      • Setup of a robot as super-bot (by superuser)
      • Detection of Potential SLA failure for a defined task queue
      • Reprioritizing Superbot to take this queue on priority (optional)

Process View

The Process view is for the process owner role. It provides details of robots running the processes, their transactions and the drill down view of the transactions including input, output and the transaction steps. It also includes:

  • Predicted Transaction Expiry and Predicted SLA Expiry
  • Transaction Start Time for each transaction
  • Transactions by Creation Time

Exception Handling using retry capabilities

The automation requests which gets timed out before completion or gets an exception while execution is resent for execution after the retry interval. Retry interval is utilized to correct any application states or data.

Role based Access to PII Data

Process Input present in Transaction details of Process View section is visible, masked or anonymized based on the access given to a particular role to view PII Data.

Credential Manager

Save the application credentials for the applications to be accessed by robots while executing the process automation requests. Once the credentials for an application are available in the credentials manager, there is no need to provide the details again for other robots using that application.

CyberArk Integration

AssistEdge has integrated with CyberArk’s Application Identity Manager offering to safely store and rotate application credentials. Clients with CyberArk partnership can leverage their Enterprise Vault Management offerings by integrating it with the RPA control tower. Admins have the provision to assign CyberArk as the default vault for storing application credentials or choose our native password vault.

BeyondTrust Integration

AssistEdge RPA supports BeyondTrust Managed Account and Team Passwords options to retrieve credentials for Robots and Applications.

Trigger View

Out-of-the-box robot triggering capabilities are available that provides ease of generation of automation requests to trigger the robots. The trigger is either configured through Trigger Manager section in the Control Tower or through load generator process in Automation Studio.

 

Following type of triggers are configured directly from Control Tower:

Schedule based (interval based, daily, weekly and monthly).

  • Email based.
  • File arrival based (Shared folders, Folders on remote servers through FTP and SFTP).
  • The main page of Trigger View displays details of the time trigger and exact nature of occurrence for a specific occurrence of the trigger.
  • Information pertaining to the trigger request is shown for each trigger. The details include Total Requests Created, Total Requests Posted, and Total Requests Dropped. This helps user to track each trigger request.
  • Other type of triggers based on monitoring of various applications such as Web Application, SAP, Mainframe, Windows, Oracle EBS, Siebel, Database are configured from Automation Studio.

Version Management

Point and Click functionality in Control Tower to upgrade Robots using the web user interface. This allows version upgrades to take place based on the business needs of individual Robots and removes the need to perform Windows login to the VM running Robots. The Control Tower presents a view of the Robot Engine version that are running on each machine and available upgrades.

CPU and Memory Utilization

Control Tower is displays CPU and Memory Utilization statistics of a machine for the last 7 days while creating a schedule and robots.

Notification on Mode Change

An e-mail notification is sent to configured e-mail IDs if mode of a robot agent running in a specific user session of a machine is updated.

Control of Robot Agent from Control Tower

Control Tower allows adding and starting a robot agent on a machine. Proctor component restarts the Agents in case they go down due to, say a machine restart, providing a self-healing capability for Robot Agent in scenarios it goes down.

Multi-Lingual Support for Control Tower

Control Tower supports plethora of scripts including German, Spanish, French and Japanese. The only exclusion to this list are scripts that are written from right to left or in vertical format.

Data availability on Control Tower

Data for configured number of days is available on Control Tower.

Control Tower Search

Search for robots as per different criteria such as robot name, robot assignee, robot creator and Robot Tag.

In App Notifications

The Control Tower provides in-app notifications. Receive notifications for every successful and unsuccessful action on robots and robot triggers.

APM Dashboard

APM (Application Performance Monitoring) feature in AssistEdge generates bird’s-eye-view dashboard and metrics of the different severs and applications that are running automation components. APM dashboard provides visualization of commonly referred statistics like CPU, Memory, Disk, etc. utilization over a period of number of days. APM dashboard also gives context specific details of the ElasticSearch and RabbitMQ runtimes to allow administrators to monitor performance of these critical components.  

Control Tower on I-Pad

Control tower is accessible on I-Pad.

Automation Configuration Statistics  

Automation Configuration Statistics allows Automation CoE to view the details of all deployed processes along with the applications automated within the process.

Cron Option in Trigger Management

An additional option of scheduling a trigger through ‘Cron’ has been added in the Trigger Management. Through the use of ‘Cron’ the scenarios such as :- Triggering the request at any particular time and triggering request for a certain interval on a daily basis can now be achieved easily.

RPA Reports

Business Intelligence Dashboards

This capability provides a framework to capture business-relevant data for creating dashboards around historic information, forecasts & business impacts.

Custom Business Reports and Dashboards

AssistEdge RPA enables you to create new or custom dashboard and custom business reports as per your preference.

RPA Reports

RPA reports are currently available in a standard out-of-the-box template for viewing various RPA KPIs such as Robot utilization, exceptions, decision outcomes, and volumes.

Kibana UX customization of RPA Advanced Reports.

  • View the number of hours saved because of automation in each of the process
  • Search keys in the report for custom business reports
  • View bot parameters in the robot performance dashboard

Authorization in Kibana Reports

Role and user-based authorization in RPA reports on Kibana platform. By default, the user accesses data of the assigned profiles which can be customized according to the role and process names as per the business need.

Role Based Access to Kibana Actions

AssistEdge provides functionality to control access to Kibana actions like create, edit and delete based on user roles. This allows organizations to control updates to dashboard and reports configurations.

 

Compatibility Checker

AssistEdge provides out-of-the-box functionality to have a bird’s eye view of the target automation software versions deployed on User machines. This ensures that there any challenges with running automations due to version conflicts of the target software can be easily identified. For instance, the OOB Compatibility report shows Chrome versions that are installed across robot farm machines.

Data Protection of Process Inputs

Process Input appearing in RPA Dashboards appears plain, masked or anonymized based on the data protection applied.

Page Access to Reporting

Only the roles having access to reporting page can see the reporting section in Admin Module and Control Tower.

Role based access control for Reporting

Role based Access to PII Data

Users can view the PII data, which appears in Kibana Reports, based on the access given to a particular role.

View Logs in Kibana

AssistEdge provides functionality to push Robot and RPA Listener logs to Elasticsearch. These logs are viewable in Kibana and removes the need for manual login to Robot VMs for troubleshooting purposes. Error, Warning and Info level logs can be published to Elasticsearch.

GDPR Compliance

AssistEdge has ensured that the product is GDPR compliant by providing the option of masking/anonymizing Personally Identifiable Information, accommodate human intervention in automated decision making, customizations to allow appropriate data validation rules, documented process of data flow across components and also support to retain/extract/notify/delete generated data. This is crucial for clients in Europe region since the regulation has been passed in 2018.

 

Admin Module

AssistEdge RPA Administrator (Admin) Portal is a web portal that enables the administrator to configure various aspects of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) such as create and manage AE RPA users, assign role to the user, control and update system settings and so on. RPA Admin Module is one of the key components of AssistEdge RPA solution.

 

Client Tool

This feature enables user to download and open Automation Studio, Engage, EPA, Robots on Existing Machine or New Machine using Client Tools on Admin Page.

Data Retention Policy

Data Retention Policy enables you to configure the retention days for different indexes from the Admin Module.

New User Journey for Business Apps

A new Business Apps login page has been introduced to allow AssistEdge

Users to login to the app of their choice without navigating to the admin module.

Manage Role

Role management screen (Specify Role Access) has been revamped in terms of UI changes, nomenclature and alignment.

Multi-Lingual Support

Admin module supports plethora of scripts including German, Spanish, French and Japanese. The only exclusion to this list are scripts that are written from right to left or in vertical format.

Enhanced server

  • Enhanced mapping server so that it runs with each user session.
  • As soon as any client component (Automation Studio/EPA/Engage/Robot) is started mapping sever process gets started.
  • Once client component is closed, mapping sever process also gets stopped.
  • Only one instance of Mapping Server process keeps on running through multiple client components are opened.

E-Mail Alerts

Consecutive process failures: A notification can be sent in case consecutive transactions of the same process is encountering the exception at the same step.

  • Application password expiry notification: A notification can be sent proactively to inform the concerned users about application password getting expired.
  • Slow Execution: A notification can be sent out to robot assignee in case the robot is taking more time than expected for executing a specific transaction.

Role-Access Matrix

View information or take any actions on the basis of access mapped to a role.

AssistEdge Infrastructure Health Monitoring

AssistEdge RPA Health monitoring allows continuous monitoring of Infrastructure components, Robots, Robot Farm Machines, and Processes. Configure out of the E-mail Alerts for these components or use the events to write any custom implementations.

SAML and OIDC authentication support

AssistEdge provides functionality to authenticate AssistEdge RPA component users (Automation Studio, Admin, Robots, Control Tower, Kibana) with any Identity Provider supporting SAML and Open-ID connect Protocol.

Application Change Support

Alerting the user in case process is failing at the same step repetitively. Alerting the user in case application credentials are about to expire. Ability to search for impacted processes due to change in specific application.

Customized Logging

AssistEdge provides functionality to have multiple log formats OOB, namely Json and Text for Automation Studio, Admin Module, Robot Agents, Robots, Proctor, Vanguard and Attended automation. The default configuration is to log using JSON format.

Add/ Remove Log Fields

AssistEdge provides functionality to add customized user defined log events by adding arguments against custom log fields. All user defined log fields and their values remain in scope until removed using the 'Remove Log Fields' activity.

The Add Log Fields activity only allows arguments of type String, Integer, Boolean, DateTime and Double.

 

SMTP Settings

SMTP setting enables you to send out the emails, notifications, or request to the application servers, which are passed to the specific SMTP server.

 

Discover Connection Settings

Using Discover Connection Settings, users can set the connection between AE RPA and AE Discover for ROI Analytics and Auto-Automation.

 

License Module

License Server

In the Server License tab, you can view the list of uploaded server license(s) which were placed in the License folder while the installation of AE RPA/Engage product.

Licensing

List of licenses:

  • Concurrent bots license – Restricts the number of bots that can concurrently run
  • Server restriction license – MAC ID based,
  • Engage license (erstwhile SE) – named and concurrent user based
  • Enterprise Personal Assistant– named and concurrent user based
  • Decision Workbench – named 

License Dashboard

The license manager dashboard enables the admin user to manage and monitor licenses, view notifications, and consumption of licenses for AssistEdge.

Upload License

The license portal enables the admin user to upload new product licenses. Users need to upload one or more of the following licenses based on the requirements:

  • Bots license – number of bots based
  • Enterprise Personal Assistant license – named and concurrent user based

License Notification

The customer admin user receives email notifications for license threshold, license expiry, and renewal.

RPA and Engage licenses

The license module can be used to upload licenses for RPA and Engage. The RPA license is created for a number of robots/concurrent number of robots, and Engage licenses are created for a number of named users and number of concurrent users.

 

Migration Workbench

Starting version 18.0_GA of RPA the product supports migration of AssistEdge platform versions using step-by-step guided approach delivered through Migration Workbench. The Migration workbench is a thick client interface which provides a single window/ user interface to migrate platform database, ElasticSearch Transaction store and Robot farm.

 

Enterprise Personal Assistant

AssistEdge Enterprise Personal Assistant is the role-based attended automation solution that is triggered by individual employees and managed centrally by CoE/Core team. Users can also provide manual inputs during the automation. 


Users can easily trigger automation from their desktop directly or through shortcuts. Additionally, they can view the history, process input, and step details of the transaction executed.

Operational Dashboards & Insights for Attended Automation

Operational Dashboards insights on Process and User Performance, SLA adherence, application failures, application usage information, time spent analysis and volume trends over time to bring out seasonality in requests helpful for better planning.

 

AssistEdge Analytics

AssistEdge Analytics for RPA quantifies the expected and actual returns on investment in RPA and helps the organization to make better decisions, optimize the solutions, and learn from any of the pitfalls. Users can provide manual inputs and also get insights on estimated savings and automation pipelines from AssistEdge Discover.

Achieved ROI Insights

ROI Achieved dashboard provides detailed insights around effort savings and cost savings achieved as compared to the target savings set by the user for the overall automation program. Users can also view the distribution of savings across business entities and processes for detailed analysis.

Automation Pipeline

Users having AE Discover can view the Automation Pipeline Count, Estimated Savings and Automation Prioratization matrix as part of the Automation Pipeline Dashboard. Users can also manually add process to the Automation Pipeline.

Multi-Lingual Support

AssistEdge Analytics supports plethora of scripts including German, Spanish, French and Japanese. The only exclusion to this list are scripts that are written from right to left or in vertical format.