By Joaquin Escalante
Robotic automation is the application of software to automate tasks and processes otherwise performed by humans. Put more simply, robotic automation is software automating software.
I first became interested in robotics at an internal company meeting where robotics was discussed as a new technology available within Pega. I became instantly attracted to everything about it, from understanding the minutiae of a business process, to breaking automatable sections and designing solutions to improve that process, to actually creating a valuable solution.
Why Robotics?
We all perform tasks everyday that are repetitive, manual, and or that adhere to defined rules—and at times, these tasks can begin to take over our days. Such tasks within a business or organization may include, for example, having your employees sign on to applications; submit requests to interact with a customer; or create a simple report each week.
You might think that 15 minutes per day isn’t much—but if every employee requires 15 minutes every day for these kinds of tasks, that time adds up.
By removing employees’ lower-value, repetitive activities, you as a business can focus more on the customer, and on having your employees perform much higher-value tasks. This reduces costs, accelerates productivity, and decreases errors.
Pega Robotics and How It Can Be Used
Pega Robotics has two methodologies: Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It uses Microsoft Visual Studio as its development platform.
RDA deploys robots to a user’s desktop, increasing productivity through task automations. These robots can input data, submit forms, and log in into applications, to name a few possible tasks. These robots tend to require human input or interaction as they perform their tasks.
RPA, on the other hand, deploys robots into a server where—without any human interaction—they perform tasks like updating user address changes within databases; processing transactions; manipulating data; triggering responses; and communicating with other digital systems.
How Pega Robotics Works
To integrate with an application, Pega Robotics injects code within the target application that directly interacts with the application’s objects.
Robotics does not require the target application to be recompiled or modified in any way.
Through this injected code we can listen to and perform tasks into the target application without human input.
BIO: JOAQUIN ESCALANTE, JUNIOR ENGINEER, RULESWARE MEXICO
Joaquin Escalante is an avid reader with a passion for science fiction and the fantasy genre. A great day for him is one where he can sit down to read, watch the rain and drink a hot cup of coffee. He has five years of experience in IT from database and server room administration, to web services development and IT consulting. He is one of Rulesware’s valued PEGA developers certified as a Robotics System Architect and is a member of the Robotics Initiative Team at Rulesware. With a goal of understanding what we can achieve with Robotics, he works on POCs to grow Rulesware’s skills, and to document and establish best practices in Robotics.