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Hit the Run button to see the result. You can clearly see in this example that using the Get Text
activity does not extract, text properly.

This is where OCR enters the picture. In the next section, we will see the extraction of text
using OCR.

5.9 Types of OCR available

There are two OCRs available in our UiPath Studio:
1. Microsoft OCR
2. Google OCR

However, we are free to import other OCR engines into our project.

Both the Microsoft and Google OCR engines have their own advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages of Google OCR include the following:

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 Multiple language support can be added in Google OCR
 Suitable for extracting the text from a small area
 It has full support for color inversion
 It can filter only allowed characters

The advantages of Microsoft OCR include the following:

 Multiple languages are supported by default
 It is suitable for extracting text from a large area

OCR is not 100% accurate. It is useful for extracting text that other methods cannot
successfully do. It works with all applications, including Citrix.

Microsoft and Google's OCRs are not the optimum for every situation. Sometimes, we have to
look for more advanced OCRs to recognize more sophisticated text, such as handwritten
documents and so on.

There is another OCR available in UiPath Studio, known as the Abbyy OCR Engine. You can
find this OCR engine in the Activities panel by searching for OCR

. If you cannot find this OCR listed in the Activities panel, you need to install the
Uipath.Core.Activities package:

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In the previous screenshot, the package has already been installed, which is why there is an
Uninstall button on the right-hand side of Uipath.Core.Activities.

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5.10 How to use OCR

In this section, we are going to see how we can use OCR. Suppose we have an image and we
have to extract the text in it. In such a scenario, OCR becomes very handy.

In the following example, we are going to use a random Google image with some text in it, as
follows:

To extract text from the previous image, perform the following steps:

1. Open UiPath Studio and click on a Blank project. Give it a meaningful name.
 On the Designer panel, drag and drop a Flowchart activity.

2. Next, drag and drop a Get OCR Text activity from the Activities panel and set it as
the start node.
Double-click on it and click on the Indicate on screen option.
Choose the specific area from which you want to extract the text from the image.
In our case, we are using an image that we have searched for on Google.

3. Now, click on the Text property of the Get OCR Text activity.
A window will pop up as shown in the following screenshot.
Right-click inside the window and choose Create Variable.
 Give it a meaningful name, press Enter, and click on the OK button.
 A variable will be created with that name:

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4.  Drag and drop the Message box activity.

Connect it to the Get OCR with textactivity.
Double-click on the Message box activity and
 specify the variable name that you have created earlier in the expression box.
 (In our case, it is the result variable).

Press F5 to see the result.

5.11 Avoiding typical failure points
There are many scenarios where the normal implementation would fail. We are going to discuss
these failure points and will see how to tackle them.

In this section, we will work with the following entities to tackle failure points:
a. Selectors
b. Scope of the variable
c. Delay
d. Element Exists
e. Try/ Catch
f. toString method

a. Selectors
Sometimes, it is tedious to deal with selectors while working with them.
This is because a selector has attributes, title, and class properties.
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 When we select a UI element using the selector, it stores all these properties.
 Different instances of an application may have different properties of a UI element.

The problem with selectors is when you select a UI element, it captures its properties.
These properties will differ when we select the UI element of a different instance of an
application with the selector.
 Hence, the property will differ and the selector will fail to recognize the same UI element of
another instance of the application.

We can easily fix this problem by using wildcard characters or by attaching it to a live
element. Two wildcard characters are available with UiPath:

1. The question mark symbol,?, which replaces one character

2. The asterisk symbol, that is,* , which replaces a number of characters

We have to simply replace the variables (the name that changes continuously) with wildcard
characters.

We can also use the Attach to live element option from the selector property window and
indicate the element again. It automatically detects the variable properties and fixes them for us.

b. Scope of the variable

Sometimes we create a variable inside a Sequence or Do activity.
 In doing so, the scope of the variable is limited to only that activity.
When we try to access a variable from outside its scope, it cannot be accessed.
 We have to change the scope of the variable.

c. Delay activity
In some situations, we have to wait for a particular action.
For example, when opening the Outlook application, it needs to connect to the server (for
synchronization).
When it is opened, it takes some time (the UI element is not stable at this stage).
In the meantime, the robot's activity is waiting for the UI element to be stable so that it can
perform the action. After waiting for some time, if the UI element is not stable, it results in an
error because the activity cannot find the UI element.
 Thus, we have to add a Delay activity to ensure that the UI element is stable for action.
Specify the time for the delay in the expression text box of the Delay activity.
This activity will delay the process for the specified period of time.

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d. Element Exists
This activity is used to ensure that the required Element Exists.
It is used to ensure that the element we are looking for exists in this context.
This is a good way of checking whether the activity exists or not.

e. Try/Catch
This is an exception handling mechanism used to tackle exceptions.
Put all suspicious activities inside the try block. If an error occurs, it can be detected by the
catch block.
f. toString
Sometimes, we forget to use the toString method with variables and we end up with an error.
For example, when outputting an integer variable inside the Message box, we have to apply
the toString method.

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Module 5
Exception Handling, Debugging, and Logging
Introduction
Sometimes, automation program may fail to execute. To deal with such cases, we use exception handling activities.
In this chapter, we start with the various types of exception handling method available in UiPath, the exceptions that you may
encounter, and how to deal with them. We will also learn about logging. An important topic covered in this
chapter is debugging to check whether workflows are working properly or not and to rectify any errors.

5.1 Exception handling

Exception handling is a way to handle exceptions for a process that the program or the procedure has failed to
execute. For handling exceptions in a program, the best practice considered is to use the Try catch activity.

The Try catch activity can be found in the Activities panel. By dragging and dropping the Try catch activity
into the workspace, we can handle exceptions.

 For handling errors in the Try catch block, we can divide the whole process into four
parts just to make it simpler:

(i)Drag and drop the Try catch activity

(ii)Try block
(iii) Catch block
(iv)Finally block
Let's build a Try catch block to handle exceptions, in following steps:
(i) Drag and drop the Try catch activity: Create a blank project. Drag and drop the Flowchart
activity into the Designer panel. Search for the Try catch activity in the Activities panel and drag it
into the Flowchart. Set it as the Start node:

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(ii) Try: When we double-click on the Try catch activity, dragged and dropped inside the workspace,
space for the Try activity appears, as shown in the following screenshot:

Inside the Try block, we have to drop the activity we want to perform.
Drop a Write line activity to test the working of Try Catch block, as shown in the following screenshot:

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(iii) Catches: Inside the Catches activity, first we have to click on Add new Catch and then click on
Add Exception option, from which we have to select the type of exception. In most cases,
System.Exception is preferred. The following screenshot shows the types of exception. There are
many more exceptions which can be viewed by clicking on the Browse for Types option:

Exceptions can be viewed when clicked on the Browse on Types option

Say the execution fails: for example, the Click activity is unable to be executed because of the unavailability of
a UI element. In such a case, we can use the Catches block in order to either view the error that has occurred or
for an alternative method to be used if that particular error occurs. As shown in the following screenshot, we
will drop the activity in the Catches block. To print a message, we use a Message box:

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When we click on Add new catch, we are asked to select the type of exception. We have selected
System.Exception. Now inside the exception block, we have dropped a Message box activity. Entering
exception.ToString will display the error that occurred during execution.

(iv) Finally: When we have defined the exception for our sequence, the Finally block will always work,
regardless of whether the execution was successful or not. Suppose we want to display a message to
the user notifying that the process is complete. To make sure that the whole Try catch activity is
executed, we will just drop a Message box activity in the area provided in the Finally block, as
shown in the following screenshot:

5.2 Common exceptions and ways to handle them

Implementing exception handling enables the robot to work in every possible situation and tackle any exception
that may arise. There are some common exceptions that we usually face while working on UiPath.

(i) Unavailability of UI element

(ii) Handling runtime exceptions
(iii) Orbit reference not set to the instant of an object
(iv) Index was outside the bounds of an array. Index out of the range
(v)Image not found in the provided timeout
(vi) Click Generic error - cannot use UI CONTROL API on this UI node please use UI Hardware
ELEMENTS method
(vii) Logging and taking screenshots

(i) Unavailability of UI element

When working on UiPath, especially on the web, we may encounter this type of error.
This is because the UI element was not found due to the dynamic behavior of the web page.
To handle this exception, we have to make changes in the selector attributes or we have to add new attributes
to the selector so that the UI element can be easily found.
For example, if we have a variable which is dynamically changing, we can use a wildcard so that it can be
easily found by the robot. As shown in the following screenshot, we can edit the dynamic attribute of the
selector using wildcard characters (in our case, * ). Another way is to attach it to the live element:

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(ii) Handling runtime exceptions

We may encounter runtime errors while working in UiPath.
To rectify these errors, one of the best practices is to use the Try catch activity, which can be used to handle
exceptions at runtime.
By keeping an alternative inside the catch block, we can also overcome the error which we encountered
before.
So placing your sequence or workflow inside the Try catch activity will help you handle runtime exceptions.

(iii) Orbit reference not set to the instant of an object

This type of error usually occurs when the default value required for some variable is not provided.
 In that case, we are required to give a default value to the required variable, as shown in the following
screenshot.
In the empty area indicated in the following screenshot, just type the default value of the variable in order to
overcome this error:

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(iv) Index was outside the bounds of an array. Index out of the range
This error occurs when we try to iterate array elements by an index which is out of range.
This happens when we are not aware of the size of the array and we just randomly type the index to access
the element.
To resolve this, we must check the size of the indexes of the array or the collective list.

(v) Image not found in the provided timeout

This type of exception is thrown because the image was not found.
 This may be due to a change of environment, such as resolution or theme settings.
 In this case, using some a selector attribute or indicating an anchor will work well:

As shown in the preceding screenshot, when we cannot identify the image properly, Indicate Anchor will help
us indicate the UI element nearby so that the recorder can identify the correct image.

(vi) Click Generic error - cannot use UI CONTROL API on this UI node please use UI
HardwareELEMENTS method
This type of error occurs when the environment in which we are trying to use the Click activity does not support
Simulate or Send message activity (used by us to click the UI element).
Sometimes, either SimulateClick or the SendWindowMessages may be checked. In both cases, when an
exception is thrown we just have to uncheck the appropriate box.

(vii) Logging and taking screenshots

UiPath has a multi-process architecture that offers to execute each workflow separately in the executor.
Executors are managed by UI robots. So, if any executor stops working, then the entire process will not be
affected.

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5.3 Client Logging and Server Logging
5.3.1 Client logging
 Client logs basically enable a server to record connections.
 These logs can be used by content providers in various scenarios, such as to generate billing, to trace
media server usage, or to deliver suitable quality content depending on the speed of the client's server.
 For client logging in UiPath, we have an NLog configuration file which makes it easy and flexible to
integrate with databases, servers, or any other NLog targets.
 Logging can be configured with this NLog.cofig file.
 UiPath Studio, Robot, and workflow execution generate log messages on the client side:
 Messages which are produced by the workflow execution are logged with the execution logging source.
Messages produced by UiPath Studio are logged as Studio Source and those produced by UiPath
Robot are logged as Robot logging Source.
We can also access these logs from UiPath Studio.
 We can access the stored logs by clicking on Open Logs in the EXECUTE option.
 By default, these Logs are saved in % Local App %\Uipath\Logs:
 The automatic logging mechanism for all errors generated, including values of variables and arguments,
may be enabled in the UiRobot.exe config file, which is present in
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\UiPath\app-17.1.6435, by setting the Log parameter from 0 to 1
inside the <Switches>section.
 We have two activities that can be used for logging and these are the Log message and WriteLine
activities.
5.3.2 Server logging
If you have configured the UiPath server, then all logs generated by the execution are also sent to the server.
You can take a screenshot anytime by pressing Ctrl + PrtScrn.
5.4 Debugging techniques
 There are various techniques provided by UiPath Studio for debugging in order to check whether the
workflow is running successfully or to find out errors in order to rectify them.
 At the top of the UiPath window, we can see various available methods of debugging inside the
EXECUTE block, as shown in the following screenshot:

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As shown in the preceding screenshot, there are various techniques for debugging. They are:

(i) Setting breakpoints

(ii) Slow step
(iii) Highlighting
(iv) Break

(i) Setting breakpoints

While debugging a workflow, we can set breakpoints in between if we want to run the program up to a
specific location.
This is useful when we have to stop before an activity ends completely. In such a case, we should use a
breakpoint on the previous activity, as shown in the following screenshot:

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The highlighted region indicates the breakpoint since the execution stops just after the breakpoint.
 In order to continue any further, we have to click on the Continue button on the top corner indicated by the
arrow:

When we click on Step into, the relevant part will start to execute; after we click on Step over, execution will
jump to the next part, and so on.

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(ii) Slow step
This is an activity in the EXECUTE block through which we can reduce the execution speed of a particular
process or activity. This way, we can identify each and every process and keep an eye on where to find the
error. In the Output panel, all activities or steps can be viewed. The following screenshot shows how to use the
Slow step activity:

As indicated by the arrow in the preceding screenshot, when we click on Slow step the execution time for this
particular step increases.

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(iii) Highlighting
Highlighting is used to highlight the steps we have taken during automation and to identify each and every step
in the workflow. It is very useful while debugging and its panel can be found in the Options menu of the
Execute section in the Ribbon:

(iv) Break
The Break activity is used to break a process at a certain point. Suppose we have a sequence performing seven
activities together and we want to break the execution at a certain activity. For this, we can use the Break
activity, as shown in the following screenshot:

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While debugging, an option for Break is available (indicated by the arrow in the preceding screenshot). We can
break at any point we want to. If we want to continue any further, we just have to click on Continue, as
indicated by the arrow in the following screenshot:

Or we can stop the execution at that point by clicking on the Stop option.

5.5 Collecting crash dumps

 Collecting crash dumps basically refers to collecting information when your UiPath Studio crashes.
 We can enable and disable crash dumps.
 These dumps provide us with information regarding the UiPath crash.

Memory dumps are of two typesfull dumps and minidumps.

 Full dumps provide us with complete information about the encountered crash
 minidumps provide us with just the main information regarding the crash.
When a crash is encountered, we first have to identify the process which has crashed.

Note:
Usually, a dialog will appear on the screen indicating the nature of the crash and the application involved.
A UiPath process could crash, such as Uistudio.exe, Uiexplorer.exe, or Uilauncher.exe, or the target application
you want to automate may crash.

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5.6 Error reporting

A user may encounter an error in UiPath and want to report it. As mentioned before, there
are two types of customer for UiPath:
(i)Enterprise Edition customers
(ii)Community Edition customers

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Community Edition users

Since the Community Edition is free, UiPath does not provide support to Community Edition users. However,
all solutions to errors encountered can be found by going to the UiPath forum. All types of errors and their
solutions are properly discussed in the forum. You can also go to the resources page and find the solution to
your problem.
For this, visit https://forum.Uipath.com/:

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5.7 Future of RPA

A Look at the Next Few Years

Back in 1965, when computers were still in the formative stages of development, Gordon Moore came up with
“Moore’s Law” that postulated that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years.
While it was somewhat off – the timing is usually about 18 months or so – it was still revolutionary.

Moore’s Law showed the incredible transformative power of computers. Of course, Moore would go on to start
one of the world’s most iconic companies, Intel.

But there was something else about his law – that is, it is one of the few things in the technology world that has
been highly predictable. The pace of change and innovation can be mind-boggling.

Keep in mind that many of the top tech founders and visionaries have been wide off the mark on their
predictions. For example, when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had this to
say: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

Or how about the time when Digital Equipment Corp. president Ken Olsen said in 1977:
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” So yes, making predictions about the future
is a hazardous activity! But then again, it is important to try. There needs to be ongoing debate to help fuel
innovation. In this chapter, we’ll take out the crystal ball and make some predictions about RPA.

Consolidation and IPOs

With over 70 RPA vendors on the market – and with perhaps more that will be formed because of the interest of
venture capitalists – there will likely be increased consolidation.

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It will be difficult for many of these players to stand out and get the attention of potential customers. As seen
with operators like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, there has already been a pickup in
acquisitions. Yet this is likely to accelerate. It certainly helps that the large companies have substantial amounts
of cash on their balance sheets.

The acquisitions will be essentially to help expand the RPA technology stack, to move into new industries, and
pick up customers. “RPA vendors need to diversify beyond their own niche technologies and core products to
grow their position in the industry,” said Dr. Gero Decker, who is the CEO of Signavio. “Specifically, vendors
will need to better examine the use cases and capabilities that automation can do, therefore expanding the reach
and capabilities behind their automation. They also need to make it easier to implement automation, and
automate capabilities beyond older, redundant tasks.”

There will also likely be some IPOs. Currently, the only pure-play public company is Blue Prism. But in the
next few years, we will likely see Automation Anywhere and UiPath pull off IPOs. This will not just be about
raising capital, either. After all, there has been little trouble with this. But being public provides other benefits,
including the following:

1. Prestige: Not many companies have what it takes to be public. Often, there must be high levels of revenues, a
diverse customer base, an extensive product line, and a path to profitability. Being public also raises a
company’s visibility with the media and analysts.
2. Liquidity: Employees may have taken lower salaries in exchange for equity in a company. Because of this,
they eventually want to see a return on this – which is much easier when a company is publicly traded.
3. Transparency: With many RPA companies private, it is difficult to gauge the industry. What really are the
revenues? Is there customer concentration? Any issues with the core infrastructure? For the most part, a public
company is legally required to provide full disclosure of material information. This not only makes it easier to
evaluate a company’s prospects but builds confidence with larger customers.

Microsoft

Historically, Microsoft has been a follower when it comes to new technologies. This was the case, for example,
with the GUI-based operating system as well as the Internet browser. It also took several interactions to get
these products to a place that was competitive. But when it did, the results were incredible, as seen with
Windows 3.0. Then again, Microsoft has enormous advantages: seemingly unlimited capital, a trusted global
brand, a strong ecosystem of partners, and a massive customer base.
So what about RPA? Yes, it’s now becoming a priority.

At the Ignite conference in November 2019, Microsoft announced its official foray into the market.
The company leveraged its Power Platform – which allows for BI, low code, and workflow management – to
create Power Automate. It also uses Selenium, which is an open source application that allows for the recording
and automating of web applications.It comes with more than 275 prebuilt connectors to apps and services.
There are also AI capabilities and of course native integrations with Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure.
While there is some coding needed, it is still high level and there is a drag-and-drop system to create the
workflows. Interestingly enough, when it comes to creating alerts and triggers, you can seamlessly use
Microsoft Teams.

Power Automate is definitely a solid offering. However, it still lacks enterprise-grade features, such as identity
management. But such things will likely be added in the next couple years.
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If anything, Power Automate will allow Microsoft to learn and iterate on RPA systems. And given the
company’s deep reservoir of talent and financial resources, it seems like a good bet that the progress will be
rapid .

Attended Automation
RPA technology has been mostly about unattended automation. And this should not be surprising. This type of
automation is easier to handle. Hey, there is no involvement with people! But attended automation has much
potential for making a huge difference. An employee, for example, can leverage the intelligence of a bot while
using his or her own skills to solve problems. Attended automation should lead to much synergy – the best of
humans and machines.

The good news is that the technology is starting to get better, especially with improved integration and AI.
“We’ll see more businesses pivot their attention toward attended automation,” said Francis Carden, who is the
VP of digital automation and robotics at PEGA. “They will start to recognize how combining bots and humans
together can produce optimal outcomes in a faster and more agile way. They will realize that in many use cases,
such as in call centers and large front and back offices, attended RPA can be rapidly deployed to many more
users for the most common tasks and delivers a much faster and
more valuable route to ROI.”

Barry Cooper, who is the enterprise group president at NICE, agrees with this thesis. “We’re starting to see a
shift as enterprises are beginning to understand and embrace the benefits of automation and view it as a way to
improve the overall workload and performance of their employees,” he said. “This is especially true when
providing employees with their own personal robotic assistant. Attended bots are programmed to provide
employees with the guidance and assistance they require, in real time directly from their desktops, and automate
anything which is repetitive and doesn’t require their special
skills. Enterprises are realizing that attended automation will have a positive impact on their employee’s
adoption of automation and ultimately on the service they provide to their customers.”

To get a sense of this, consider Automation Anywhere, which has acquired Klevops, a start-up based in Paris.
According to the deal’s press release: “Automation Anywhere fast forwards the RPA category to Attended
Automation 2.0, where managers can easily orchestrate workstreams across a team of employees and bots,
driving a higher level of employee productivity and improved customer experience.

This enables customers to automate more processes than ever before, with the same level of central governance,
security and analytic capability for which Automation Anywhere has always been known.This approach is
likely to see much traction in industries that rely heavily on contact centers, such as banks and telecom
companies.

The RPA Career

Even though the emergence of the Internet has resulted in the reduction of certain jobs, there have been new
professions created like digital marketing.
Something similar is happening with RPA. “Hiring for RPA skills will explode across all industries and job
functions,” said Prince Kohli, who is the CTO of Automation Anywhere. “With more than 5,000 RPA jobs in
the U.S., there is already incredibly high demand for RPA specialists. Starting salaries will
skyrocket.”

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This will not just be for developers, business analysts, and managers. There will also be growth for those who
have experience in verticals, such as IT, BPO, HR, education, and insurance.
But for those companies that implement RPA, there will be a need on how to transition existing workers. This
is certainly an opportunity – but will not be easy. Companies must rethink the traditional approaches to talent
management.
 According to research from Leslie Willcocks, Mary Lacity, and John Hindle, change management is the
most seriously under-recognized and underfunded component of successful RPA implementations.4
“We will see more companies embracing training opportunities to upskill their employees for RPA jobs,
opening the doors for new career opportunities and growth,” said Barry Cooper, who is the enterprise group
president at NICE.
To do this, companies must go beyond just offering training courses. There will need to be a focus on areas
like providing interesting opportunities and incentives.

Scaling RPA
While the early stages of an RPA implementation are generally successful, it usually gets more difficult to scale
the technology. What winds up happening is that there is a hodgepodge of bots throughout an organization,
which often means not getting the maximum results.

“As more and more organizations adopt RPA, we have yet to see an enterprise-wide adoption of more than 50–
100 bots,” said Harel Tayeb, who is the CEO of Kryon Systems.

To help improve things, RPA vendors are retooling their systems to help achieve scale, such as by adding AI
and process mining. “With the benefits of RPA, corporations are looking for scalability and are struggling in
two areas related directly to processes – inability to identify candidates for automation after tackling the ‘low
hanging fruit’ and dealing with bad processes,” said Ray LeBlanc, who is the product strategy manager at
Verint.

“Process mining is the logical solution; however, the solutions are expensive, still take considerable time, and
don’t truly align with RPA. We are starting to see solutions that are targeted to a smaller sample size, that is,
number of users, but also are focused on actual workflow on the desktop, that are focused on discovering
processes that are suitable to benefit from RPA.”6

There will also be a move toward using Business Process Management solutions.
“RPA began as a stand-alone technology but the future of RPA is clearly integration into larger end-to-end
process automation platforms and programs,” said Michael Beckely, who is the CTO of Appian. “When unified
with human workflow, BPM, API integrations, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning services, and RPA can
be efficiently orchestrated with humans and other systems to maximum benefit.

The so-called ‘problems’ with RPA really become features when viewed within the greater context of an overall
Automation project.”7 He notes that the financial services industry – which was an early adopter of RPA – is
already shifting toward a holistic approach.

“Whereas RPA was sometimes started as a way to bypass overburdened IT departments, as RPA projects scale,
IT is increasingly taking charge,” said Beckely. His company has built a system, called the Robotic Workforce
Manager, that uses low code to enable the scaling of RPA projects to hundreds and even thousands of bots. For
example, Union Bank – one of the largest banks in the Philippines – has used this, along with UiPath, for the
unification of its automation initiatives.
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The company was able to deploy over 400 automated applications in under three months and accelerated
processing times by 300%. “Through this process of digital transformation, UBP achieved 97% digitization,”
said Beckely. “Business executives require real-time visibility into robotic workforce operations so they can
analyze bot value by process and department and achieve greater business impact through end-to-end
automation.

RPA business users need better ways to automate human-in-the-loop activities and self-service controls to start
and schedule robotic processes on-demand. With end-to-end process visibility across people and robots, users
can confidently tackle much greater workloads than ever before.”

Vertical-Specific Companies
In general, most of the RPA vendors have solutions that span multiple industries. Yet the companies still
usually have specialties. Actually, as RPA starts to mature, there will likely be more vertical-based players.

Customers will want a more specialized approach, as there will usually be unique use cases.
Just look at Olive, which is targeting the healthcare industry.

The founder and CEO – Sean Lane – actually has an interesting background. He started his career as an
intelligence officer in the Air Force working at the National Security Agency. There he had valuable experience
dealing with enormous engineering challenges. He even completed five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But when he returned home, he saw another devastation: the impact of the opioid addiction crisis. To do
something about this, he looked at how he could leverage his experience with finding insights from data.

When he started learning about the healthcare system, he realized the enterprise systems were highly proprietary
and would not talk to each other. The technologies were also unintuitive and often required hiring consultants
and outsourcing firms to add new capabilities. This made it particularly difficult to do cutting-edge initiatives
like AI. Because of this, he saw there was an opportunity to bring automation to the industry.

“My focus was on building an AI-powered digital workforce,” said Lane. “Instead of building new software to
replace disparate systems, we would create the first health care specific digital employee to automate robotic,
error-prone workflows, emulating the manual tasks employees had once done – only faster and more accurately.
With Olive, I’ve set out to carve a trillion dollars out of the cost of healthcare while improving the human
experience.”

The name Olive is the “digital person” that provides the automation. She is quick and does her work in a
confidential manner, helping with tasks like collections, coding, and credentials. There is also a deep
understanding of the complex language of healthcare as well as the EHRs, patient accounting systems, and
third-party clearinghouses.

“If something breaks?” said Lane, “Olive proactively fixes it. If a payer portal changes? Olive will adapt her
workflow.
And if Olive gleans a cost-saving insight from the large amounts of data she’s processing? She’ll surface it and
e-mail her manager about it. This allin- one approach makes it so automations work for our customers. They
don’t work for their automations.

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What’s most exciting is that every Olive is able to learn collectively, like a network, so that hospitals never have
to solve the same problem twice. I ultimately see Olive’s digital workforce as a way to build global awareness –
a true internet of healthcare.”

The healthcare industry is certainly a prime target for RPA. Note that an estimated $1 trillion in spending in the
United States goes to administration. And unfortunately, an employee will engage in mundane tasks like filing
folders or moving data across a myriad of systems and interfaces. In light of this, is it any wonder that burnout
and boredom are the leading causes of turnover and that attrition in the healthcare industry is so high?
“Imagine what we could accomplish if we eliminated even 1% of the burden of time and cost,” said Lane. “The
research that could be funded, the treatments that could be developed, the cures that could be found.”

Hype Factor
Back in 1995, Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn developed the “Hype Cycle,” which caught a lot of attention. The
irony is that her framework was, well, hyped quite a bit! Her premise: Major technologies undergo fairly
predictable cycles.

In fact, the Hype Cycle has five of them, which include the following:
The Technology Trigger: There emerges a transformative technology that quickly gets the attention of the
media, entrepreneurs, and VCs. There are some prototypes for proof of concepts. But the commercial viability
of the technology has yet to be established.
Peak of Inflated Expectations: At this stage, the technology has shown to be effective and this gins up lots of
excitement. This can happen rapidly, especially with the power of social media and the availability of huge
amounts of cash to fund new technologies. As should be no surprise, the hype gets to giddy levels. You will
hear things like “game changer,” “inflection point,” and so on.
Trough of Disillusionment: There begin to be signs that the enthusiasm is evaporating. Some of the companies
in the space are failing or not meeting expectations. Stock prices are getting hit. Customers are realizing that the
new technology is not generating the promised ROI.
Slope of Enlightenment: Despite the issues and problems, the technology nonetheless gets more refined. The
result is that the impact gets stronger. But the media no longer shows much interest and is focused on other red-
hot categories.
Plateau of Productivity: Here the technology becomes mainstream and there are standards of its use. It is
really just a natural part of the business world. This framework is far from perfect.

Consider that Gartner has had some flubs with its own predictions, such as with BPM and cloud computing. But
the 5-step cycle is still useful. It’s a way to allow for a longer-term perspective and to avoid being too early
when it comes to adopting technologies.

According to Gartner: “If there are too many unanswered questions around the commercial viability of an
emerging technology, it may be better to wait until others have been able to deliver tangible value.”

Then where is RPA on the Gartner Hype Cycle? This is definitely tough to answer! One of the things to note is
that RPA has been around for two decades and it was not until six or seven years ago that it really started to
accelerate. But in my opinion, I think the industry is definitely beyond stage two and may actually be entering
the early phases of stage three. The media attention is intense.

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The funding has been plentiful. But at the same time, there are some signs of disillusionment. As noted in
this chapter, there are challenges with scaling RPA as well as combining technologies like AI.

And some of the large players are experiencing growing pains. For example, in late October, Forbes published
an interesting article that showed that UiPath laid off around 300 to 400 employees or 11% of the workforce.
This is not to imply that UiPath is in big trouble. Far from it. The company remains in a strong position – in
terms of its product line, customer base, and financials. But Wall Street is putting much more emphasis on a
path to profitability. The implosion of WeWork – which lost billions of dollars in market value and almost went
bust – was a wake-up call to many in the tech world.

This will mean that the strategies will likely be moderating in the coming years. As UiPath CEO Daniel Dines
noted in the Forbes article, there will be a need to “balance growth ith efficiency.”

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Open Source

RPA software is still mostly on-premise. But there will probably be a transition toward a SaaS model. Part of
this will be about having a cloud-native platform, which will make it easier for upgrades and data access (this
will be critical for AI applications).

“When the software robot becomes a commodity, we will start to see the next wave of adoption in RPA,” said
Antti Karjalainen, who is the founder and CEO of Robocorp. “SMBs (small and medium size businesses) will
want to have access to business process automation but they will not always have the required sophistication to
adopt the technology. This gives an opening to a new type of service provider, a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS)
operator, that can help SMEs by automating their business routines and maintaining the software robots for
them. These RaaS operators can either focus on certain verticals, like car dealers or real estate agents, or they
can work as general automation providers in their local area.”

But also expect a change in the business model. As RPA scales, the costs can get prohibitive because of the per-
bot fees. So customers will be looking for alternatives, say, a subscription approach. Companies like SAP,
Intellibot, and Nintex have been offering lower-priced strategies as a way to get traction in the crowded RPA
market, for example. Companies may also look to the open source approach as a way to deal with this as well.
But of course, there are other benefits, such as a strong ecosystem of developers who keep innovating the
platform. Granted, the landscape for open source software is fragmented. The projects tend to be
small in terms of adoption – and the technology is not extensive. But this is expected to change. As seen with
other industries, open source has become ubiquitous.

According to Karjalainen : “The traditional RPA infrastructure hasn’t incentivized participation from the
developer community to build RPA tools because of the high cost of entry for businesses has essentially limited
market-share and profitability. However, as RPA becomes more open-source driven and the user-base grows,
developer interest will increase and we’ll begin seeing a subset of RPA-exclusive developers that will drive
innovative creation of tools. We will identify the ‘RPA developer’ as a new developer category.”

If anything, open source is likely to be critical for the RPA category. “Open source is a central pillar of modern
cloud stacks, and if RPA is to have a role in hybrid cloud infrastructure, it must be open source as well,” said
Phil Simpson, who is the product marketing manager for process automation at Red Hat. “A number of open
source RPA projects are available today, but few at this point can compare to proprietary products in
the market currently, particularly around providing enterprise-grade support.

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With that said, the industry is moving toward a more open and flexible model, and I anticipate we’ll
soon see parity between the two models, giving customers the ultimate in flexibility and choice.”

Chatbots
Sometimes there is confusion between chatbots and RPA. While both involve the use of software bots, there are
clear differences. A chatbot is a system that uses NLP (natural language processing) to communicate with
people. In the consumer world, this would be Siri or Cortana. But of course, many companies are using chatbots
for handling customer service.

The market for this technology is growing quickly. According to research from Reports and Data, the spending
on chatbots is forecasted to go from $1.17 billion in 2018 to $10.8 billion by 2026, which represents a
compound annual growth rate of 30.9%.Some of the biggest drivers include the pervasive use of social media
and smartphones. Chatbots are expected to have a notable impact on the bottom line too. A research study
from Juniper Research points out that the cost savings will hit $7.3 billion by 2023, up from
only $209 million in 2019.

Then what does RPA have to do with chatbots? There are several use cases. First of all, a chatbot can be used
internally as an assistant to help employees with gaining access to information or getting insights. But RPA can
also help automate processes that deal with customer interactions.

Look at Aflac. The company, which has been around for more than 55 years, is a top provider of financial
protection for health matters. There are over 50 million customers.

No doubt, Aflac has had to find ways to help automate processes. “We have been working with RPA for quite
some time,” said Keith Farley, who is the VP of US innovation at Aflac. “We have worked with screen scraping
and other techniques – even before it was called RPA.”

But it was in 2017 that the company implemented two systems from RPA vendors, which involved the help of a
consultant. The first bot was for handling wellness claims, which was a quick success. Aflac has since gone on
to create 28 more bots. Actually, one of the workers whose processes were partially automated became a
manager of the RPA system. “We have reached a point of maturity,” said Farley. “We are now looking at the
next stage for automation.”

A big part of the strategy is the use of chatbots. At first, Aflac leveraged the Facebook Messenger bot service. It
was built to address common questions and would route to call center people when the chatbot did not have an
answer. But in the end, it failed and Aflac took it down. But the company did not give up. “We embraced the
failure and talked about new approaches,” said Farley.

One of the problems was that Facebook Messenger could not identify the user, which made it impossible to
provide personalized answers. Next, the database of Q&A information was subpar.
“We thought the solution was to bring people back into the loop,” said Farley. “We started using a chatbot
system where our employees would answer the questions. By doing this, we were able to create the right kind of
data.” This proved to be spot-on. The new chatbot system had a login to identify the users and
a much richer database, with the number of question types going from 500 to over 20,000. The result has been a
higher level of satisfaction from customers and reduced call center volume during peak times.

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“The second iteration was a big success,” said Farley. “But we realized that the chatbot was not a replacement
for employees. There are certain times when customers want to talk with a person. This is especially the case
with our own business, where we deal with wrenching situations with illness and disease.”

Artificial Intelligence
AI is likely to be the most important driver for RPA. Based on research from PwC, this technology is expected
to add a whopping $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030, which is more than the combined output of China and
India. According to the authors of the report:

“AI touches almost every aspect of our lives. And it’s only just getting started.” Despite this, AI is still limited
and narrow. Consider your smartphone that has Alexa or Siri installed on it. While the technology is powerful,
the core functionality is really about handling simple commands. It will not be until many years that we will be
able to have a free-form conversation with an AI device.

In other words, when thinking about AI and RPA, look for clear-cut business use cases. Interestingly enough,
according to a report from PwC, the focus should be on solving “boring” problems. The report highlights that
executives are starting to realize this as they run into challenges with implementing projects. The PwC survey
shows that – for 2020 – only 4% of companies plan to scale this technology across their organizations. Rather,
the priority will be on functions like finance, HR, tax, and compliance. It may be as easy as something like
intelligently extracting key information from a form. The survey also shows that 44% of executives see AI as a
way to operate more efficiently and 42% believe it will lead to better productivity.

Even before thinking of putting together an AI project or buying a new software platform, it makes more sense
to look at your existing systems. Keep in mind that they already likely have AI features built in! For example,
companies like Oracle, Salesforce.com, and Microsoft have been investing heavily in revamping their software
offerings. So the first step is to try out the new features. This should not only lead to improvements in
automation but also provide some understanding of how to work with AI.

Many of the RPA vendors are also aggressively adding AI features (this is often referred to as intelligent
automation or IA). But do not rush with these either. Take the time to operationalize the AI within your
workflows. What is relevant for your company? What types of AI can be effectively managed?
Granted, it’s a lot of work and there will be the need for extensive planning – but this will be well worth it.

“AI, especially machine learning, has a big role to play in making sense of all the data that will be generated,”
said Ryan Duguid, who is the chief of evangelism and advanced technology at Nintex. “ When you start
tracking every mouse click and keystroke, the volume of data is staggering.”

Then what are some of the interesting use cases for AI and RPA? Well, there are plenty. Here are just a few,
from Tom Wilde, who is the CEO at Indico: Corporate E-mail Inboxes: “Most companies have a central inbox
that receives lots of emails from customers, contractors, suppliers and the like, often with attachments. You
can use RPA to detect when a new e-mail arrives with an attachment, then automatically route the e-mail to an
intelligent automation tool. Machine learning can then be used to extract the attachment and ‘read’ it, using
OCR and NLP. It can also extract relevant unstructured content such as payment terms, invoice numbers,
contractual language and so on. The tool can then normalize the data in an appropriate format and send it to a
downstream platform, such as a CRM or ERP tool.”

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