topic RE: Possibly the silliest automation ever in Product Forum

Possibly the silliest automation ever

Michael_S — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 13:47:00 GMT

Hello friends,

So, as you may know, I am learning to RPA. And through this process, I'd like to say, I admire you all because this requires a ton of logic and focus.

The Foundation training, docs and all the answered questions in this community have been an immense help. But I decided that I needed a passion project to test my padawan skills. And so, I created this:

This, my friends, is the Star Wars Prequel Memes Bank. It works like this:

The Fetch URL Action Stage runs a BO I created using the Application Modeller. It:

Kills all instances of Chrome
Clears the clipboard
Launches a new instance of Chrome, and navigates to the r/prequelmemes subreddit
Sorts the feed by "Top This Week"
Clicks on the top post
Copies the URL in the address bar to the clipboard
Saves that URL to a Global Data Stage
Cleans up

After that, there are a series of Excel VBO Actions which:

Open an instance of Excel and records the instance handle
Open a specific workbook that I already set up with headers
Shows that instance to avoid background processing weirdness
Finds an empty row
Sets todays date as reference in the first column
Pastes the URL gathered from the Fetch URL BO into the second column
Saves and closes the Workbook
Cleans up

So, now, I have a bank of beautiful Star Wars Prequel Memes to peruse whenever I'm feeling low. Perhaps slightly more valuable than that though, I learned a ton about automating through making a LOT of mistakes:

I learned all about SendKeys! Which was fun.
I painfully learned about the importance of proper clean up after processing
I used Application Modeler and UI Automation to work with specific elements on a specific website, which helped me cut down the number of stages needed
I learned a lot about data stages, instances and handles - in particular how useful data stages can be purely for debugging problems by having the data that the process is working with displayed on screen

Anyway - I had fun! If you have any advice on how I can improve, upskill or what I can try to build next, give me a reply 🙂

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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RE: Possibly the silliest automation ever

steven.boggs — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 13:56:00 GMT

Now this is podracing!

This is great, Michael. Thanks for sharing!

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Steve Boggs
Senior Product Support Engineer
Blue Prism
Austin, TX
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RE: Possibly the silliest automation ever

Michael_S — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 14:06:00 GMT

@steven.boggs:
Now this is podracing!

This is great, Michael. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks @steven.boggs!

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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RE: Possibly the silliest automation ever

michaeloneil — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 10:44:00 GMT

Hi @Michael Shillingford

Congrats on your first automation, from the screenshot you have it all looks pretty clean and easy to follow so if it were to be passed to a maintenance support team thats exactly what they need. As for the VBO you created i would say remember to separate out your actions so the vbo is transferable to other automations, e.g. Launch should hold the actions to open chrome and opens the main page of the site you are using. A navigate page may contain the actions to take an input parameter url to the page you want to use, a new page filled with actions to get the "Top this week" and get the url.

This way any new automations can use it without redevelopment of something that was already built. Hope this helps

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Michael ONeil
Technical Lead developer
NTTData
Europe/London
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RE: Possibly the silliest automation ever

Michael_S — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 10:58:00 GMT

That's brilliant advice, particularly on re-usability! Thanks @Michael ONeil 🙂

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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RE: Possibly the silliest automation ever

DevendranVenkatesh — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 09:29:00 GMT

Good work mate

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Best Regards,
Devendran Venkatesh
RPA - Technical Architect |
Riyadh 11413, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Phone. +966-556784162
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