Blue Prism just announced the availability of BP Cloud Interact, an advanced web interface for digital worker and human collaboration. Blue Prism finally supports native “attended automation”! This will be great news for customers who have………been using Blue Prism in attended automations for years. In fact, the UK National Health Service (NHS), has been using Blue Prism with self-service kiosks since 2010.
We are overdue in addressing a common perception issue around Blue Prism. The platform has always been capable of attended automation. Blue Prism Cloud Interact introduces another advanced solution for attended interactions.
Over the past 2 months I have been posting a series on LinkedIn which shows many ways to use Blue Prism for attended automation. While this series of posts was always intended to keystone with Blue Prism Cloud Interact, I have covered many other ways to do attended automation with Blue Prism.
Why is there this perception that Blue Prism can’t support “attended automations”?
- Blue Prism coined the term “Robotic Process Automation” in 2012, but we didn’t invent every marketing buzzword. We have historically used the phrase “assisted automation” while the phrase “attended automation” became the market standard. Blue Prism documentation that covers best practice design for human/robot interaction does not use the “attended” phrase.
- Blue Prism has a range of Technology Alliance Partners such as TrustPortal, various BPM technologies, Chatbot integrations, etc. which offer dynamic & mature user experiences related to attended. While these technologies can achieve more compelling user experiences, much like BP Cloud Interact, they have never been a requirement for attended automation with Blue Prism.
- Blue Prism has a single license model that can transition between unattended and attended work. A single Blue Prism license can also support many humans through attended interactions. Other primary vendors in this market have significantly more complicated license models and one component is an “attended” specific license SKU.
In a decade of deploying attended RPA across the most heavily regulated industries on the planet, we have learned a few tips on the topic. For most newcomers this knowledge is embedded into piles of reference documentation and training. In order to surface these concepts, we are merging several of my personal how-to posts with broader best practices to share with the world. You can join the conversation on this topic by registering as a member on the Blue Prism Community Blog.
The RPA market uses a constantly evolving array of terms currently including attended, assisted, human-in-the-loop (HITL), attended 2.0, etc. Where the robot resides, how a user interacts with a robot, and how a robot is designed are separate topics; but RPA vendors have successfully distorted these concepts. The term "attended" is now as well defined as the term "artificial intelligence". Throughout this series I differentiate forms of attended based on architecture.
On-Desktop Attended (aka. “RDA”): The Digital Worker (aka. “robots” or “BOTs”) shares a desktop with a human business user, similar to a desktop macro. Humans typically trigger the Digital Worker locally through desktop icons or tray icons.
Off-Desktop Attended: The Digital Worker owns its own virtual desktop separate from the human business user. Automations run in a secure data center (either on-premise or cloud). Humans initiate Digital Workers via a wide range of triggers such as desktop icons, email, SMS, web services, BPM interactions, moving files into a file share, etc.
Getting Started
Blue Prism can support attended automation like all other RPA vendors. We just recommend doing it in a way that supports enterprise scale. If you want to build simple desktop trigger with your BP Trial or Learning Edition then checkout https://rpatools.com/2019/01/message-box-and-request-credentials-using-blue-prism/. Keep in mind that these automation options can be done without add-on technologies.
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