This year at Blue Prism World we hosted three virtual Challenges for global teams to work together and design the best process possible using Blue Prism.
The Challenges were one of our most popular sessions within Blue Prism World last year and this year was no exception, with registrations closing with a total of 29 teams and 112 registered participants. Open to both our customers and partners, this year we had the pleasure of accepting teams from Capgemini, EY, Fidelity or Smart Automation, among others.
All the Challenges were held on May 20th, and the teams had access to the Blue Prism environment for 24 hours to solve their Challenge.
Each of the teams did an amazing job of thinking outside the box to address the Challenges and were very collaborative on their dedicated Community, Challenge Zone, with more than 40 posts on the Challenges day.
To get an overview on this year's Challenges and the main comments or difficulties the teams faced, just keep reading!
Translate news around the world - designed by @alfred.lau - Product Consultant at Blue Prism
Task
For this Challenge, teams had to create a solution within the Blue Prism product to extract the editorial of the day from a website provided in French and translate into English.
They needed to extract the article text without any advertisements and translate using Google Translate and Microsoft Bing. Once translation was completed, it was required to display and store the differences in the two translated texts.
Difficulty level
Medium (3 hours of expected completion time)
Highlighted Challenges
- The character limit for Bing translator changed from 5000 to 1000. This made the Challenge more difficult and required extra logic to be implemented to split the text into smaller chunks that can be translated by Bing.
- Captcha was present while working on Bing Translator and there is no expectation for the robot to handle the captcha. Creativity points may be awarded if the robot has a way to get around it.
What participants said
"We have been able to complete the challenge within stipulated time. Indeed this was a great experience. Our whole team got to learn new things and it has opened a new dimension in our knowledge base"
Robo-pairs! A memory game - designed by @Mike__Lowe - Senior Product Consultant at Blue Prism
Task
For this Challenge, teams had to create a solution within the Blue Prism product to play the "Blue Prism – Matching Pairs Challenge" game using surface automation techniques only.
The game had several levels, each with a varying number of cards on the screen and a 60 second time limit for each level. The aim was to create a solution to complete the "Medium (5x4)" level in the fastest time, and in the fewest possible moves.
Difficulty level
High (6 to 8 hours of expected completion time)
Highlighted Challenges
- Doubts regarding the best technique used for searching cards on the screen. The method of locating the cards was completely open since there were many approaches to this challenge.
- Ability to allow Blue Prism to load objects into memory faster. Using the image manipulated object it takes 7-9 seconds to initialize when running.
What participants said
"This was a pretty fun, frustrating, and challenging experiment. Definitely learned a lot."
"Fun challenge overall, thanks for the inclusion we had a great time and some interesting learning points for whole team involved!"
Beat the Broker... Lock in prices before they change! - designed by @Adam Greenwood - Automation Development Lead at Blue Prism and supported by @Carl__Carter, @MikeThorpe and @Shiyanbade Animashaun
Task
For this Challenge, teams had to create a solution within the Blue Prism product to read a table within Chrome on the website provided, that will refresh every 30 seconds.
The aim of the Challenge was to create a solution to capture the data in the table before it updates. Teams needed to consider the speed of their desired approach as well as the robustness.
Difficulty level
Medium (3 hours of expected completion time)
Highlighted Challenges
- How to write to CSV as Excel was not available in the machine. There are various ways to write data to a csv file or comma separated value file, without using Excel and part of the Challenge was to figure this out.
- Doubts around the output file. Their Business Object needed to be able to read the Stock Market data before the page refreshes, and then the process should output this data.
What participants said
"It was really a good opportunity to work as a team considering the covid situation. This 24 hrs challenge was a good challenge as we had to understand how to plan and complete the work virtually as a team. Thank you once again for the wonderful opportunity."
"We have enjoyed it a lot and more over it was a team collaboration and new learning for us"
The Blue Prism judging panel is currently reviewing all solutions submitted and they will select a winning team per Challenge. Keep an eye on the Community to find out about the Challenge winners of Blue Prism World 2021!
If you couldn't participate on these Challenges, simply stay tuned since we'll be hosting more standalone Challenges on the Community.
What did you think of the Challenges held this year? Leave your thoughts below.
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Lorena Seco de Herrera Ortega
Community Associate
Blue Prism
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