Good gosh - it's almost the end of 2024. How has your year been? What wins are you celebrating? I hope you're looking back on a year of success.
And if you're one of the 334 automation professionals who joined our Community this month - welcome to Best of the Community! Here's where we round up the top discussions, events, contributions and more.
Let's get into it, shall we?
The best questions and answers
- Automating MS Office 365
@DipinDevP has been asking some fantastic questions in the Community lately - and this is a great example. If you can't install Microsoft Office apps on a machine, is it possible to automate the web versions instead? It absolutely is, and there's loads of great advice & resources from the DX in the replies from @michaeloneil @david.l.morris @rafikBL and @saivikas729 . Thank you all for helping! - Renaming a worksheet via an action
Warmest of welcomes to @joanne.spratt - who joined the Community to ask for ways to rename a single worksheet within an Excel workbook using Blue Prism. Round of applause to @michaeloneil @John__Carter and @Mohamad_747 for a healthy debate on the best practice method of achieving this - as well as @stepher for rounding off the thread with a beautifully concise summary. Great job all 💙
It's important to emphasize, there really is no question too big or small here. If you need help, we're all here to offer it. You are never alone, and these are fantastic examples of how knowledge sharing can make our whole profession a beautiful one to work in.
It's also a great way to practice soft skills... but more on that later!
If you’re looking for opportunities to help others, and level up your community profile, head over to the Can You Help feed to find unanswered questions waiting for assistance.
The best newcomers
This section is a tough one this month, because there's loads of newcomers! Here's a few whose contributions I've loved reading:
- @blazino17 – who has been making great use of the technical expertise of the community this month. I love how you always include screenshots in your posts, it makes providing advice very easy!
- @Adnan3194 – for making great use of search! You found an existing post that was really relevant to your question, and made great contributions to it along with help from @Chakkravarthi_PR. Thanks to you both.
- @emmanuelkatto24 – might just be one of the most polite and thorough members of the Community! Thanks for diving straight in with great product ideas and questions, we're lucky to have you here.
Newcomers to the community bring new ideas, interesting challenges and extra knowledge to share - thank you all for helping to make our community a great place to be.
The best events
I need to take a moment here to thank @michaeloneil @sastharpa @asilarow and @RobinParkerBPC for joining me in our Soft Skills Lunch & Learn. We had an incredible discussion on why, as AI agents become all the more popular, your human-centric skills can help you to stand out. You can catch up on the event here, or read the post-event discussion here.
November also saw our first UK Northwest User Group meetup:
Kudos to @john.mackey for organizing this get together.
Be sure to check out our user groups for upcoming meetups near you.
Here's the events coming up in December:
Revolutionize The Future of Work To Create Value With SS&C Next Generation Powered by AWS-Webinar – Dec 4
Next-Gen product manager @tomsadler will take you through the latest Next Gen developments, and show you how we're making it really easy to integrate AWS services via pre-built connectors.
Blue Prism France User Group Meetup - Dec 11
If you're in the Paris area, join MVP @Mohamad_747 for a networking and knowledge share meetup, hosted by friends at Infinity!
BPM Tips & Takeaways: Leveraging Generative AI and Automation to Transform Customer Communications – Dec 17
We utilize Blue Prism as a product across SS&C, and this webinar will feature some fantastic stories and examples of how we're using Automation and AI combined to improve customer communications. Join the always-inspiring @BradHairston and a multitude of expert guests to see it all in action.
2 things to inspire you
Last month I gave a shoutout to @Alizee and @john.mackey for their amazing blog series on maintenance. And now I have to give them both another shoutout this month - they're at it again!
This time they're talking about pure survival. When a major outage strikes your organization, will you have an action plan ready to ensure the continuity of your automations? Get their tips, best practices and advice over on the blog.
Elsewhere, @harish.mogulluri has been reviving #BPTechTips. This month, he's showing you how to save time identifying elements in Application Modeler. Go and feed your brain!
Over to you...
Okay! One more month of 2024. Again, I really hope you're looking back on a successful year. Thank you all for joining in, for sharing what you know, for being there for each other. No matter what we automate, we'll always have an innate need for connection - and I'm so proud to be a part of the connections that happen here in the Blue Prism Community.
Until next time!
💙
