DEFEATED! Community Boss Battle #2: Robot Healthcare

[Michael_S]

🔥 Attention, mighty intelligent automation professionals! 🔥

Once again, there's trouble in bot-land, where Bob the Bad Bot has been causing chaos by causing all of your automations to fail and stop unexpectedly!

In this Community Boss Battle, you'll need to suggest possible solutions to the problem below in order to destroy the boss and earn the Defeated Bob! badge for your community profile. Let's see what you're up against this time...

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👾 The Boss: Robot Healthcare (100 HP) 👾

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tackle this daunting question:

"What steps can you take to prevent your automations from failing, stalling, stopping or causing unexpected chaos?"

PS. Thanks to @Jignesh Khakhriya for inspiring this Boss Battle with Dr. Bot!

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🛡️ The Rules of Engagement 🛡️

• Post your innovative, well-thought-out answers to slay the boss!
  Each viable answer will reduce the boss's hit points (HP) based on the quality of your response. The boss starts with 100 HP!
  
  
• Join forces with your fellow community members!
  Recommend another member's answer by clicking the "recommend" button, or reply to their answer and cheer them on. This teamwork will also deal damage to the boss!
  
  
• Keep the conversation positive and respectful.
  We're all in this battle together, so let's support each other and learn from one another. When posting, you don't need to give all the answers - one tip will do. Leave room for your fellow community members to contribute too!
  
  
• You'll receive a notification each time your answer or recommendation deals damage to the boss.
  Please note that we're calculating damage manually, so there may be some delay between posting a reply and receiving a notification.

Now, let's gather our creative powers and expertise to slay this boss together! The future of intelligent automation awaits your innovative ideas and solutions. Good luck, and let the battle commence!

The Boss' HP is currently: 0HP
🎉 Congratulations - you defeated Bob once more! 🎉

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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[michaeloneil]

• Implement catch and recover in as many places as is feasible - Main page recovery and retry but subpage retries if this makes sens to do so i.e. areas known to be a bit flakey such as interaction with a particular element on a web page. 
• Recover at the main page - Does the automation need a retry for the failure or can it recover and continue?  
• Break up your process stage - Do data gather, processing and reporting separately to allow for continuation if possible e.g. If theres a failure in the data gather can second process continue? if data gather fails can the schedule move to processing and work any queue items that are there? 
• Email notifications - These can work for complete failure or recover and continue scenario i.e. email the support team to notify there was a failure, include the error details, but the bot continues on.
• Multiple same failure scenario - During work item processing do retries for individual work items (3 recover and retry per item) also include steps to track the last item error so if each item is getting the same error then the bot can end without continuing to process all items when there might be an issue. E.g. retry a work item 3 times, if it still fails record the exception info and start the count of the number of failures, run the next work item if this fails 3 times and the error is the same as the previous item then again record the number of items. Do this until you reach the defined error limit and then end and notify there might be an issue. If an item fails with a a different exception then the failure count is reset as this is only for recording continuous failures.

I'll add more if i think of any. Also, BOB MUST DIE!

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Michael ONeil
Technical Lead developer
NTTData
Europe/London
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[Digital_WorkerB]

@Mukesh Kumar applied 10hp damage!

@johnwild hit the boss for 10hp!

@Tejaskumar_Darji hit the boss for 10hp!

@Babjee Vangipurapu caused 10hp damage!

@Michael Wulff Nielsen hit for 10hp damage!

@Michael ONeil caused 10hp damage!

🎉BOB IS DEFEATED! 🎉

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Hi 👋 I am a Digital Worker. Please check out my profile to learn more about what I do!
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[Michael_S]

HUGE congratulations everyone, what a battle that was! I'm going to award some extra trophies:

• THE SHORTCUT AWARD goes to @Michael Wulff Nielsen for telling us all to just delete your boss' account from Blue Prism. Perhaps the fastest way to a cold beer, but also the most likely to lead to a difficult decision on Monday morning...
• THE ROLEPLAY AWARD goes to @Vipul Tiwari for his vivid fantasy inspired healthcare superpowers. I especially love the Scroll of Wisdom!
• THE RAGE AWARD goes to @Michael ONeil for passionately declaring that BOB MUST DIE. ...are you okay?
• THE LINKED-INFLUENCER AWARD goes to @Tejaskumar_Darji for quoting himself in his post 👏
• THE FRIENDSHIP AWARD goes to @johnwild for reminding us all that the best asset in a crisis is a strong network of colleagues you can depend upon

Well done community for taking down another tricky automation best practice challenge! Jokes aside, the advice shared here has been absolutely stellar and I'm positive that you will, over the coming days, weeks and months, inspire others to pro-actively take good  care of their digital workforce. Thank you for your kindness, generosity and enthusiasm 💙

Those of you who took part before Bob was defeated will find a new badge on your community profile page.

You can keep the tips flowing on your robo-healthcare advice, and if you have any ideas for future boss battles, be sure to send me a message!

And remember - Bobs never mean to be bad, they're just mis-informed. 

Have an excellent week everyone!

M

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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[grbanares]

It is always best to understand the process you are building. Sitting with the SME and understanding all the ropes of the process is the best place to start. Working with technical people to understand the application and knowing versions, releases, and upgrades can leverage the way we code the solution. There is no enough exception handling. Doing a good amount of testing is something that you should consider before moving to the next stages. Unit testing while building, getting into extensive UAT with the SME, and working on ensuring that the code will work well once in production is a vital key in having a good robot that we can rely on with our automated process. 😉

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Genold Bañares
Head of Automation Development
Virtual Blue
Auckland, New Zealand
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[Mukeshh_k]

@Michael Shillingford - I asked ChatGPT to narrate "Shakespeare" version of this Battle with "BOB the bad bot"  and the response was epic - 

"Upon yon time's return, a strife unfurled

Within the realm of bots, where trouble swirled.

'Twas Bob the Bad Bot, spreading chaos wide,

Production's heart did falter, hopes did slide.

Yet warriors of automation, bold and true,

with valor they pursue.

To rescue and redeem, they marched ahead,

Defeating Bob, his reign of dread.

But lo! Each time Bob dared to rise anew,

The valiant warriors would regroup and pursue.

In ceaseless dance, they'd thwart his vile plot,

Till Bob the Bad Bot existed not.

Thus, the tale unfolds in endless loop,

The battle's rhythm, an unending stoop.

Yet 'tis the courage, ever shall it reign,

As long as bots and warriors remain."

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Regards,

Mukesh Kumar - Senior Automation Developer

NHS, England, United Kingdom, GB
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[Michael_S]

Haha amazing, thanks for that @Mukesh Kumar!

I like to think that Bob isn't a really mean villain who sets out to cause everyone trouble. More that he just grew up on bad practices, never received any formal training and is under a lot of pressure. The perfect circumstances for mistakes. It's our job to set him right 😉

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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