Whether you're planning for one bot or 10,000 bots, it's critical that you set the standards for bot governance within your organization. This 60-minute webinar will teach you how to provide your citizen developers with a foundation for success.

So, what's next? 

We hope you understand we couldn't get to every question during our Q&A session, but we'd like to provide answers to as many as we can.

Check them out below: 

Q&A

When will Pega release RPA version 21?

The official GA release is expected later this year. The first preview is expected any day now and will be downloadable through Pega Digital Delivery. 

Could you please suggest the best practice for password management of the same unattended robots on multiple VMs though robot manager (server-side management to retrieve or reset or update) *password of web and window applications used in unattended robots.

Depending on the number of bots you have you may find storing passwords on each VM sufficient. You would use OOTB tools, delivered with the RPA Service install, to store and retrieve credentials. If you find that you need to manage them centrally, you can use any number of enterprise-grade password management vaults. We support integration with both Beyond Trust and CyberArk out-of-the-box in addition to providing an SDK and a template C# solution to allow creation of your own custom integration.

How is this capability different than other integration software like MuleSoft?

RPA supports the ability to automate (and with Pega Robotics create APIs around those automations). Automation through the UI of an application is used when other APIs do not exist or are caught up in an IT backlog. Pega Platform and Pega RPA can integrate with any API from anywhere, including MuleSoft.

Assuming we do not have any automation capabilities internally, do we have a checklist to find out what could be a good starting point for automation and how to develop RPA capabilities internally?

A good standard when looking for candidate processes for robotics is to search for processes that have high volume and low complexity. These will yield the highest return on investment and see the fastest time to production. We also provide Operational Walkthroughs for our clients to help determine effective use cases, and you can use those sessions to enable your team to look for RPA opportunities.

Once you’ve determined the right use case, the next step is to perform some application discovery. In v21, you will likely be recording the process and capturing the controls you will need for the process, so this can be a great starting point for your production automation. From here, you will determine if there are any technical challenges to automating the application and develop an idea of the level of effort required.

Could you please shed some light on how to approach a solution like first design - manually testing it, integrating it in the process, etc. Could you provide some simple high-level steps breaking down the approach?

First, I prefer to perform some discovery on an application to determine if automation is possible and if it is, what the LOE will be. After I have determined that I can automate an application, then I start with interrogation and/or recording the process. As I am interrogating, I like to build out the framework for the automation(s) I am going to use (Start, Stop, Search, Check for VIP Customer, etc.). As I am building the automations, I am testing each one as thoroughly as possible. Finally, once all automations are built, I test the whole solution and make sure it meets my standard. I then deploy it for further testing by official testers or users. After any bugs have been resolved, it would get deployed to production.

There is not a lot of availability of code samples or snippets, which can be used by developers to understand how to use robotics tools. The PCRSA course does not contain all the required things. Google does not have Pega Robotics-related issues. There are no eBooks that cover the concepts in detail. Collaboration Center has some information, but mostly verbal information, and that too is limited. These reasons cause the developer to spend too much time researching to do some simple tasks. Do you have any recommendations on how to make the developer's life easier?

We have many courses in Pega Academy that are available to our clients. These courses help with learning how to use Pega Robotics. We also have many video vignettes that showcase how to build specific types of projects (example: Automating Excel, StartMyDay, Parallel Processing).

You can find a list of these videos here.

Also, if you need additional details on Collaboration Center or Pega Community all you need to do is ask and the moderators will provide them.

Can you provide a document or a video that references how Pega Case Manager integrates with RPA bots?

We have a video vignette highlighting this functionality, but it is not publicly hosted. Please contact your AE, and we will be happy to provide it. Look for this content in Pega Academy for the v21 Robotics System Architect course.

Is there any way to add comments to the variable declaration in the global container?

There are no current methods for adding comments into a global container. Ideally, your variables should be named appropriately so developers can understand their usage, but this isn’t always the easiest to do. You might also make use of the navigator feature to be able to determine where the item is used. Great idea! We have added this to the v21 roadmap. Thanks!

Can you provide any guidance on automated testing, using CICD for robotics development, or how to design for test-driven development?

Pega Robotics has built-in unit testing components to help with testing your automations. In terms of CICD, as a best practice, the projects should be built in a modular and agile fashion that will allow you to easily add to or change and update the project as needed.

While we talk about best practices for developing a robust RPA solution, how can we connect to Microsoft Office 365 (cloud license), rather than Office 2013 / 2016 / 2019 (on-premisis license)? These versions change from time to time. If we must connect to Outlook, be it whatever the version, how do we manage this while installing RPA?

Our current set of pre-built components work with the locally installed MS Office products. However, the best practice for integrating Outlook is to use our Pega Email Bot product, not through automation of the Office 365 UI. Pega Email Bot also gives you quick integration to our NLP engine and provides a prebuilt interface for the user. We also support all the Office 365 APIs which can be call from Pega Robotics, platform, integration designer etc.

What are the best practices for monitoring and maintaining RPA bots?

The Robot Manager gives you a single place to monitor and administer all your RPA Bots. It has functions to control and provides metrics all your unattended bots, and reporting is available for both your attended and unattended bots.

What are the limitations of Pega Robotics that should be considered during RPA opportunity assessment and development?

As with most things, the biggest limitations are time and money. With enough time, you can do anything with Pega Robotics. However, for the most successful implementation, once the use cases are determined, you should always do application discovery before beginning any development. This is an important part of determining the LOE required to automate a new application. Through application discovery, you will learn what techniques you will need to use for your use cases, and which use cases should be prioritized to save time and money.

Just like we have AES in Pega to monitor Alerts, similarly, do we have anything for tracking the workability of RPA and RDAs?

Robot Manager is used to track and monitor work being performed by unattended bots. Alerts happen through Robot Manager OOTB and can also be sent to Pega Diagnostic Cloud. There are also extensive reporting capabilities available there to see what automations have been performed, how many times they ran, and how long they took to execute. New features around real-time monitoring of attended RPA are in development now. Stay tuned!

What are the best practices or points to be considered to ensure that that RPA/RDA functionality will not be impacted when adapter applications undergo major upgrades?

As with any major upgrade of an application, with or without bots, you’ll need to have a change management process. Testing your RPA bots that utilize that application should be a part of the regression testing process. We provide unit testing components in the product to help with basic testing, but you can also use them in this scenario to help confirm functionality. It’s worth saying that unless the upgrade changes the underlying technology (going from Windows to Web), or drastically removes/replaces controls, the automations should continue to work as long as all the target objects are still on the forms or pages you are automating.

Thank you again for attending, and we hope to see you at our upcoming events.

You can find the full schedule on our Pega Community Events page.