5 ms·

Automagica: Open-Source Robotic Process Automation

113 points by mariushn 7y ago

gapo 7y ago
Very curious on the delta with AHK. Their syntax looks a little bit more easier and the OCR Integration with Tesseract looks nice. AHK however has way more examples.
- nacs 7y ago
  AutoHotKey is Windows only and Automagica looks like it has crossplatform support for one.
sstark 7y ago
Fail. Windows only, making it useless in most cases.
TFortunato 7y ago
"Cross-platform" "Only supports Windows 10"
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  Exactly. DON'T CALL IT CROSS-PLATFORM WHEN IT ISN'T. Lying isn't acceptable just because a president does it.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  Well, it might be cross platform in function...but they simply don't provide support for mac and linux...Then again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. ;-)
  - Penelopepe 7y ago
    Yeah indeed. It works, but not all of their activities work on Mac OS
- taneq 7y ago
  Relax. The actual quote from the readme is: > Automagica officially supports Windows 10. Linux and MacOS are not officially supported. It's cross platform, and Windows 10 is officially supported.
  - bdcravens 7y ago
    Looking in activities.py, I see a some functions that are OS-agnostic, but also a ton of functions that are Windows-specific in terms of process names and paths, and directly referencing the win32 lib. It's a matter of "unsupported" meaning "impossible" rather than "you're on your own". That said, the code is pretty easy to read, and would make for a good starting point to make your own automation library.
dalacv 7y ago
sikuli ís nice
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
This is a huge area in enterprises right now - most large global businesses have (I estimate) 2/3 of their headcount at serious threat to process automation - and people are putting the money into it now - expect this area to blow up in the next year or so - definitely a area for the sensible contractor to look at. However is this automation package going to win? I don't know but OSS is likely to have a big part to play And as for the Windows only part - well 99.9% of the processes that are currently done by humans and will get automated are done on windows machines (cos if they were done by humans using a Linux box they would have already built a shell script for it)
- ethbro 7y ago
  This appears to be a glorified services ad posing as an open source project. The crux of desktop automation isn't that you can do the easy things, but that you have a way of doing everything. A 99% automated process with one manual step in the middle is still pretty useless. Which is the reason the major vendors tend to have been in business for 10+ years. Because it's not about wrapping the Windows Active Accessibility API (or whatever they're calling it now) and patting yourself on the back. It's about supporting, out of the box, that VB6 app with a hacked-in async UI interaction using a custom grid with a combo box in it. And it's about exposing it in a way that, ideally, a business use familiar with Visio-only can kludge together 85% of the logic. In short, this looks like all those times HN opines on {biology / rocketry / etc} and offers that "If they just ____, it would all be easy."
  - cgio 7y ago
    Have you worked with major vendor solutions? They don’t do much more than wrapping the accessibility api and in some cases clumsily so. They have surface automation on top, but if you end up using it you are already in a bad place automation wise.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      I've worked with all of the top 5 products in the space at various times. And no, they don't. Automation Anywhere is the least compatible of the bunch, and even it includes custom translators.
ethbro 7y ago
> "Our platform is built on open source technologies such as Python and Google’s Tensorflow, and is therefore easily extensible with the latest and greatest developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence." This... should definitely not be on your front page if you're trying to appear like a serious desktop automation suite. Just, no.
Penelopepe 7y ago
I've used it for some small projects, I think their documentation is very beginner friendly. Their cross-platform support isn't that great though, half of their activities do not work on a Mac..
- ponchodev 7y ago
  Cross-platform support wouldn't even be that hard to implement considering Python is cross-platform already and there are quite a lot of automation libraries for it.
Fantastic5 7y ago
I have used other (commercial) RPA vendors before, I do not understand why it took so long for a Python RPA platform to be developped. The commercial 'graphical flows' are such bullshit. They claim to be business friendly so that your average manager can use it to automate tasks, but in reality it sucks and just creates vendor lock-in. Looks like Automagica still has some work to do on the cross-platform area but at least it is nice to see Python code based RPA.

113 points by mariushn 7y ago

gapo 7y ago

Very curious on the delta with AHK. Their syntax looks a little bit more easier and the OCR Integration with Tesseract looks nice. AHK however has way more examples.

nacs 7y ago
AutoHotKey is Windows only and Automagica looks like it has crossplatform support for one.

sstark 7y ago

Fail. Windows only, making it useless in most cases.

TFortunato 7y ago

"Cross-platform" "Only supports Windows 10"

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Exactly. DON'T CALL IT CROSS-PLATFORM WHEN IT ISN'T. Lying isn't acceptable just because a president does it.
mxuribe 7y ago
Well, it might be cross platform in function...but they simply don't provide support for mac and linux...Then again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. ;-)
- Penelopepe 7y ago
  Yeah indeed. It works, but not all of their activities work on Mac OS
taneq 7y ago
Relax. The actual quote from the readme is: > Automagica officially supports Windows 10. Linux and MacOS are not officially supported. It's cross platform, and Windows 10 is officially supported.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Looking in activities.py, I see a some functions that are OS-agnostic, but also a ton of functions that are Windows-specific in terms of process names and paths, and directly referencing the win32 lib. It's a matter of "unsupported" meaning "impossible" rather than "you're on your own". That said, the code is pretty easy to read, and would make for a good starting point to make your own automation library.

dalacv 7y ago

sikuli ís nice

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

This is a huge area in enterprises right now - most large global businesses have (I estimate) 2/3 of their headcount at serious threat to process automation - and people are putting the money into it now - expect this area to blow up in the next year or so - definitely a area for the sensible contractor to look at. However is this automation package going to win? I don't know but OSS is likely to have a big part to play And as for the Windows only part - well 99.9% of the processes that are currently done by humans and will get automated are done on windows machines (cos if they were done by humans using a Linux box they would have already built a shell script for it)

ethbro 7y ago
This appears to be a glorified services ad posing as an open source project. The crux of desktop automation isn't that you can do the easy things, but that you have a way of doing everything. A 99% automated process with one manual step in the middle is still pretty useless. Which is the reason the major vendors tend to have been in business for 10+ years. Because it's not about wrapping the Windows Active Accessibility API (or whatever they're calling it now) and patting yourself on the back. It's about supporting, out of the box, that VB6 app with a hacked-in async UI interaction using a custom grid with a combo box in it. And it's about exposing it in a way that, ideally, a business use familiar with Visio-only can kludge together 85% of the logic. In short, this looks like all those times HN opines on {biology / rocketry / etc} and offers that "If they just ____, it would all be easy."
- cgio 7y ago
  Have you worked with major vendor solutions? They don’t do much more than wrapping the accessibility api and in some cases clumsily so. They have surface automation on top, but if you end up using it you are already in a bad place automation wise.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    I've worked with all of the top 5 products in the space at various times. And no, they don't. Automation Anywhere is the least compatible of the bunch, and even it includes custom translators.

ethbro 7y ago

> "Our platform is built on open source technologies such as Python and Google’s Tensorflow, and is therefore easily extensible with the latest and greatest developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence." This... should definitely not be on your front page if you're trying to appear like a serious desktop automation suite. Just, no.

Penelopepe 7y ago

I've used it for some small projects, I think their documentation is very beginner friendly. Their cross-platform support isn't that great though, half of their activities do not work on a Mac..

ponchodev 7y ago
Cross-platform support wouldn't even be that hard to implement considering Python is cross-platform already and there are quite a lot of automation libraries for it.

Fantastic5 7y ago

I have used other (commercial) RPA vendors before, I do not understand why it took so long for a Python RPA platform to be developped. The commercial 'graphical flows' are such bullshit. They claim to be business friendly so that your average manager can use it to automate tasks, but in reality it sucks and just creates vendor lock-in. Looks like Automagica still has some work to do on the cross-platform area but at least it is nice to see Python code based RPA.