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> It's finicky technology that is hard to make sustainable This 100 times over. The only way I've been able to make it work is being one heck of a generalist.

> It's finicky technology that is hard to make sustainable This 100 times over. The only way I've been able to make it work is being one heck of a generalist. I've found that training on what I do is near-impossible and I don't even know if I could scale a real company in this beyond myself.

virgilp 7y ago
Well, UiPath's valuation is currently 7B... But yeah. They have an "academy" for training RPA developers, forums/ social presence, big sales teams, a process for developing automation, an "automation framework", a marketplace for automation activities, etc.... all these are stuff outside of the core software (robot/"activity executor", orchestrator, and studio for designing said activities). Maintaining & expanding the automation is a heck of a challenge though. Like, once you got the stuff deployed, make sure that it works without headaches, in the face of other software/ OS upgrades. The robots/automation services are essentially a "fleet of microservices" that you have to maintain for a customer whose strength is likely not IT, and who will change the infrastructure from underneath your "microservices". It's a hard problem, but I feel we're well positioned to tackle that, and if we do, the sky is the limit really. (disclaimer: I work for UiPath, though that should be obvious from the message)
- folkhack 7y ago
  Right on! Yeah - I would love to learn more about what the bigger guys are doing. Everything you're saying is 100% something I deal with on a day-to-day basis, and ongoing support is a huge struggle to workout with the companies I've implemented software at. Looking at your product offerings made me chuckle - I definitely have versions of a lot of what you do! My robots are called workers, my orchestrator is called a broker, etc etc ha. Lemme know if you guys are ever looking for a remote automation engineer w/tons of cloud experience ;)
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    A big challenge with the Blue Prism world is getting the people who will lose their jobs to map the processes Robotic processes will automate. Fiddly, tricky and easy to automate a vast number of errors. Only works once extensively tested and results verified. Ignore analyst and sales hype at your peril.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      - Never use an RPA tool that doesn't integrate with third-party SCM. If they tried to roll their own, that's a bad sign - Never use an RPA tool that doesn't generate plaintext-serialized scripts. You're going to have a bad time if they're binary locked - Never choose an RPA tool that's been around fewer than 3 years. It's probably just a shim on top of MS automation libs, and can't handle the really gnarly stuff - Never promise anyone you'll automate 100% of their workload. Never try to automate 100% of their workload. Never hesitate to tell a VP you're not going to automate 100% of their workload. There's value in 50%+, get the easy win and move on. Only come back when you've gotten all the easy wins - RPA is fundamentally about target selectors (or match rules, or whatever else your tool calls them). Their robustness is the only real feature of an RPA platform, and a smaller toolset is going to result in some fragile, quick-to-break stuff Ultimately, RPA is about one thing: creating a more tactically malleable layer on top of your existing software. Development and change speed is the biggest advantage. It shouldn't ever be a core system, but it should be where you prototype functionality.
      - folkhack 7y ago
        Everyone listen to this - this is 100% accurate and SUPER applicable. Have reached out via email - thanks for the offer to chat in your other comment =)
      - olivermarks 7y ago
        Perfect. Also, set project start boundaries to ensure realistic goals and expectations. Under promise and possibly over deliver - all too often data and information discovery reveals unforeseen problems and opportunities
  - ethbro 7y ago
    If anyone in this thread wants to talk RPA, I'm happy to talk your ear off. At this point, I've been doing it for... about 7 years? It's been an interesting ride. Email in profile
    - hugs 7y ago
      Would love to know more. How is RPA different than Selenium?
      - ethbro 7y ago
        See reply to your other comment. Tl;dr - different target user & no corporate sponsor seriously incentivized to improve legacy compatibility Would love to get the Selenium viewpoint though! Have always been curious, and I'm not as well versed in that side of the house.
      - virgilp 7y ago
        Kinda how Dropbox is different than rsync (imperfect analogy, but still pretty good I'd say)
  - virgilp 7y ago
    > Lemme know if you guys are ever looking for a remote automation engineer w/tons of cloud experience ;) Maybe - but how would one go about contacting you? (I have my email in my profile, should you wish to contact me).
xeonoex 7y ago
Disclaimer: I work for UiPath. This is a problem with almost any type of automation. I wouldn't say our software (I am only familiar with UiPath) is finicky. GUIs are finicky, but there are ways to deal with them. That's the stuff a good RPA dev can handle. I was automating before I started at UiPath, and GUI interaction adds a new layer to automation, of course. But it is still maintainable when you implement them using best practices and CI/CD. I didn't have UiPath at my previous job but it would have made a lot of our automations more reliable and more maintainable. We're also making strides to address these types of problems easier. I strongly believe that UiPath should a tool in any automation developer's toolbox, as well as GUI testing. UiPath is also pretty easy to use, so business users can automate simpler tasks on their own after going through the academy. The industry is exploding, and good devs are in high demand. Salaries are high, and you can download Community edition and get certified for free.
- hugs 7y ago
  How is UiPath different than open source tools like Selenium?
  - xeonoex 7y ago
    It's developer friendly and easy to use. It has an IDE for creating automations. I know a lot of devs might think they don't really care about an IDE, but when you're automating interfaces it makes it _way_ easier. It also is not limited to web browsers. Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B4Y_aUBWTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B4Y_aUBWTM It's a very simple automation. It just gets text from a browser and inserts it into notepad. But it's a 3 minute video that does something. Check out Selenium tutorials and compare how much you would learn from a 3 minute video. You don't have to dive into the HTML, you just click on what you want to click/type into/scrape and it knows what you want. But it still has all the power a developer would want. You can create custom activities using C# and VB. The product itself is not open source, but it is very extensible and flexible. The workflows it generates are text files, which work well in source control. It has source control integration built in, which a custom diff tool. It enables code sharing and encourages code reuse. The only downside I would point out is that it only runs on Windows for now, which might be a problem for linux only shops.

virgilp 7y ago

Well, UiPath's valuation is currently 7B... But yeah. They have an "academy" for training RPA developers, forums/ social presence, big sales teams, a process for developing automation, an "automation framework", a marketplace for automation activities, etc.... all these are stuff outside of the core software (robot/"activity executor", orchestrator, and studio for designing said activities). Maintaining & expanding the automation is a heck of a challenge though. Like, once you got the stuff deployed, make sure that it works without headaches, in the face of other software/ OS upgrades. The robots/automation services are essentially a "fleet of microservices" that you have to maintain for a customer whose strength is likely not IT, and who will change the infrastructure from underneath your "microservices". It's a hard problem, but I feel we're well positioned to tackle that, and if we do, the sky is the limit really. (disclaimer: I work for UiPath, though that should be obvious from the message)

folkhack 7y ago
Right on! Yeah - I would love to learn more about what the bigger guys are doing. Everything you're saying is 100% something I deal with on a day-to-day basis, and ongoing support is a huge struggle to workout with the companies I've implemented software at. Looking at your product offerings made me chuckle - I definitely have versions of a lot of what you do! My robots are called workers, my orchestrator is called a broker, etc etc ha. Lemme know if you guys are ever looking for a remote automation engineer w/tons of cloud experience ;)
- olivermarks 7y ago
  A big challenge with the Blue Prism world is getting the people who will lose their jobs to map the processes Robotic processes will automate. Fiddly, tricky and easy to automate a vast number of errors. Only works once extensively tested and results verified. Ignore analyst and sales hype at your peril.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    - Never use an RPA tool that doesn't integrate with third-party SCM. If they tried to roll their own, that's a bad sign - Never use an RPA tool that doesn't generate plaintext-serialized scripts. You're going to have a bad time if they're binary locked - Never choose an RPA tool that's been around fewer than 3 years. It's probably just a shim on top of MS automation libs, and can't handle the really gnarly stuff - Never promise anyone you'll automate 100% of their workload. Never try to automate 100% of their workload. Never hesitate to tell a VP you're not going to automate 100% of their workload. There's value in 50%+, get the easy win and move on. Only come back when you've gotten all the easy wins - RPA is fundamentally about target selectors (or match rules, or whatever else your tool calls them). Their robustness is the only real feature of an RPA platform, and a smaller toolset is going to result in some fragile, quick-to-break stuff Ultimately, RPA is about one thing: creating a more tactically malleable layer on top of your existing software. Development and change speed is the biggest advantage. It shouldn't ever be a core system, but it should be where you prototype functionality.
    - folkhack 7y ago
      Everyone listen to this - this is 100% accurate and SUPER applicable. Have reached out via email - thanks for the offer to chat in your other comment =)
    - olivermarks 7y ago
      Perfect. Also, set project start boundaries to ensure realistic goals and expectations. Under promise and possibly over deliver - all too often data and information discovery reveals unforeseen problems and opportunities
- ethbro 7y ago
  If anyone in this thread wants to talk RPA, I'm happy to talk your ear off. At this point, I've been doing it for... about 7 years? It's been an interesting ride. Email in profile
  - hugs 7y ago
    Would love to know more. How is RPA different than Selenium?
    - ethbro 7y ago
      See reply to your other comment. Tl;dr - different target user & no corporate sponsor seriously incentivized to improve legacy compatibility Would love to get the Selenium viewpoint though! Have always been curious, and I'm not as well versed in that side of the house.
    - virgilp 7y ago
      Kinda how Dropbox is different than rsync (imperfect analogy, but still pretty good I'd say)
- virgilp 7y ago
  > Lemme know if you guys are ever looking for a remote automation engineer w/tons of cloud experience ;) Maybe - but how would one go about contacting you? (I have my email in my profile, should you wish to contact me).

xeonoex 7y ago

Disclaimer: I work for UiPath. This is a problem with almost any type of automation. I wouldn't say our software (I am only familiar with UiPath) is finicky. GUIs are finicky, but there are ways to deal with them. That's the stuff a good RPA dev can handle. I was automating before I started at UiPath, and GUI interaction adds a new layer to automation, of course. But it is still maintainable when you implement them using best practices and CI/CD. I didn't have UiPath at my previous job but it would have made a lot of our automations more reliable and more maintainable. We're also making strides to address these types of problems easier. I strongly believe that UiPath should a tool in any automation developer's toolbox, as well as GUI testing. UiPath is also pretty easy to use, so business users can automate simpler tasks on their own after going through the academy. The industry is exploding, and good devs are in high demand. Salaries are high, and you can download Community edition and get certified for free.

hugs 7y ago
How is UiPath different than open source tools like Selenium?
- xeonoex 7y ago
  It's developer friendly and easy to use. It has an IDE for creating automations. I know a lot of devs might think they don't really care about an IDE, but when you're automating interfaces it makes it _way_ easier. It also is not limited to web browsers. Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B4Y_aUBWTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B4Y_aUBWTM It's a very simple automation. It just gets text from a browser and inserts it into notepad. But it's a 3 minute video that does something. Check out Selenium tutorials and compare how much you would learn from a 3 minute video. You don't have to dive into the HTML, you just click on what you want to click/type into/scrape and it knows what you want. But it still has all the power a developer would want. You can create custom activities using C# and VB. The product itself is not open source, but it is very extensible and flexible. The workflows it generates are text files, which work well in source control. It has source control integration built in, which a custom diff tool. It enables code sharing and encourages code reuse. The only downside I would point out is that it only runs on Windows for now, which might be a problem for linux only shops.