3 Tips to Build Bots More Efficiently With akaBot Studio

For the newbies to the akaBot Studio platform, our free Akademy courses can provide you with basic knowledge and skills. However, when it comes to practice, you will need the following tips to quickly get familiar with the platform and avoid errors.

RPA is easy to access and has low entry barriers. Since working with RPA platforms like akaBot Studio simply involves drag-and-drop, you don’t need to be a coder or programmer to work in the RPA industry. And depending on your ability and passion, it may only take 2 weeks to understand the technology.

In practice, however, you may encounter some difficulties in the early stages of working with RPA platforms. Here are some tips from akaBot experts to help you start your first RPA project more easily with akaBot Studio – a platform that is becoming more popular for its comprehensive and cost-effective use.

Installation 

  1. License key is used for both akaBot studio and agent, user need to activate both to use the full functions.
  2. When activating a license, choose the “offline” option instead of the “online” one, so users can use it even without an internet connection.
  3. Either https://aegis.akabot.io or https://aegis.akabot.com can be used as the active URL.

Development

akaBot studio activities should cover most of the basic needs, except for:

  1. akaBot can interact with popular browsers, the preference, however, should be: Chrome > Edge > Firefox > IE
  2. Extension installation on the browser is required in order to pick elements. If you know how to use Xpath/Javascript, customizing them would be more effective 
  3. Chrome and Edge frequently update their driver versions automatically; therefore download the  driver for the Activity

Code styles

  1. Avoid interspersing too many if-else threads; this makes coding more challenging. Use Flow Chart – Flow Decision instead in case of  2 or more flows. Here’s an example:

Using lots of If stream:

Vs. Using Flow Chart – Flow Decision

  1. Break the problem down into small steps and log at each checkpoint
  2. For specific functions, it should be divided into sub-workflows for easier code management and updating
  • If you add all the code into Main.xaml, the flow will be long, messy, and hard to control. In that case, you can separate the distinct functions into smaller workflows and Invoke Workflow to execute them by:
    • Setting parameters to pass values in/out of the sub-flow
    • Passing corresponding variables from Main.xaml to input values into the sub-flow/receive return values from the sub-flow
  • Besides, make sure to add Try Catch when invoking workflows to catch Errors/Exceptions. If you are not familiar with using Invoke Workflow File, you can watch the tutorial video here.

Directions:

– Declare arguments for the sub-flow LoginACME.xaml

  • Open the file LoginACME.xaml
  • In the Arguments section, add the variables that need to be passed in or receive return values from the parent workflow. For example:
    • InArgument: str_ACME_Username (data type String) to pass values from Main.xaml to LoginACME.xaml.
    • OutArgument: IsLoginSuccess (data type Boolean) to return values from LoginACME.xaml to Main.xaml.

– Invoke the sub-flow LoginACME.xaml and combine with Try Catch to catch errors

Open the file Main.xaml

  • Add or drag the Invoke Workflow Activity to where LoginACME.xaml needs to be invoked.
  • In the Import Argument section of the Invoke Workflow Activity:
  • Create variable corresponded to defined arguments.
  • Drag the Try Catch Activity to the Invoke Workflow Activity.
  • In the Properties section of the Try Catch Activity:
  • Exception Type: select the type of exception to catch.
  1. Variable names should be named according to a certain rule, avoiding ones that are not formatted or too general.
  • Variables should be named according to the following criteria:
    • Without accent marks, written together or connected by underscores.
    • Meaningful: link -> URL, username -> Username, password -> Password.
    • Avoid using general names: variable1, variable2…

5. Rename activity + Add annotation:

– Add annotations to note which operation the flow is performing.

– Rename the activity:

  • Where to Type Into: Username? Password?
  • Which button to Click: Login? Cancel?

Conclusion 

We hope these tips found them valuable to you in avoiding regrettable mistakes when starting to practice on the akaBot Studio. In case of more complex issues, our akaBot experts and community members are here, join us at akaBot forum and RPA Vietnam Community.

akaBot (FPT) is the operation optimization solution for enterprises based on RPA (Robotic Process Automation) platform combined with Process Mining, OCR, Intelligent Document Processing, Machine Learning, Conversational AI, etc. Serving clients in 20+ countries, across 08 domains such as Banking & Finances, Retails, IT Services, Manufacturing, Logistics…, akaBot is featured by Gartner Peer Insights, G2, and ranked as Top 6 Global RPA Platform by Software Reviews. akaBot also won the prestigious Stevie Award, The Asian Banker Award 2021, etc.

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