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Author's profile photo Kapil Verma

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA): A Quick Glance

RPA Stands for Robotic Process Automation, its the tool that comes on top of mind of any Enterprise when it comes to automation. So, SAP has come with its own RPA Tool called SAP Intelligent RPA. It was introduced in SAP TechEd 2018, it is released to market already and there will be lot of sessions, demos and panel discussions around it in May in SAPPHIRE NOW. So, get ready and let me give you a glimpse of this amazing offering.

The offering is really interesting, it enables users to do intelligent process automation. There is no limitation, can work anywhere on SAP applications or any third party offering. In short, whatever you currently see on your screen can be automated. So any redundant task that follows particular steps can be scripted & automated. It’s just like, record what you want to do once & then let RPA do all your repetitive time consuming boring task, while you relax.

Modes of Operation

So how it works, currently it has 2 modes, Attended Mode & Unattended Mode. Which are based on the type of trigger used for there execution.

Attended Mode

As it suggests there can be some task that requires Human intervention. So these automation scripts are triggered by users. The developer provides a User Interface where the user can choose or select different scripts for different scenarios.

Unattended Mode

As the name suggests doesn’t require any human intervention. These are condition triggered automation scripts. The developer set conditions for different automation scripts which are executed once the trigger condition is met in any programmed scenario.

Architecture

The architecture consists of 3 components Developer, Cloud, User. Developer codes the script which is then sent on Cloud & can be accessed by the User. So currently SAP is providing an IDE (Íntegrated development environment), which can be installed on the desktop, developer codes the script (attended/un-attended) which finally generates a ZIP file. This ZIP file is then uploaded on SAP Cloud Platform on SAP Intelligent RPA App. Once uploaded can be accessed from anywhere, just need to be connected to the cloud.

Pricing

So, it’s a subscription-based offering. So every time a script is executed its called a “transaction”. So you can subscribe to the number of transaction you think, you will need on a monthly basis. These transactions are to be used within that subscription month & are not carried forward to the next month. So, have to choose wisely considering your average & peak time usage.

Conclusion

It’s a really good tool, with things like SAP integration, Machine Learning capabilities really have unlimited possibilities.

Reference : Enablement Session : SAP Intelligent RPA, 18 April 2019, 11:00 (EDT)

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      9 Comments
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      Author's profile photo David Rodríguez Díez
      David Rodríguez Díez

      Hi Kapil,

      Nice Blog. Do you know if it is (or will be) available as a Trial service in Cloud Foundry?

      Thanks,

      David R.

      Author's profile photo Fausto Motter
      Fausto Motter

      good question.

      Author's profile photo Kapil Verma
      Kapil Verma
      Blog Post Author

      Hi David,

      I am happy you liked my blog. Unfortunately, no Free or Trial exist right now for RPA. But, there is a course: “SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation in a Nutshell”, on OpenSap it will start from September 17, 2019, then we may get trial licenses for hands-on, right now its paid.

      Thanks

      Kapil Verma

      Author's profile photo Shibaji Sahu
      Shibaji Sahu

      Hi Kapil,

      I'm interested to know it's applicability on SAP Business ByDesign especially in the Supply Chain area. We are into Subcontract Manufacturing space with work-around setup (as proper Subcontract Manufacturing is part of future release). So in such a scenario what are the automation possibilities from a data exchange standpoint between suppliers, subcontract manufacturers etc.?

      Appreciate if you can can you throw some light?

      Thanks, Shibaji

      Author's profile photo Shanaka Chandrasekera
      Shanaka Chandrasekera

      Hi Kapil,

       

      Thanks for the nicely written details.

      Just need to know whether this solution is fully based on cloud?

      We only need to develop scripts locally and upload them to cloud . Once uploaded need to interface cloud (SAP Intelligent RPA) with any system (either on-premise or cloud) and then trigger the script (transaction) in cloud to initiate the automation process?

       

      Thank you,

      Shanaka.

      Author's profile photo Kapil Verma
      Kapil Verma
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Shanaka,

      As the blog states, yes its cloud-based & can work anywhere. But for execution, you have to options that depend on the need or the use case. If you want just want scripts to be executed on the end-user machine you need to get them installed a Desktop Agent by SAP. Else, if you want an option to change/edit scripts at the end-user side then there is an option of installing Desktop Studio & SDK. So basically as per understanding, you want to code, upload the scripts & run them on some other system. So, in this case, you will just need to install the Desktop Agent on the system where you want them to be executed.

      Hope , I was able to clear your doubt.

       

      Thanks

      Kapil Verma

       

      Author's profile photo Shanaka Chandrasekera
      Shanaka Chandrasekera

      Hi Kapil,

       

      Yes that cleared my doubt. Thanks for the information.

       

      Regards,

      Shanaka.

       

      Author's profile photo Mohammed zahid
      Mohammed zahid

      @Kapil Verma

       

      Can you tell me in which cloud foundry this is available ?? I could not find the service in my SAP Cloud foundry account .

       

      I am following the below open SAP course -

      https://open.sap.com/courses/rpa2/items/RGh6YvGb8v8tCoExqVUVl

       

      I want to replicate the same.

      Author's profile photo Lalit Borse
      Lalit Borse

      Can we integrate this module in SAP ByD?