Quick automation with iRPA – Excel SDK

So I learned about SAP iRPA last month and thought I would share how easy it is to automate mechanical tasks.

As a concrete example I will show how I could use iRPA to quickly read records from an Excel file. The Excel SDK provides all the necessary steps easily.

Let’s dive in.

First let’s create an Excel file with 3 column headers, name, price and category and save it to a know path.

Excel file structure

Now we can go to the iRPA cloud factory and create a new project

Create Project

Now we select the create automation option

Create Automation

The iRPA factory will detect the agent installed on your machine and prompt you to confirm

Confirm desktop agent

Now enter the automation name and description and hit the create button

Automation Details

Note: that the Excel SDK is added by default to your project.

The steps needed to read the excel file involve

• Opening the Excel Instance
• Opening Cloud Link (convenient to detect the excel structure)
• Open WorkBook
• Activate the Work Sheet
• Release the Excel Instance

Let’s follow

Drag the Open Excel Instance to the left

Open Excel Instance

Add the Excel Cloud Link and double click to select the excel file and define the record data type

Add excel file to Excel Cloud Link

The file data structure is detected as you can see

Added File

NOTE: Set the Workbook Path if it is not set automatically.

We can now create a data type based on the excel structure, this will help us store and pass excel data around.

Data Record

Order Item Record

We move to the Open Workbook step

Open Workbook

And select the Excel workbook path

Select the Workbook path

Final step is to add the release Excel Instance

Release Excel Instance

Our defined steps will look like below

Click save and test the automation. Select your environment.

If everything works as expected you will see the successful test on the tester pane.

Hopefully this will make you appreciate the easiness of SAP iRPA.

Cheers.