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SAP Build Challenge – Week 3 – Automation Bots

Dan_Wroblewski
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

This post is part of the SAP Build Community Challenge (April 2023)

dan_wroblewski_0-1680162815071.png

We're mixing it up for this week’s challenge, moving to SAP Build Process Automation and automation bots – which are a bit tricky but really cool!

It feels great to set up your bot, step by step, add all the activities and commands and configurations, and then click a button to have your bot do all your work. I love watching my automation open Excel, read data, open Outlook, create and send emails, open a web app, interact with it ... and a million other tasks.

 

Background

We will be using the RPA Challenge web site for the community challenge.

dan_wroblewski_1-1681619833771.png

Essentially, you will have to do 3 things:

  • Automatically retrieve data from an Excel.
  • Add an "application" for the RPA Challenge web page – meaning, get your bot to recognize the web page and all its user interface elements.  
  • Automatically enter data and click the submit button 10 times, once for each row of data.

The trick is that the fields on the web page move each time you click Submit, so you have to know how to find the right fields on the page (hint: based on CSS class).

If you’re new to SAP Build Process Automation, you should do the following tutorials:

Together, they will give you the knowledge to do the challenge.

 

Setup

You must have an SAP BTP account with SAP Build Process Automation. Luckily, it is available for free on the trial version of SAP BTP, or you can use your own account with the free-tier service plan. Setup is described in the SAP Process Automation now available in your Trial Account blog post.

You will also have to install the desktop agent, which automatically installs the Chrome extension. This is described in Install SAP Intelligent RPA On-Premise Components tutorial.

 

Challenge

Once you are set up, do the following:

  1. Download the Excel from the RPA Challenge page.
    • You could add this task to the automation but you do not have to.              
  2. In SAP Build Process Automation, do the following:
    1. Create a new automation.
    2. Read the data from the Excel.
    3. Click the Start button.
    4. Enter each row of data into the web page into the right fields, and click the Submit button. This must be done 10 times – once for each row. Remember, the locations of the fields change so you must identify the field correctly and enter the correct data into the correct field.
  3. Run the automation (you can run it from test mode; you do not have to deploy it).
  4. When complete, upload an image of the completed challenge that shows the system tray with the time, like this: dan_wroblewski_0-1681707670703.png
    • Also, upload your complete automation definition,something like this (without blurring): dan_wroblewski_2-1681620156761.png

Ideally, you should get a score of 100%, with a time of under 30 seconds. But even if you don't, show us what you were able to do.

It is a little challenging, especially for newbies to SAP Build Process Automation, but it is doable in a couple of hours, and worth it.

Good luck (and join this SAP Builders group! 😺




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89 REPLIES 89

ADR
Participant

Hi Dan,

It was a new experience for me. Enjoyed it. Thanks.

Output PageOutput Page

I found it very difficult to move around the steps at the build space as I could not find any scroll bar.  I had to take two screenshots by searching the step names.

Build area - 1Build area - 1Build area -2Build area -2

Thanks again for the interesting challenge. 

Regards,

Anupam

Dan_Wroblewski
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

You had previous experience in iRPA to be able to do so fast, yes?

Was there anything that was challenging (besides taking screenshots)?




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Hi Dan,

This was my first iRPA project. I went through few online videos last month and set up the environment. But could not manage any hands on. The tutorials you shared with this post have been very helpful. 

The steps I followed: First built the excel upload part and tested it following the tutorial 1 you shared. Then created the web page automation set up going through the third tutorial. Initially I started with static data without any loop. Then converted it to a loop when the static part was successful for at least one set. 

Challenges faced: It took me a while to understand the DOM elements and map those with variables. Your hint on the CSS helped here. Another problem I faced with mobile number. It is a numeric field in the excel. But the web page accepts string. I could not convert it to string using the toString() function in the 'edit expression' section. I changed the excel column to string and reuploaded the template. I'll explore this part further. 

I totally enjoyed it. 🙂

Regards,

Anupam

ADR
Participant

Got that Phone Number issue sorted out. There are two ways: 1. Using custom script to convert a numeric value to string. 2. Changing the field type in the reference structure while uploading from excel. Second one should be the right approach.

Regards,

Anupam

Dan_Wroblewski
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

In the end I was just able to use the toString function ... yes, at first, the editor did not like it but it somehow worked in the end.

dan_wroblewski_0-1681705821422.png

 




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Great. I'll give another try. Thanks Dan. 

JJAIMES
Participant

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski ,

How could proceed to create the SAP BTP environment if I get a message like this:

00_SAP Build.pngThe options selected has been "For Me (I'm developer on my own or testing SAP BTP for my company)" but I am not able to create an SAP BTP environment to test.

 

Is there a way to solve it and continue with this challenge?

02_SAP Build.png

 

 

 

Thanks.

Can you use the free trial?

https://cockpit.hanatrial.ondemand.com/trial/#/home/trial

 




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0 Kudos

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski,

I have done the setup using this free trial you shared and it worked. But now when helping a colleague doing the same steps, when we create the subscription it starts Processing and after some time the subscription fails. We retried several times and it keeps failing.

SofiaBastos_0-1682702005175.png

How can we solve this issue?

Thanks 😊

Sofia Bastos

0 Kudos

What does the error message say -- click on the red rectangle or click View Details.

Did you follow everything in this blog? https://blogs.sap.com/2022/09/09/sap-process-automation-now-available-in-your-trail-account/ 

 




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aaruljothi
Participant

Hi Dan,

I was able to complete this task. I am a first timer and the instructions and reference tutorials helped me complete this.Below are my screenshots:

aaruljothi_0-1681682611751.png

 

aaruljothi_1-1681682661453.png

 

Thank you for all the efforts on the challenge.

Regards,

Aruljothi Arumugam

 

 

Congrats ... that's the fastest time I have seen 😺




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Bharathi_S
Explorer

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski ,

I've completed the challenge, with help of your instructions and the reference tutorials. Thank you for that.

Here is my output,

Bharathi_S_0-1681721603294.pngBharathi_S_1-1681721619563.png

 

I thought it would be a little more difficult 😺




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abdullahgunes
Participant

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski ,

I completed the challenge of this week. Tutorials were very helpful to complete.

This was the first application I build.

Looking forward to next week.

W3Score.pngW3Flow.png

saranraj_9021
Explorer

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski ,

I've completed the third challenge. 

saranraj_9021_0-1681742579659.pngsaranraj_9021_1-1681742600684.png

Looking forward to the next one 🙂

Farid
Active Participant

Hello,

Here is my third contribution.

I am no developer, so understanding how to uniquely identify each field in the form, took me some time. The CSS Class hint was very helpful.

Thank you3challengeflow.jpg           fullscreen80percen.jpg

Glad I gave that hint then 😺 nice work ... automation bots are pretty cool, no?




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MartinaKolafova
Explorer

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski , 

I have completed the challenge in 2578 milliseconds.

Martina

MartinaKolafova_0-1681821380180.pngMartinaKolafova_1-1681821416781.png

 

Sounds like a new world record!

But know I am upgrading my CPU and will later try to beat you 🏎




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enzoleon
Explorer

Hello @Dan_Wroblewski ,

Very useful challenge, I've been working with automations recently but first time using the "Application" artifact to explore the Web. I like the potencial.

enzoleon_1-1681829385159.png

Global:

enzoleon_2-1681829697711.png

Inside ForEach:

enzoleon_3-1681829756062.png

 

Thank you!

Enzo.

 

 

 

 

Nice work 😺




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SandipAgarwalla
Active Contributor

Mine took 1309 millisecs, I am running it on Virtual Server Windows Hyper-V 2019

p057784_0-1681829785184.png

And the Automation itself

p057784_1-1681829818134.pngp057784_2-1681829828517.png

The Desktop Agent does not run on my local laptop, have raised an incident for it. Some security policies does not allow browser extension to run executables(CxChromeBroker.exe) to run. 

Currently implementing few use cases in Automation for a client, this challenge was fun. 

Regards, Sandip

SandipAgarwalla
Active Contributor

Also I do not think we need 'class' identifier to identify a variable. The property "ng-reflect-name' should work

p057784_3-1681830210827.png

 

rudavi
Explorer

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for the challenge!!

This is the result of my rpa challenge (3248 milliseconds): 

 

 

Screenshot 2023-04-18 171419.png

 

 

This is my build area :

Screenshot 2023-04-18 171348.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you again!

 

Thanks for participating 😺




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PatrikMajer
Explorer

Hi Dan, 

thanks for another challenge. This one was propably the easiest for me 🙂 

PatrikMajer_0-1681832292505.png

PatrikMajer_1-1681832328266.png

 

Patrik

Nice work ... I assume you used SAP Build Process Automation before? For newbies, it can be a little extra work but these automation bots are really cool.




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MioYasuatke
Active Contributor

My submission for week 3.

miyasuta_0-1681852413441.png

I have created two automations: one for extracting data from Excel, and the other for posing the data to the RPA challenge site. 

miyasuta_1-1681852502540.png

miyasuta_3-1681852580245.png

The difficult part for me was to capture the web page. At the beginning, web pages were not detected at all. Then thanks to the comment in the blog post, I restarted my PC and pages got detected.

Next, I proceeded with type "Recorder" in capturing the web page. However, exporting the recorded application to an automation took too long (it was not responding), so I switched to "Manual Capture" option. After all, this was the right decision because I needed to specify selectors for each element on the screen.

I liked the testing capability of applications. This helped me recognize errors at an early stage. 

 

 

 

Thanks so much for participating ... great that you kept at it and succeeded 😺




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nishantbansal91
Active Contributor

Hello @Dan_Wroblewski 

This is done with my colleague @Jarmel  

Very Interesting Challenge. We were able to even simulate the testing on the application screen. 

 

challenge3.png

nishantbansal91_0-1681894617466.png

 

 

 

Great ... but why didn't you do it? Or why didn't @Jarmel post it?😺




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Max_McP
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Hi Daniel,

I've built a few automations before.

I decided to add an extra step where I capture the result message and log it before closing the web page. 

Max_McP_0-1681932351537.png

Max_McP_1-1681932403714.png

One tip for the excel cloud link activity: You can set the range to only include the column letters and the last row will be detected automatically. For example, in this exercise I set my Range Definition to A:G

Kudos Sandip for the 1309ms execution!

 

Thanks for the tip and for participating 😺




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javiermartin02
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Thanks @Dan_Wroblewski for another great challenge!!

Captura de pantalla 2023-04-20 a las 9.13.44.png

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski, thank you for another great challenge! 

Mine took 2957 millisecs 😊

SofiaBastos_1-1682006319865.png

And the Automation

SofiaBastos_3-1682006428783.png

Sofia

JJAIMES
Participant

Hi @Dan_Wroblewski ,

Challenge done with some issues but manageables.

I was wondering how to send an email at the end of the process. It is not as simple as UIPath (please, take it as a constructive opinion).

You can see it in this URL:  https://youtu.be/_YS3XclEkfc

03_RPA_sreucture.png

03_RPA_time.png

Thanks again and I'm looking forward to next challenge!

Max_McP
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Hi @JJAIMES, sending an email will be similar to the steps you used to connect with excel. You can send an email with the results by following these steps:

1. Add the Outlook SDK in the Project Properties (gear icon in the top right corner)

2. Add the Open Outlook Instance, Send Email (Outlook), and Close Outlook Instance activities to the process and set the parameters for the send email activity

Snag_5d3bac15.png

You can send an email using Outlook automation, as @Max_McP  says above, or directly with SAP Build Process Automation, as explained in this blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2022/05/09/send-emails-from-automation-inside-sap-process-automation/

You'll have to set up a mail server, but you can use Gmail or whatever

Thanks for participating in the challenge 😺




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