About Appian RPA

As the cost of labor increases, businesses find that investment in automating rote tasks through software is much more attractive. The cost savings for outsourcing work isn't as compelling as the cost savings for robotic process automation (RPA) solutions.

Appian RPA automates high volume, highly transactional manual processes to free up your workforce to focus on tasks and initiatives that require reasoning and human intervention. By delegating these responsibilities to a robotic process, you can also ensure data quality and consistency where compliance is concerned and such standards can't be compromised.

RPA represents a new paradigm in business process automation. Appian delivers:

• Full-stack automation: Appian offers RPA that fully integrates with business process management (BPM), artificial intelligence (AI), and case management to provide the right automation technology for the right use case. Unite people, robots, and AI to tackle high-value and high-volume work that involves different levels of cognitive engagement.
• Powerful governance: As your RPA practice grows, you can centrally manage, monitor, and deploy robots across the organization to increase scale and performance.
• Secure, cloud-based RPA: Appian Cloud is secure, globally available, and trusted to run mission critical, enterprise applications, including those that use robotic processes.

How does Appian RPA work?

Robotic processes interact with applications the same way that humans do. Robots perform repetitive tasks based on rules, allowing people to focus their efforts on activities that require problem solving or personal interpretation.

Among other objectives, Appian RPA replaces manual tasks with a programmed robotic task. RPA differs from traditional automation in its non-intrusive nature. Robotic tasks don't necessarily need to access databases, nor do they have to communicate with computer systems by invoking functions, web services, or APIs. Instead, robotic tasks interact with the user interface itself, using the windows of the applications as people do: moving the mouse, clicking different menu options, and entering or reading data from the screens.

A robotic process follows a series of actions, which are added and configured by a developer. You can customize a robotic process using low-code development features, such as drag-and-drop actions. Use the Appian RPA task recorder for even faster development: capture your own interactions with a web browser and automatically create a fully configured robotic process to match.

The console is also the place where administrators can execute processes, monitor completed processes, and schedule new ones. Administrators must also set up environments where robotic processes should run. The execution environment for a robotic process is known as a resource and can be a physical or virtual machine (VM). In production environments, we recommend using a dedicated machine, whether physical or virtual, as the resource. Appian RPA uses tags to secure visibility and execution for users, robotic processes, and resources.

Who is this guide for?

This documentation serves as the reference guide for Appian RPA administrators and developers. The tasks and responsibilities for each role are as follows:

• Administrator: Technical support in the organization for robotic process deployment, including hardware and software infrastructure and communications. In addition, this role can change permissions and has remote access to the resources and the events generated by the platform.
• Developer: This role corresponds to the designer, who analyzes and builds robotic processes. The developer creates, sets up, and visually defines the workflow for the robotic processes. Developers are responsible for preparing robotic process packages for deployment to other environments.
• Manager: Operational support to help keep robotic processes functional. Managers are responsible for executing robotic processes, managing exceptions, and troubleshooting issues such as offline resources or failed queue item processing. Managers can't edit or create a robotic process, but help support existing ones.

Many other people play important roles in RPA. Individuals may step in at certain points in the process and help to resolve exceptions when they arise. As you plan and coordinate robotic processes, it's also important to communicate with employees of the organization who know the processes best suited for automation. Users may need to know at a functional level what robots do, and they must handle detailed information about input and output data from the processes and their metrics. Further, some people must know the costs of both the manual process and the automation in order to calculate savings and determine the return on investment (ROI).

This documentation provides the technical framework to help you design, develop, and deploy robotic processes for your organization.