What needs improvement with Automation Anywhere (AA)?

Automation Anywhere, like any other new software, comes with challenges when using it. For instance, if there is an update in their services, there is always a restart, along with challenges in setting up the software and implementing it to ensure others I work with can use it. It takes some time to learn how to use the software, but I am now somewhat comfortable with most of the features. For business users who do not have any technical skills, learning how to use Automation Anywhere is a lengthy process since it requires making frequent calls to the support team for guidance. Initially, it was somewhat difficult, but as I continued using it, I improved. While it was challenging at the start, we are at least better now.

We find the feature complex for new users. Once we started using it, the user interface is quite difficult because it has a lot of features. That's the reason at the early stage it is complex, and we find it quite difficult for new users to use. First of all, Automation Anywhere has a complex workflow which requires more technical expertise. That's understandable because it has a lot of features, but we also need to spend more time getting our team accustomed to it. Additionally, the user interface is quite outdated and could be more user-friendly. The licensing cost is also too high, which means many small-scale industries may not choose this product. Regarding how easy or difficult it is to train new employees on how to use Automation Anywhere, it is quite complex for new users to get adopted to it because of the many features, and going through each of the features is quite difficult for new people. However, once you get them trained, then we are good.

One area for improvement with Automation Anywhere is that while Power Automate has very simple integration with Microsoft tools, it is something that could be worked upon. Even in my previous organization and many other organizations are shifting towards Power Automate, especially companies catering to clients because of the cost efficiency with Power Automate, which is also something you can take into consideration. I confirm that while the product has advantages in terms of pricing, in terms of integration, it needs some improvement.

We do not use Automation Co-pilot, Process AI, or RI. I and my team do not use any of the Co-pilot features. It is one of the things that we probably should get involved with, but I have done the training on it. It is just finding the time to try and implement that from what we are currently using to slot that into our day-to-day practices. We have not had that opportunity to fully learn it and then interact with it. I find that things with Co-pilot, even for Microsoft, are more a case of learning yourself how to work it and get it to do what you want to do, as opposed to Automation Anywhere where I can think it and I should be able to do it, and I would find that the quicker way and probably learn more about what I am actually automating in that way. Being able to, within the debugging code, start from a specific point would be massive for me. For example, if you had something with forty steps but you only had to test from step thirty onwards, that would save a lot of time because what I end up doing is taking the steps to the very top, running it down, then I have to delete it out and go through it again, and it is not running within the actual flow. Being able to start an automation or a bot from that specific point would be super useful. What they have done lately with being able to step into bots and out, and enabling break points, has been massive and has helped hugely, so it is good that they have taken previous feedback from developers on board. There is room for improvement around the recorder function. Based on the website or the UI that you are interacting with, if it is older, it can be quite difficult to define and locate the element. Sometimes I find going through the different spy modes or capture modes that some of them can be really hit or miss. If you are not using the basic default one that is there, which tends to give you your DOM X path and your attributes and path, you cannot locate it through that for whatever reason due to the way a UI or a website has been built, usually poorly. You have to go into the accessibility modes and it sometimes can be really difficult to hone down to it. Or it might work locally and then when you put it onto a bot, it does not. Really just a fine-tune and maybe add more capture modes if possible through the recorder feature would be helpful.

I'm just a user, an end-user of Automation Anywhere. I have no affiliations. For improvement, perhaps what I can say is that sometimes I get challenges with the customer support team. When I contact them, they are sometimes busy, and I get delays in replies. They always reply, but at a later hour on some days, although of course, some days they are responsive.

Their vision is promising, but the product requires significant improvements in maturity and usability. I'm concerned that the product is not user-friendly. They continue to release new features, but end users struggle to adapt to them. This indicates a lagging development in product usability. From a product maturity perspective, there is an area of improvement. We are currently on-prem, and as we transition to the cloud, there are numerous restrictions from our banking organization that we must consider. When planning to scale the product, I need to understand how it can handle increased bots. For instance, if I start with 1,000 bots and later expand to 1,200 bots, will the platform still be able to support this growth? Additionally, as we integrate new features such as document automation, Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), and CoPilot capabilities, I need assurance that the current platform can sustain these enhancements. It is essential for Automation Anywhere to improve in these areas so we can effectively increase the scope of automation within the platform.

There are certain areas where improvements would make a significant difference in Automation Anywhere. One area that could be better is the user interface and the overall user experience. Business users who are not deeply technical on the platform sometimes feel overwhelmed with too many menus, options, and configurations. Although the idea is to make automation accessible to both IT and business teams, the learning curve is still steeper than expected, and more intuitive drag and drop, plug and play simplicity would speed up adoption across non-technical departments. Another area needing improvement is bot maintenance and troubleshooting. While building bots is relatively straightforward, keeping them running smoothly in a dynamic banking environment where system updates, application changes, or small UI tweaks happen frequently can cause bots to break. When this happens, the troubleshooting process is not always as seamless as it should be. On the scalability side, while the platform handles large-scale deployment effectively, the infrastructure requirements and licensing model can get expensive as the number of bots and processes grows. In a cost-sensitive industry like banking, where automation needs to prove clear ROI, a more flexible pricing structure would assist organizations in expanding automation more aggressively without feeling constrained by budget considerations.

The platform is functioning quite well. Initially, I faced some challenges in learning the platform; it felt a bit complicated at first. However, as I became more familiar with it, I found it manageable. Debugging can be particularly tricky; identifying the exact reasons for bot failures can be time-consuming. Integration with modern data engineering stacks also posed some difficulties, but I have since learned to navigate these challenges.

For non-technical users, some technical knowledge is needed in Automation Anywhere, so they cannot use it as flexibly as developers can. In my earlier career, when using a data table in Automation Anywhere and wanting to merge columns, there was a plugin called Group By. In Automation Anywhere, we have to create variables and append the data to a single variable one by one to get that flexibility. Having an activity for grouping columns would be great. For reading data from Excel, providing a single button to fetch all data columns would make it more flexible for developers. For filtering purposes in Automation Anywhere, we have to apply if conditions and additional conditions to get the appropriate data. Introducing filter activities would change the perspective of developing.

Its pricing definitely needs to be more competitive. When licensing costs are high, we cannot use this tool for automation. Instead, we might opt for a lower-cost tool like Power Automate which is 50% less expensive. Power Automate offers very seamless integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure cloud services and other Microsoft products. In contrast, Automation Anywhere has to rely on external LLMs for integrations. If Automation Anywhere can improve the ease of these integrations and provide them natively within the platform, it would greatly enhance its appeal.

Regarding what I would to see improved or enhanced in Automation Anywhere, it's difficult to judge if the problems we are facing are truly RPA related or related to other systems that we cooperate with. The main issue is to have better resilience of the whole system. If we have 95% success during the bot runs, it costs a lot of time to debug and find the errors or to rerun the bots. So constantly working on the resilience of the bots, whatever it may be, will help. One thing I would to see included in the next releases of Automation Anywhere is a more clear overview of when we have gaps in our automation scheduling. Currently, when we are scheduling our automations, and we have historical data of our runs, there is no clear overview of when we have space in time to schedule another automation. So having functionality that shows in one clear picture where we have gaps to run additional automations would be beneficial.

They can provide more features for desktop application automation. They don't have extensive capabilities for automating desktop applications. While we can automate desktop applications using paths, it is not very accurate. I haven't used AARI extensively, but I have created one or two processes that have AARI infrastructure. I have used forms for those processes.

The monitoring and reporting aspects are currently not very standardized, specifically regarding the on-premises setup. I’m not entirely sure if the cloud version has the necessary capabilities. If something goes wrong or is about to go wrong, it doesn’t help to only rely on dashboards or monitoring tools to assess the situation. Additionally, businesses typically want detailed reporting. Right now, we lack the ability to monitor transaction-level statuses and tracking, which is a significant limitation. Their support also needs improvement.

In Automation Anywhere, they could improve certain aspects. I also used Microsoft Power Automate where we have one initialization of variable that can be used anywhere in any subflow. If there are 10 subflows, we can use one variable everywhere without creating a new one. However, in Automation Anywhere, if you have created a flow, subflow, or subtask, you will create one variable STR name. Every time you have to use input-output scope for that variable to use in other subtasks as well. Automation Anywhere should implement this feature. They should also decrease their cost. Automation Anywhere is good, but Microsoft Power Automate offers unattended machines at a very competitive cost.

Automation Anywhere can be improved in terms of complex logic implementation. While the application is very easy to use, we find that programming complex business logic could be better integrated into the native tool.

As far as what could be improved with Automation Anywhere, I think they have a really wonderful product. There have been things in the past that I have asked them to improve or submitted a ticket to them to improve, and I've seen results from that. They have implemented something that makes the product better. If there was anything that I would ask for improvement on, there were times in the past where through submitting a ticket for support, it seemed that some of the engineers who were helping me did not understand the product that they were supporting. That felt difficult because I felt I was almost explaining the product to the company. But again, isolated and for the most part, it's been a really good experience.

My main issue with Automation Anywhere might be the logging of bots and getting more detailed feedback of what my bot is doing, step by step. It is hard to track fine-tuning in larger codes.

In Automation Anywhere, while the user interface is top-notch and doesn't require improvements, the main issue I identify is that the cost of the enterprise-scale license and add-ons can be a barrier for small businesses. Additionally, users sometimes report performance challenges with large datasets and stability concerns due to frequent version updates. The basic features are acceptable, but advanced tools often require deeper technical expertise, which can slow adoption. Additionally, some users experience delays in customer support for complex issues. Despite these challenges, Automation Anywhere remains a robust platform for organizations seeking scalable and intelligent automation, and refining these aspects could further enhance its accessibility and reliability.

Sometimes, I find that Excel automation is not as expected. Excel automation can be enhanced. For instance, to accomplish tasks faster, I use scripts. However, if I could achieve the same speed without scripting, that would be ideal. For web automation, the recorder package can be improved. It is sometimes hard to catch certain elements on the web. The Automation Anywhere community is less active than the UiPath community, which is a downside. When I ask questions in the Automation Anywhere community, responses take a longer time. I have checked the UiPath community, where there are more active participants.

There are many areas for improvement, especially in the developer environment. Providing a desktop version rather than focusing on the cloud is essential. Only UiPath offers a studio environment for desktop application development. Automation Anywhere lacks a desktop version and is solely web-based and cloud-based. Automation Anywhere is not so easy for business users who are not technical. It is at the medium level. UiPath also provides UiPath StudioX to enable business users to automate easily.

There are areas of improvement needed, such as complex decision-making skills. When updates are made, the IQ Bot's actions can be affected, leading to decision-making failures. If it had the ability to make decisions in complex situations, the bot would perform more smoothly. More advanced decision-making skills are needed for improvement.

The learning curve is an issue in terms of implementation and writing scripts, which is a challenge. Although it is advertised as easy to implement, it is not. It is not easy to learn or implement. However, if you have the IT staff and are willing to invest the time to learn it, then it is worth it. You need the planning and the capability to hire the appropriate people to implement Automation Anywhere. It is not as easy to implement as advertised. It is difficult across the board. It is difficult for technical and non-technical users. I am still in the learning stages. I attempted to implement it with a client, but the client did not move forward with it because it was too costly and too difficult to implement without the significant assistance of Automation Anywhere. The issue with Automation Anywhere is that the majority of their help staff or technical staff seems to be offshore, not located in the United States. That is, in my opinion, an issue for companies. In addition to that, it is for companies that are very large. It is not for mid-level and below companies because it is too expensive. It is unfortunate. I could sell a bunch of it if it was affordable. So, the fact that the majority of their staff is offshore making it difficult to get technical support from them and the fact that it is unaffordable to anything other than the Nikes of the world is an issue in the United States.

One thing I learned with Co-Pilot is that it is very static. For instance, when dealing with tables and their headers, I must program them in a form. If my build changes, I have to return to my form and update the table titles. Features like looping are missing from Co-Pilot. If I want to perform a task five times in a row, I have to rerun Co-Pilot five times just to achieve that. This is an aspect I considered as I explored possible changes and improvements. Other than that, it is among the best software tools and organizations I have worked with. I find it challenging to suggest much beyond continuing the good work and expanding on it.

I have found that Automation Anywhere is prone to bugs in handling Excel. It breaks and gives vague error messages. I have had a lot of experience with that and learned that it is better to write a Python script instead of using Automation Anywhere's package when dealing with Excel because it is buggy and tends to break, unfortunately.

I have been using IQ Bot, and its accuracy can be improved. It could be more accurate. Managing all the bots in the control room can be a difficult task for a large organization. The control room features could be enhanced for better performance.

There are occasional technical issues, particularly with cloud operations. Sometimes, the bot struggles to initiate on the cloud, even when everything appears in place. This issue occasionally requires uninstalling and reinstalling a component on my PC, although I cannot recall the specific component involved. I often need to stop and restart system services to get the bot process working correctly, which can be frustrating.

One area requiring improvement is the debugging process. When I use a multi-structure with conditions to switch from one bot to another, successful debugging of the entire process is not feasible. Each bot has to be debugged individually.

The website can be buggy at times, and I would like to see improvements in latency and slow response times.

There are improvements needed in error handling processes, as currently, they rely on start and end error commands. A more strategic approach could enhance efficiency. While the implementation of a structured development approach has been introduced, further enhancements could be made to accommodate non-technical users better, perhaps by making the platform more accessible and user-friendly through a flowchart or diagram-based setup. Automation Anywhere can be moderately challenging for business users without technical skills. While the platform offers some drag-and-drop functionality, building automation requires a strong understanding of logical operations and scripting. To become proficient, users may need to invest time in learning basic coding concepts or pursuing relevant certifications. This learning curve can mean that users typically require a few months of training before they can effectively build and implement automation.

The workflow has a complex drag-and-drop interface that is not user-friendly and requires a good technical understanding, which can be challenging for users. Additionally, the IQ Bot configuration is complex and requires significant effort to interpret unstructured data effectively. Simplifying these aspects would be beneficial.

I struggled with understanding the use of different variables during my initial time with Automation Anywhere. We have three types of variables. We have user-defined variables, system variables, and config variables. Sometimes, we get confused about the values stored in various variables. If the tool could show the current value stored in the variable, it would be much easier.

Automation Anywhere has newly integrated the Generative AI feature. It should be more customizable. Currently, we can change certain parameters, but we would like to have the ability to do modifications within the LLM for better outputs. We would like the ability to fine-tune it. It would be better if Automation Anywhere could add some extra features for us to use the Generative AI feature.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is steep, especially for advanced features like IQ Bot and API automation, which require technical expertise. While basic automation is relatively easy, the platform's documentation and training materials are not comprehensive, making it challenging to master the more complex functionalities. Compared to UiPath, which offers extensive resources and support, Automation Anywhere's limited resources contribute to a steeper learning curve for those seeking to utilize its advanced capabilities. From a business perspective, Automation Anywhere is expensive compared to other tools like UiPath, making it unsuitable for small or medium-sized businesses. It requires robust systems to run efficiently and previously had limitations integrating with legacy systems, though they are improving this with REST API support. Additionally, community support is slow and unhelpful for critical issues. While they offer IQ Bot for unstructured data, it can only automate around 50 percent of such processes, requiring manual intervention. Although Automation Anywhere supports customization, it is limited. These are key areas where Automation Anywhere could improve.

Automation Anywhere's frequent updates are unnecessary and disruptive. Updates are often pushed for no apparent reason, even for perfectly functional packages. This excessive update frequency is undesirable and should be reduced.

One of the main concerns with Automation Anywhere is the lack of a robust feature for capturing and managing information from the user interface, something competitors like Blue Prism already offer. In Blue Prism, you can create an "application model" to capture every control on a screen and assign them to variables, making it easy to reference and update them in your code, even if the screen layout changes. In Automation Anywhere, however, you must manually search and update capture instructions within the code, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Implementing a similar feature in Automation Anywhere would be critical for improving efficiency and maintainability. While this idea has been discussed with the company, it has yet to be implemented. For experienced developers, there's room for improvement. For instance, code refactoring, a valuable feature, is currently impossible in Automation Anywhere. While Automation Anywhere is excellent for beginners, it could benefit from enhancements for advanced users.

Automation Anywhere can improve its integration. For example, you can't directly integrate Automation Anywhere with SharePoint or third-party applications seamlessly. Adding seamless third-party integration would add a lot of value to the platform. We need to use APIs or Python coding to integrate the third-party applications. If Automation Anywhere could add some connectors, that would be great. I'd love to see the ability to build web or mobile applications that are integrated with Automation Anywhere bots, so that a user can work on a web interface directly. Then, it can be linked to the Automation Anywhere bots in the background. They just hit a button, and all the data or information will be used by the bot to do some process in the back end.

Reporting could be better because there is a little bit of overkill in getting information about the utilization of the bot license. This could be a little bit improved. We sometimes have a problem with the connection between the control room and the database, but it is not very often.

A standardized improvement area for any RPA tool is making it more user-friendly. This can be done by allowing users to give instructions in their language. For example, one should be able to say in his or her language to automate the login page of the XYZ application. It should be able to create a flow based on the information or screenshots that the user provides. This is the next step that Automation Anywhere should be able to achieve. Based on the information given by a user in the dialog box, the tool should be smart enough to prepare a workflow that the user can simply play and test. It is more related to AI than RPA. Its stability can also be better.

The Copilot recently integrated into Automation Anywhere requires significant refinement and additional features. Essentially, it still necessitates manual review, which is inefficient. For example, instructing Copilot to write code for opening and reading an Excel file generates necessary commands but still requires developer input to specify target data, column numbers, and desired data. This indicates a need for further training to enhance the bot's capabilities. Integrating Automation Anywhere with existing systems often proves challenging due to the prevalence of legacy applications that are not automation-friendly. Unlike modern applications with easily identifiable elements, these older systems require creative problem-solving to develop reliable and error-resistant automation. This challenge is common across the RPA industry, necessitating innovative approaches to data extraction. For instance, utilizing software development kits, XML files, or APIs can be more efficient than navigating through multiple application pages. Additionally, implementing fuzzy logic scripts is crucial for handling data entry errors, such as name variations, to ensure accurate matching and process success. The learning landscape for Automation Anywhere offers various certifications and training materials. While the community provides a platform for interaction and resource sharing, not all training content aligns with the specific needs of developers. Additionally, the community forum, though helpful, doesn't always provide timely or comprehensive solutions to user inquiries. The company's internal structure, with multiple product teams, can also complicate the process of obtaining support and resolving issues.

The only thing I would advocate for is making Automation Anywhere's developer environment Mac-enabled because many of our graduate students are coming out of school with Macs. Everything else in the Automation Anywhere world is built for Windows.

Automation Anywhere could improve its integration with Python and other programming languages.

Some of the biggest improvements they can make are with the interface. It can be improved in terms of usability or searching for something. For example, icons are hard to find. Typically, you jump into the search box, but being able to go in and find things quickly with the eye could be very valuable.

The tools are fundamentally solid. However, when I think of self-healing, such as automation with a new prompt or a new Windows patch occurring, being able to handle those kinds of things on top of what Automation Anywhere already does and that automatically click through and do the reboots that are necessary to just have a clean run would be ideal. That way, no one has to wake up in the middle of the night and adjust something. That would be amazing.

We'd like to see more AI features.

From a platform perspective, our model has been getting operational data back out to our automation owners. We are a pretty small team. We have about 70 automations in production. Everything that we automate, we naturally own a fraction of that just from a technical perspective. Having a team of developers, you want them focused on building new things. We are at an inflection point where we have automated so much that just keeping the lights on certainly takes 20% to 50% of the time, depending on the time of year. Being able to enable the stakeholders is one of my main focuses. If we are automating their process, I want them to continue owning that as much as possible. We are just expanding on the bot insights. From a security perspective, there have been some challenges for us getting our customers in there from a role-level security perspective and making sure that they have full access to the control room and their automation after it is automated. Being able to manage a digital worker has been a big focus. That is what I am looking to get the most out of the tool right now.

Automation Anywhere can be improved by offering more integration with many more applications. While it is very integrated nowadays, the complexity is a key issue. Common users must have the opportunity to integrate it with many more environments.

If I look across the use cases that we have, there is more opportunity for us to collaborate with Automation Anywhere to see or maybe explore some potential opportunities for new capabilities within the platform. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of anything that they would need to improve on, but there are probably opportunities to explore some potential use cases where maybe there is a feature that is not yet available. We can discover and pioneer something together.

Automation Anywhere's current requirement for upfront annual payments limits flexibility for customers. Offering a wider range of payment options, such as monthly installments, would be a welcome improvement. While Automation Anywhere's current learning materials cater to junior and new users, senior developers require more in-depth content to effectively utilize the platform's full potential.

OCR technology could be more inclusive by offering a wider range of supported languages, as its current selection is limited.

The scripting can be a bit difficult.

Automation Anywhere can be enhanced with additional safeguards during the database-building process to minimize errors. When dealing with a large number of variables, uploading them directly from an Excel sheet to Automation Anywhere is not supported. In such cases, we have to enter each variable one by one.

Automation Anywhere risks falling behind by focusing solely on Robotic Process Automation when competitors offer more versatile and adaptable solutions that integrate AI for a more intelligent automation experience.

I have experienced the issues of UI getting stuck. There seems to be an issue with server stability. This is something that can be better. At times, the created tasks start failing randomly or intermittently which affects the business. They are failing at the runtime because of the bot launch crash issue. Business people are impacted a lot because of these failures at the run time.

While we initially implemented Automation Anywhere due to its inherent strengths, the software landscape has evolved significantly in the past two and a half years. Several competing products now offer superior functionality compared to Automation Anywhere's current capabilities. Microsoft's automation solutions are particularly compelling. They integrate seamlessly with the wider Microsoft product suite, which is often the core software environment for many businesses. This integration advantage isn't present with Automation Anywhere, which operates independently of Microsoft products. The price has room for improvement.

When working with Excel, unlike other tools such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere does not have the standard variables for .Net data types. It does not support data tables and many of the data types supported by Microsoft and the .Net technology. When designing automation, you need to use only the few data types that Automation Anywhere supports. For example, when you work with Excel, you need to do many tasks with the data tables, cells, and rows, but that is more difficult with Automation Anywhere than with other platforms. It is not flexible for custom activities. With UiPath, you can use C#. You can use VB.NET directly. With Automation Anywhere, customization is more complicated than UiPath. There are a lot of resources available on the Internet to learn Automation Anywhere. They have Automation Anywhere University, but the difficult thing is that it does not have a specific path for a beginner. When I was learning it initially, I had to choose randomly. I could not work out where to start. It is probably better now. A good thing about Automation Anywhere is that when the bot is running, it displays which line of the code is running, but we also want those logs to be displayed on the web. When we implement an automation process, currently, we have to write the code to archive the logs. That is the thing they need to improve.

Automation Anywhere is easy, but the Automation Anywhere courses are not so easy. All RPA tools have their own academy where business users can go and learn the solution and do things themselves. Automation Anywhere courses are a little bit complex to understand. You need a little bit more time, and accessibility is also a little bit of an issue. They should focus a bit more on the academy and learning materials on their portal. The content should be easy to understand. It is not easy to grasp for a non-technical person. It should be easy for citizen developers. Also, their certification is very costly. There should be more visibility as an RPA product. Every organization is trying to stick with certain tools. I like Automation Anywhere, and I would like to work with it, but I am not getting an opportunity. Automation Anywhere is not promoting itself to other organizations. Organizations are moving towards Power Automate and UiPath. It could be because Automation Anywhere is not reaching out to companies. Their community events are also less. There are not many developer events in the cities where IT is there. In Bangalore, India, most of the IT companies are there, so we get to go to a lot of conferences. We get to hear a lot from other vendors, but Automation Anywhere's events are very limited. They should take care of their presence in the community and companies. They should introduce videos for the new features. They should promote new features. They should be known to people. They should be accessible to people. Only then developers or companies will know about it. Only then, it will get used. There are probably plenty of good features, but they are not known or explored.

The help Automation Anywhere offers during setup isn't great for smaller companies like ours. It could be improved. Many users in my country lack, for example, advanced Excel skills. This makes using Automation Anywhere a significant challenge for them. The Automation Anywhere community doesn't seem very active. Additionally, navigating their site can be quite difficult when encountering problems. As a developer and engineer, I found it challenging to locate information. Support could also be improved. For example, I had trouble connecting my Google account, and finding help was nearly impossible. In terms of variable initialization, I prefer the previous enterprise version. It was simpler and required less code. Object access could also be improved in the current version. Ideally, there would be an easier and more precise way to retrieve objects.

The AI centricity is a bit behind compared to the way we see Microsoft and AWS doing it. This is the feedback that I have also given to them. They need to expand themselves to provide more services than just RPA. Only RPA may not be enough for us, and it would not be our preferred choice for an automation tool.

We had some issues with screen-scaping and recording. Also, some of the components are not user-friendly enough compared to UiPath. The learning curve isn't very long if you come from a programming background, but it may be difficult for someone without a technical background to understand.

Automation Anywhere should make it easier for developers to manage queues and exception handling. The OCR component could also be better. We have had to use other OCR tools to get information from the account documents.

The Automation Anywhere calibrating needs to be more user-friendly to avoid human error. Non-technical people can not use Automation Anywhere.

From the product side, I like the minimum viable product approach, where the first generation of a new product is released and tested in the market, but it would be great if some of those pieces were a little bit more thought out from a user experience perspective. They could take a little more time to get some insights from their customers like in a beta test or something like that.

To improve Automation Anywhere for the next release, standardization is key. The application should work universally across servers and desktops, without limitations on licenses tied to specific virtual machines. Currently, the one-to-one bot and VM dependency pose restrictions, and a more flexible licensing system would enhance its usability. Additionally, for business users without technical skills, using Automation Anywhere can be challenging. While it is easy to develop automation, deploying and running them requires some technical knowledge. Training is essential to navigate the platform effectively. Upgrading Automation Anywhere can be challenging. Communication about upgrades is lacking, and an auto-upgrade feature or at least notifications would be beneficial. Currently, there is no automatic check for the latest version, and improvement is needed in providing information to users about updates.

The marketing for Automation Anywhere has room for improvement.

I think there are some opportunities to improve integration with monitoring tools already on the market to make this even faster. We struggle a little when applying the upgrades because the control room has some flaws. That's one advantage of migrating to the cloud. If we do that, then we don't have to upgrade manually. There is a SaaS option, but we decided to opt for on-prem and perform the upgrades ourselves. We're thinking of choosing the cloud options in the next version to make it easier.

The price has room for improvement.

If you come across any process, it can be automated via Automation Anywhere. However, companies need to better justify the ROI before usage - otherwise, they might spend money on things unnecessarily.

Novice users are able to automate basic applications using Automation Anywhere. Business processes are more complex and require experts to be brought in to automate. The automation process can be made more user-friendly.

We only faced some problems when integrating it with SAP, and Oracle integration was a bit challenging, especially with Oracle Fusion. We had some issues when we were trying to connect some of the applications on the API level. But, in general, integration using Automation Anywhere is fine.

Automation Anywhere was difficult with certain applications with respect to Java platforms. For these, we'd likely use UiPath instead. Handling Java-based applications or browser-based applications could be better. Automation Anywhere should have more Excel-related functionality.

Integrating RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents in Automation Anywhere is a challenging task. We have come across a type of YAML application that we use with the APIs, enabling us to get a holistic picture. However, direct integration has always been problematic. For instance, when attempting to integrate with SAP, we encounter certain gaps. As a solution, we can either input the data into the call sheet or create a YAML application for the integration process. Unfortunately, it is not a seamless process where we can transfer everything directly into an SAP system. This presents a double issue for us. I would like Automation Anywhere to work with SAP and improve their interfaces. The technical support needs improvement. They take a long time to respond, and they are not very knowledgeable.

For business users, the solution is complex and could be made more user-friendly. It is not easy to integrate APIs with Automation Anywhere without a good knowledge of APIs. The pricing of Automation Anywhere is higher compared to other solutions on the market, such as Microsoft Power Automate and UiPath, and it has room for improvement.

There are not many areas for improvement. As compared to V11, A360 is more user-friendly and flexible. It is fine. They have even included support for ChatGPT, Azure, and other things in the latest version. They have incorporated many latest technologies, such as AI, and there is always scope to improve the processes and have more stability.

Automation Anywhere is difficult to use and could be made more user-friendly. The GUI needs to be improved. Using Automation Anywhere can be extremely difficult for individuals who lack technical skills. The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is challenging. We should not need to rely on a vendor to handle the solution. The end-user should be able to use the solution independently. The automation at scale has room for improvement. There are many features missing from Automation Anywhere, including cloud collaboration tools provided by Google and Microsoft, that I would like to see integrated into the solution.

We have a new feature share in Automation Anywhere, but it does not migrate automatically from the previous version to the new one. Therefore, we had to do a lot of work to adapt the records to the network, which was a problem. I would like Automation Anywhere to have more integration with for example, with AI platforms. The technical support response has room for improvement. Automation Anywhere is not user-friendly and could be improved.

The analytical dashboard in the Control Room could use some improvement. Currently, it's quite basic, which can pose a challenge when customers require more advanced features. Of course, different customers will have varying needs and expectations, so there's no one-size-fits-all solution. However, I believe it would be helpful if our team could have more flexibility in developing a more sophisticated analytical bot to meet these diverse demands.

The solution should include an analytics dashboard. As the space is maturing, many vendors sell functionalities as separate components so this is not unique to the solution. If I am buying a license, I should at least get a flavor of my analytics with a dashboard related to operational KPIs. Right now, if you want detailed analytics, you need to buy the dashboard separately. This licensing structure adds to the overall cost. The solution should include bot insights instead of selling it as a separate license. From the bot and business perspectives, insights are important for operational agility metrics and managing KPIs. For example, I want to how many hours in a day or month a bot runs for human resources when it performs A, B, C, D, and E and gives benefits across D, E, and F.

They need to improve the REST Api Documentation because its not well detailed or clear enough for beginners, They need to provide some out of the box AI and ML functions such as Image classification and Objection Identification, They also need to improve the real-time data and analytics,There is less support for various data types, The .NET Framework is not completely supported and they have to add more features to fully support the .NET, Last advice is to add an option for developers for Graphical View along with the Code View option.

There is room for improvement; with the overall architecture as it is tightly coupled. Everything is coupled with the Control Room of the overall product architecture. When I look at the UiPath product, where they have a mostly combined architecture and development environments. It should be more loosely coupled, but both products have advantages and disadvantages. The overall product in Automation Anywhere is good, but they need to improve a little bit on the overall architecture side. Integrations should be included with the analytics platforms and third-party SAP, enterprise-level applications, as well as if there are any built-in connectors where you can connect with the ERPs to automate the required teams. There are ready-made connectors available, which will help to democratize automation across the enterprise with various customers across the globe. They should include integration with not only analytics but also analytics and enterprise applications, as well as advanced AI/ML features. It's not just about the IdP; some AI/ML features should be available. Aside from computer vision, NLP, NLU, and NLG, as well as a variety of other advanced features, should be included.

Their OCR is a bit expensive, meaning the IQ Bot. There are a lot of customers who don't want to use it due to the price tag. Maybe if they price it more aggressively, it could be widely used as well. Otherwise, it has pretty much industry-leading functionalities, similar to any other RPA tool. In general, their roadmap is well defined and we are pleased with its offering.

In terms of what could be improved with Automation Anywhere, there are a few areas. They could improve the environmental stabilizing issues. There are a lot of environmental issues when rolling over from one environment to another, higher environment. This is the one thing they definitely need to look into. They also have to look into the document understanding process - the screen scraping of the documents, etc... In the next release, I would like to see, as I mentioned, better document understanding and screen scraping. There are a few more activities they have to include, like reading the particular column on the Excel operations. They can increase more activities like that. Right now, there are a lot of complications and complexities involved when reading Excel - they could make that easier.

Excel automation or the activities for Excel is an area of improvement.

The solution could improve the integration with some web applications. It was difficult to manage them.

Migration is probably our biggest challenge. When we were trying to do the migration to the new version, it was a little bit painful. We didn't have that many bots, and I can't imagine the level of effort that some of the bigger customers have to put in for that. The product is stable, but moving from one release to the other was the issue. We also had difficulty with some of the documents that we were trying to automate. IQ Bot or intelligent document processing doesn't have all the features and functions that we were originally told it had. They need to improve that. It had some limitations, and we've had to add other products to the mix just because they weren't able to deliver some of the things that we were told that they could deliver upfront. They've been talking about task mining for a while. They don't have a good tool out there to evaluate the current processes and come up with a plan. It is a trial and error process where you have to sit down and go through what different people are doing, for how much time they're doing it, etc. There isn't a good systematic way of capturing that information. There are other products such as Kryon, and there is a new product called Soroco that we're looking at, that would let us evaluate the task that could be automated. So, it is not really process automation; it is task automation. You don't really see end to end when you're doing these projects. You don't just decide to automate the whole process. You select the tasks that you are going to automate, but you don't really know the effect that particular automation is going to have on another task. You don't have the big picture. It would be very helpful if both UiPath and Automation Anywhere provide a center of excellence that you could run on your systems so that the people who are running things come back and say that: * Here is the task that we should be automating. * Here is the time that we are taking to do it now. * Here is what the benefit is going to be. All these are manual today. You're looking at what other companies are doing and hoping that you're going to get an ROI, but you don't really know until you start the project, and by then, it is too late. You've already spent the money on the software, the bot, the integration, the services, etc. At the end of the day, you're thinking if you would get the ROI. You have to measure it to see if you're going to get it after you've already spent the money. It would be really nice to have something that you could run upfront to know about the automation tasks that are costing you money today and where you should focus your efforts on automating.

The product's technical support could use improvement. I can't think of any additional features I would like to see. The existing features are okay.

Automation Anywhere has a lot of room for improvement. It is not customer-friendly. They are always rolling out patches. They have a lot of limitations.

The current version is very effective and I have no recommendation for improvement. Since we deployed Automation Anywhere is has never failed in functionality. It has led to faster growth of our enterprise and lead to increased productivity. Automation of most services has led to faster service delivery and given our organization an opportunity to win over many customers. The next version could have more data storage capacity that can be customized to sustain different workloads. I am satisfied with most features overall and I am very proud of this Software.

Automation Anywhere can improve by implementing a Citrix environment and increasing the stability of tools, such as IQ bot.

They still need to improve the SAP application's ability to use the features it has. For example, we have been using a MetaBot to automate SAP applications. They have given the SAP the ability to command Automation Anywhere itself, but we have encountered some limitations. Microsoft Power Automate has so many connectors, like its connector with Microsoft Office and SharePoint. On the other end, I have found Power Automate to be overpowered compared to Automation Anywhere because they already have so many connectors with Office 365, Teams, and other APIs. There are even more if you consider the cloud flow of Power Automate, so it's easy to get triggered. Automation Anywhere is not so easy to trigger. For example, I can create an automation in Power Automate where the user provides input into a form, such as Microsoft Form, and that info gets pulled into SharePoint. In Automation Anywhere, we do not have some trigger like that. We have to keep one bot running 24/7 to get this data into SharePoint. Power Automate does not have anything like scheduling. Whenever you fill out the form, it gets triggered on its own, and the information is saved into SharePoint. So this is an advantage of Power Automate that Automation Anywhere does not have. Automation Anywhere should add the same feature that Power Automate has, so whenever I create a flow, there is a trigger given by Automation Anywhere. Instead of scheduling that bot on CR, there should be something running in the background constantly, so I do not have to schedule the bot or trigger the bot manually. The trigger should be integrated into Automation Anywhere. Also, if I am creating one variable in one module, I have to make the same variable in another subtask, then I have to create a mapping between those two. If Automation Anywhere were to come out with a feature like Power Automate's environment variables, then that variable could be created globally and used throughout the process. That would be better. Another feature I would like to have in Automation Anywhere is "Go To Line." When we are writing the code, it sometimes extends 500 to 600 lines. If I want to go to some line numbers — say, the bot has failed on line number 120 — I have to go manually to line 120. If Automation Anywhere provided something like a "Go To Line" feature, that would be useful for us. For example, if you face an error at line number 500 and your code is 1,000 lines, you have to scroll so far down to get to line number 500. Furthermore, in Automation Anywhere, you have to write a DLL separately when you want to have something from a .NET perspective. In UiPath and some other tools, there are direct call functions available. It would be nice if Automation Anywhere came up with something like that, where you can directly have the method called.

Their bot runners could be made to handle multiple payloads at the same time because if I want to run multiple parallel operations, the number of bot runners that I have to buy just keeps increasing. It is adding to the cost. However, there is a possibility that we don't need that many bot runners, and we can run multiple operations in a bot runner. This would be a great addition to have.

Automation Anywhere should improve its OCR command, as it's my observation that I have faced data loss or improper data being extracted. If the image quality is low then the data extraction with 100% accuracy is a huge task that I have been facing. If the scheduling of the bot were much simpler, also allowing us to schedule bots prior to the start time, it would be an improvement.

AA has many features but the issue is with the loss of overhead on computing resources. For example, if the bot is encrypted, the bot should decrypt it first then act accordingly. If there are issues with the logic in the bot, there will be a lot of computer memory overload. There should be an additional feature for cloud functionality. Also, there should be an improvement done in Citrix automation. There should be a bit of a pricing cut down as other RPA tools charge only for bot runners. If any new features been introduced it would be a delight for many developers like me.

If I build a bot today and don't use it, however, in several months, someone tries to use it, there's a 30-40% change the bot will fail in one or two areas. I'm still trying to figure out why. It's on a ticket right now. It may be due to updates or changes to the environment. I'm not sure. The solution lacks in the approval process area. They need to provide more solutions.

* Available Data Analytics * More on AI Front and Deep Learn concept

Automation Anywhere changed OCR features in A2019. My suggestion is to improve the OCR command scope and usability. We use OCR for PDF data extraction as we use in V. 11.x product. Automation Anywhere has a perfect structure of working. Automation Anywhere has the best product structure. It also provides support for customers and they respond in 24 hours. They still provide updates on packages to get more accuracy in process creation. The automation has already improved very much.

Handwritten documents are still a drawback to read. Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script. I feel limited at times with some of the looping and some of the branching and some of the ways to make procedure calls when I have a complex business issue. Also, there's a loss of overhead of the computing resources in Automation Anywhere. If you have an encrypted bot, the Automation Anywhere software has to read it first, decrypt it, and run it. So there is a potential that, if the logic of the bot isn't good enough, a lot of CPU and memory overload will happen. This is something that Automation Anywhere should look at because it takes a lot of computing resources. I have seen CPUs running at 100%.

The price is a little high and could be reduced.

I have had some difficulty with OCR extraction, which could be a little better. Automation Anywhere is not fully compatible with browsers other than Internet Explorer while working with web extraction. Maybe there could be more options added for PDF integration. Having a few practical use cases added to online learning would be helpful for newbies. Other than these, I don't see other difficulties. In terms of extra features, they are adding them day by day to make for the smoother automation of processes.

Bots get disconnected from control rooms sometimes without any reason and this takes up a lot of time. If the user creates a schedule then he/she leaves the company, that schedule became unusable at some point and I can't edit it. We need to create it again using generic IDs. This problem can be avoided in an upcoming release or update. There should be a button for customer support. For each process, we have a separate log folder/files and it's tedious to go and check each process. They should include a button/feature to check the logs for each/process and or bots in the control room itself. There should be an option for the quick addition of disconnected bots/kind of rollback options. I would also like to see the One-Touch Asset management report button in the control room.

I have identified a few areas where one can find the scope of improvement: 1. AA IQ Bot has not yet succeeded in living up to its reputation due to its high cost, low ROI, and its inability to meet client requirements. 2. Commands such as OCR are not up to the mark the output accuracy is not satisfactory. 3. It is unable to identify IF/Else, for Loop block when reviewing/writing AA code. There should be an expand/collapse button to identify a block of code. Integration with Google Spreadsheets and other products should be included in the next release.

When it comes to Citrix automation, AA should improve or add more features in such a way that all the commands should work when automating a Citrix application. There should be more options to write codes in VBScript, C#, Python, etc. directly within any commands, instead of just invoking an already existing script. Since A2019 is cloud-based and since it is a new product, there are a lot of commands that require improvisations such as the Outlook Save Email command, Rest API commands, and a few others.

1) Needs some improvement in IQ BOT: * while uploading input files we are facing issue with grouping even the same kind of PDFs * consuming of CPU utilization and requiring more RAM 2) It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability. 3) Handwritten documents are still a drawback. 4) Some of the control room GUI can be improved, it is also difficult in terms of control room management. 5) If Excel gets hanged Automation Anywhere does not give any notification. 6) Needs improvement in image recognition. 7) BOT insights taking more CPU utilization.

Automation Anywhere has lots of good features. It does not require improvement. I would like if the IQ Bot could read hand-written documents, otherwise, Automation Anywhere is fabulous to work or develop processes for customers. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly UI to work with so that any non-technical person can easily understand the process workflow. The accuracy of the IQ bot in the new version has been increased. We can make validations to fields in IQ Bot with Python scripts.

I hope that Automation Anywhere can further optimize its bots to help automate tasks with Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft PowerPoint documents because, in most organizations, there is a lot of reporting required. Hence, it would be great and more cost and time-efficient if there is a way to automate everyday tasks such as Microsoft Word Report Generation and Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation Generation. Further, I would also recommend that Automation Anywhere assist users with automating tasks such as the monthly payment of essential services. For example, automating payment of utilities like the water bill or electricity bill, online.

Most clients use systems which use old Java versions, trying to automate on these systems is really difficult since most features/commands are not supported. Java earlier than 1.7 cannot work something and most firms I have interacted with their systems are old. Another thing according to Automation Anywhere, it's main aim is not to change the client's system but to be used on top of the existing one hence Automation Anywhere should consider those clients since in my country most of them use systems which date back to 2000, and they are not willing to spend another fortune to change them just so they can use Automation Anywhere. Additional features: Automation Anywhere should add a couple of commands which will help most developers not to always use a script, a good example is in String operations.

Excel functionalities, the macro interface can be improved in the next release of RPA platform Automation Anywhere. Functionalities such as maneuvering on the excel worksheets, increased capability to manipulate formulae, and other Excel functionalities will give Automation Anywhere and edge in the RPA platform category since most financial applications use a lot of Excel and macro sheets for their calculations and postings. This will not only help the developer in saving time to develop simple keystrokes but also make the final bot much more stable and robust.

There are some areas that the product can be improved : (1) Better exception handling mechanism. (2) Parallel processing of branches to improve execution time. (3) IQ Bot: An easier way to tag the document's source after extracting information from the document. (Which group does the document or a transaction belong to). (4) Better integration with external data sources for Bot Insights. (5) Advocating and encouraging use of queues and device pools by providing implementation details with success rate and support from services for the same.

Especially while using v11, I often experience freezes with OCR extraction from PDF files. It just didn't work properly. I had to work around this using Python scripting. It would be a big improvement to have the inbuilt OCR capability work seamlessly. A perfect OCR would be awesome.

The improvements that we could see would be the increased stability of each A2019 releases and reduce the likely impact on existing features. We are also looking to see improvements in the upgrade and bot deployment processes to make them easier and less interaction with back end servers. We are also to see more features to be added to seamlessly transition between human and bot tasks in the long-running process. We are also keen to see the new AARI feature develop into a voice-enabled command activation to run the bot process.

I would suggest adding more fields while calling in API. There is no option to generate an Authentication token within the Bot. While using REST web services, we faced a lot of issues as we were trying to connect with the Salesforce application which needs an authentication token to connect. Since there was no option to create an authentication token we had to find a different solution altogether. This feature can be improvised. Object cloning is another feature which is not very stable and this can be improved as well

One of the important drawbacks of Automation Anywhere is that it needs to be able to show the automated process as a single flowchart. After complete deployment of the bot, such as a Task Bot, to see an overview of the complete process and the steps in the job is difficult. As such, I would like to suggest that they provide an option to show the entire process as a flowchart. This isn't required for the UI pane, but perhaps simply export it as a flowchart. This would be great. The ability to automate using third-party code involvement should be improved. As far as I know, Python scripts can be used to automate a few use cases but it would be great if there is a change to include the .NET and C# languages. I've also worked on UiPath and .NET code can be used for most of the Excel automation. This includes operations like creating pivot tables and applying advanced filters. These are things that work directly with VB.NET code. Automation anywhere needs a forum where active users can provide answers for standard errors and exceptions. More webinars regarding the latest releases and the features should also be created.

Verbose logging of bot compiling and deployment from the control room. Events occurring during compiling, pre-processing the bots should be logged in the control room or bot launcher logs. Exported bots packages are not updated. Each package must be validated independently upon being exported from one control room to another. Moving away from Client-server architecture to web-based deployment compromised developer experience of app reliability offered by 11.3.X flavors. Desktop app experience >>> Web experience. Developers are not pleased.

I still believe there is a long way to go when it comes to ML & AI capabilities, though Automation Anywhere is the leader here in the market. A2019 is awesome with its features but I don't find it as stable as v11. I suggest having more ways to perform string manipulations and string operations, instead of just what is pre-defined in the V11 tool. I would like to have a buffer-type thing where the bot should throw an exception to the production support team when it is looping through a record. Date operations can be improved without using VS script.

Though IQ Bot is the most powerful and effective cognitive OCR platform for data extraction in the market, still, there is a lot of scope for improvement as there are a lot of non-standard documents which do not give a high straight-through processing rate and accuracy. Additional features to be included in the next release should be the option to develop basic web portals through which business users can view and run required bots on demand. Secondly, some features of BPM should also be included in the RPA platform itself so that business workflows can be defined and automated easily.

OCR - OCR capability needs to become better. For the handwritten documents, we had a struggle to extract with accuracy while some other market tools were able to achieve it without any issues. The OCR component should allow integration with 3rd party OCR. This way we can use the best of breed solution along with AA or allow better control over OCR packages to be customized. As of now, it acts like a black box where there is very little control over the outcome of the OCR. We had great struggles with a customer who had handwritten data extraction. Finally, the customer was not able to see the value and the exploration went on hold post COVID.

The inclusion of word packages would help us to extract data from Word and automate word-related activities easily. PDF package should have the Read from PDF option. Now we need to convert the word to PDF and then extract data. The quick mapping between the parent and child bot variables should be available. Different tasks should be visible at the same time. Now we need to open different browser tabs to view multiple codes at the same time. A2019 has more features than the v11 version but some mentioned that user-friendly features should be enabled.

We have a challenge in our front office automation where capturing details from a table within a table does not happen in the existing AA Enterprise client version 11.3.4. The AA team tries various methods like using an Excel spreadsheet to capture the tables. Using object cloning it recognizes only the top line items and not the table which is in an HTML format then they asked to use Python codes within AA to identify tick boxes as a windows box. If this gets improved then we should be able to work on all the voice-related projects for a particular healthcare payer.

They bring out new or enhanced functionality on a very short cycle, which is great, although a criticism would be sometimes new features are released so quickly they can sometimes be a little buggy. We have been faced with inconsistent error handling during the bot development stage, which is something that should be improved. The error handling is generally good, but the problem arises when developing multiple tasks within the same project. Specifically, I want to handle the error that occurs in a sub-task, as we have to ensure that all of the relevant tasks are completed properly in order to continue the process. I would like to see a global error handler introduced, which will explicitly handle errors over the entire project. I would like to have a Project Sharing Hub, similar to that of GitHub, but inside the tool. This would help with consolidating all of the project files at the end of the deployment.

Automation Anywhere is the best automating tool on the market and it's very difficult for me to think to suggest something to improve the tool. Here are my few suggestions: Automation Anywhere can include database commands like insert row, bold row, etc commands in 11.x They can also include features like API integration features in the command panel. They should create a standard framework like re framework in Ui Path. As it enhances the capability of the developer to create an automation project.

I think automation anywhere is a complete system if we have to work on structured data that doesn't require human decisions. However, it does not work as well with retrieving data from images. Image automation is something that needs to be improved. One more thing is that Automation Anywhere does not support reading and writing to CSV files. If we are getting input from a CSV file, we have to add one more layer of automation that first saves the data to an Excel file. This is important to us because most of the data we get from the database is saved to a CSV file.

1. User Interface can be simpler. 2. Master Certification now paid (previously it was free of cost) which sometimes creates hesitation to go for it. 3. Though the courses in the certification's learning hub are great and awesome, there is some more space for adding more explained contents. 4. Citrix automation lacks the perfect end to end automation. 5. Web Automation fails when an automated Screen Resolution is changed to some other resolutions. 6. Pricing with respect to the competitors is more.

Automation Anywhere should think about the integration with Machine learning and deep learning with ease, so that AA can be used in various other domains that require human calculation and logic to work. A good application would be IVR, as this can help businesses reduce the response time and achieve better customer satisfaction AA should include more features in the mobile app, such as monitoring and debugging bots. This can help the administrator to look at the status on the fly. They should provide more features to improve the visibility of bots.

Areas that can be improved are: * For assisted automation, the AA bot needs the facility to be triggered through an application interface after collecting input from the user. There is no inbuilt option available in AA to collect all the inputs in an interface. In our case, we built a desktop application to collect all of the user input and, on submit, the .NET code will run the ATMX file. Can AA provide a simple user interface through which a user can collect input and submit it to trigger the bot? * It needs an option to change the Windows resolution. * It needs to have an option to select an object after a three to five-second delay. It is useful in the case of menu selection and this option exists in other tools.

The areas in which the product and service must be improved are in the government sector and ministries such as the Ministry of Education and Health. From my point of view, we need a lot of features that must be added in future releases, for example, improving the special dashboard in bot insight, reducing the duration session from 20 min to 5 min, and added SAP API command. I would like to have the ability to work on a remote desktop connection, run the recording on it and use all commands.

It would be better to make it more user-friendly so that individuals with no experience can pick it up pretty quickly.

Had we had access to the RPA bots in advance, we would have practiced before fully implementing. This is something that should be changed in the future.

Automation Anywhere provides more than 300 commands but it lacks in certain areas like Excel automation. For eg: there is no command to add, rename, or delete sheet. However, meta bots can be utilized for the same. AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome. The AA control room is fairly difficult to understand and maintain initially. Integration with new technologies and scripts like Python. However, I have heard that A2019 supports Python scripts. The license prices vary drastically depending upon the partnership with the client. Debugging of SQL queries is hard. The error description is not accurate. I have to initially test the queries on Access and then only I paste them on AA.

1. Data Mapping Utilities 2. Console Management 3. Bot Runner need to perform much smoother 4. It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability. 5. Handwritten documents are still a drawback. Also difficult in terms of control room management. 6. A few applications take more time for loading when integrated. 7. Declaring the datatype of variables is challenging. 8. The process of migrating codes from one environment to the next can be automated as a default function. 9. The webpage for the control room could use some retouching or redesign to enhance the user experience. 10. Many little-usable features.

Points to Improve: 1. Control Room -> While exporting a package, an option to de-select all the depending/referenced files should be available. Currently, it only allows for selecting all the files. Also, the views should be re-sizable as they are currently fixed width. This would enable to view long file names easily eliminating any chances of exporting the wrong file. Points to Add in next release(s): 1. Availability of actions for Date and time functions in task bots, meta bots logics editor like Date Addition, calendar functions, etc. 2. Addition of Assertions activities, that can help with conditional compilations 3. Option to copy multiple variables at the same time (as selected by the developer) 4. Option to close all the task bots files in the editor at a go 5. Option to check-out multiple files inside a folder structure in a go 6. List and array should be made dynamic, as in there must not be a requirement to specify at least 1 element in the list, etc. 7. Deletion of multiple variables in one go (as selected by a developer)

The product needs improvements in dealing with remote servers and providing more APIs that will be used with other systems. Also in need of improvement are: * The AI sense command needs improvement. * Bot discovery needs more work. * Migration tools should be improved. * REST and SOAP services need work. * AA should provide the ability to use custom packages that follow a standard to be imported in RPA. * I would like the ability to use custom cryptography algorithms with commands. * They should improve PDF commands and IQ features to include Arabic language OCR. * The admin user should have the ability to change the tome out of the session.

With more demo recordings and positive real-time reviews from the clients. AA should provide a free evaluation period so it is easy to attract new customers. It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability. Handwritten documents are still a drawback. It is also difficult in terms of control room management. The debugger is also a weakness of the tool, forcing the developer to use error handling or message box to map errors. Few applications take more time for loading when integrated.

The IQ Bot could use improvement.

The Automation Anywhere Control room component features can be improved, as of now it contains too many roles and rules which makes it confusing to use it. They should make it more simple because a lot of times I have to go through the user manual while dealing with the Automation Anywhere Control Room. I always wanted a python and javascript editing console in version 11, which I later found in A2019. Earlier, only Run script command was there to directly run the scripts which somehow creates one additional dependency to the solution.

For improvements, I would like Automation Anywhere to add new default mail operation commands, which might help developers to automate Outlook solutions easily and effectively. Similarly, some PDF commands can help developers to automate complex PDF automation projects and help developers to extract the PDF data more accurately and precisely. IQ Bot has some limitations that should be improved in future releases. It would be great if the work items concept is improved; that would help the developers and support team. The AI and ML features should be more fully explored in the future.

You could improve the tools for reading CSV/Excel, also providing wizards or detailed guides, otherwise, it is quite complex to use them, especially at the beginning. It would be useful to have an online wiki on each tool that can be used on AA with practical examples of use, with images and videos. It would also be useful to increase the community and make public in a forum the problems solved by other developers through the support, so that we can use past experience to solve development problems without having to send emails to AA about a problem that may have already been solved.

The UI can be improved a little bit to make it easier for beginners to understand. There are many commands called Actions that are very good but sometimes, I feel that it should be more comfortable to find and search for specific commands. There should be some type of hint or notification system about what actions are useful, according to the situation or part of the process that it is in while creating the bot. The speed of the bot processing on a whole can be improved so that the bot can run in less time than the task or processes.

The accuracy in Web Recorder needs to be improved, defective outputs found most of the time(not sure if is a website side issue). You cannot add dynamic variables in PDF scanned values, hopefully, this can be added as a new feature in future. Integration with most-used email applications eg: Gmail, Outlook, etc for ease in sending mails without any configuration of port or hostname. This could help to concentrate on actual problems, instead of spending time to figure out port and hostname for sending or receiving emails.

The debugging tools need to be included, for where and why it has failed to execute the bot in a clear manner. Maintaining the bot is a little tough sometimes during a failed issue. If Automation Anywhere is developed in a real-time environment, we can do daily routine our home routine jobs much easier. I am learning a bit daily day by day. Automation Anywhere can also be improved in machine learning and artificial intelligence. It would make our lives easier.

Configuring A2019 and using it is getting a little difficult because of frequent errors of compatibility. It is not so user friendly like the enterprise desktop version. Sometimes the A2019 platform takes too much time in the pre-processing and deployment process which is too time consuming and to solve this we need to restart the services and also sometimes need to restart our machines. This is extra overhead. AA-client is too heavy software. AA-client should support multiple languages. Sometimes the client software needs to login, again and again, every hour and so. Advanced Machine Learning and AI features with visualization capabilities should be included in the tool so that the product can offer many new use cases and

One of the challenges that I face every now and then while working with A2019, is around the bot agent updates. Every week/alternate weeK, I receive an error while running my bots, that asks me to update the bot agent. I have to download the bot agent every time and reinstall it, in order to get the work done. This thing has also created an issue for me in the past, where I need to present something to my US counterparts, and then the bot was unable to run because the bot agent update notification came few minutes before the meeting. This was really frustrating at that point in time, however, fortunately, I got that resolved within minutes during the meeting by updating the bot agent. Hence, I believe, there should be some facility available, which can help me in running my previously implemented bots, even if there are some updates in the bot agent

It would be great if there will be a built-in machine learning model available in the AA, so the developer can directly map it with their task and train the model accordingly. Training and testing the model can be achieved using these features.

1. Excel commands should include more features. 2. Need more variable types for eg. date, amount, number, etc 3. Better API support and more APIs. 4. Queues should be enabled to directly connect to DBs. 5. Managing so many variables is a pain. Some kind of variable initialization mechanism like how Blue Prism has it will be helpful. 6. Input-output variables should be defined for taskbots as well. 7.There are a lot of glitches in AA not fixed since Ver 10. Reach me to know more about them. 8. The commands should help evaluate the current state of variables(like how in Blue prism) 10. Metabots should have command to stop the task. Basically should have all commands of a task bot. 11. No one uses "WorkFlows". 12. The user roles and the Credential Vaults administration, sharing and the whole thing in action is very confusing. 13. Automatic technical logging option should be given by default in all commands like how we have in BP.

I believe Automation Anywhere is working perfectly and it is the best in the market. However, some points based on a development perspective I would like to add are: * Universal search. * Creating a variable from anywhere, including from the properties/attributes of commands. * I would like to have the ability to delete multiple variables. * It should be possible to delete multiple parameters for the API. * I would like to have commands to link with the respective knowledge base. * Having a refractor in the code would be an improvement. * A predefined framework for Bot Development that includes an audit log and error handling would be helpful. * It would be useful to have some updates for the control room in terms of analytics.

We had a few setbacks because of bots getting queued and unable to force delete a task bot which kept persisting in the control room. These features should be included in future releases which will be highly beneficial. Also when the upgrade happened from .14 to .15, it did not allow for the existing task bots to be checked in. The upgrades should work seamlessly to enable high efficiency of the AA product. We need the Business dashboard to be exported to other environments. Also for the availability of G-Suite package in the enterprise edition.

Already the new version is out, which has cognitive abilities. The bot learning skills are there, which helps to train the bot. AA has done a great job by bringing compatibility with IBM Watson and many other AI interfaces. If some more functions we can get related to other web applications will be a great help. At some places, the if-else statements become so confusing so, at that place, they can change the UI for better understanding. Apart from this I liked this tool and would like to continue working on this.

As long as we are using this tool, it includes all features required from a process automation perspective. As of now, we are not looking for any additional features. However in IQ Bot if the following features can be added then I would be very grateful: The recognition of Voice /Audio As of now IQ Bot only takes/fetches the record of the places that we have marked. e.g. Invoices fields that are dynamic in nature are very difficult to fetch the data from the scan copy. If this feature gets added, it will save a lot of time for developers.

PDF extraction and cognitive automation need improvement.

I would like for AA to add an inbuilt debug log that has functionalities to view the values of variables during run time in order to have a point-to-point debugging in case of an error.

It should be easier to use.