Robotic Process Automation Run Phase – Execute & Monitor via a Mobile App

In this penultimate instalment of our RPA Implementation lifecycle series, we will focus on the Run phase, and talk about the use of Mobile App for executing and monitoring RPA robots on the go.

Connecting the Digital with the Physical

As RPA and Intelligent Automation is gaining traction across industries, a key consideration is how to create better synergies between the human and the digital workforce so that automation can be utilised in the most effective and least disruptive ways to the humans. More so, as automation efforts are scaled up to make the interactions seamless and reduce the bot management overhead.

We are seeing the rise and greater use of physical devices such as mobile, IoT and other internet-enabled connected devices in our day to day life, be it work or home. These devices are becoming more sophisticated by day in terms of their computing power and accessibility to allow multimodal communications, i.e. interactions that happen through natural modes of communication such as touch, voice or context-awareness, between the digital and the physical environment. It is imperative to converge the power of digital devices with that of software robots so that the digital workforce is accessible anytime anywhere and be managed with ease.

RPA activities via a Mobile App

In the last year or so, we have seen Mobile integration with RPA, where major RPA vendors have introduced mobile apps that enable us to execute & monitor RPA robots on the go. By offering a mobile app in both iOS and Android versions, a user can easily execute or view results of a bot execution via touch interface of a mobile device, if not yet via a voice or chat interface through a mobile device.

The below diagram highlights key capabilities and communication modes that an RPA mobile app can fulfil to allow interactions between the RPA bots and human workforce-

RPA Mobile App Capabilities-

• Review Execution Statistics of an existing robot such Number of executions, Pass rate, Return on Investment, etc
• Execute Automations on the go that are accessible to a user in an unattended mode with the ability to start, stop and pause an execution
• Input & Output Data to specify run parameters or upload input files needed for the execution of a bot, and to be able to download, analyse and send out any output files from an execution
• Notification & Alerts generated from any executions triggered earlier to indicate completion or issues with an execution, and to alert for any reminders being set for RPA activities by a user

RPA Mobile App Communication Modes-

• Touch – by doing simple touch screen clicks one could navigate the mobile app and be able to do most actions not needing typing in data, such as review execution stats, start a bot execution, upload a file, etc.
• Text– by typing in values through the mobile keypad to do activities such as search an automation by name, specify input parameters, etc, and in the case that an RPA platform provide chatbot capabilities, then to be able to interact with the platform via chat interface
• Voice – by doing voice conversations with the mobile app in order to perform suitable activities such as searching a bot, start or stop an execution, etc.

With the current advancement made in this area by RPA vendors, Automation Anywhere has one of the most sophisticated mobile app implementations at the moment to allow some advanced features such as uploading unstructured data (i.e. image files) to execute an IQ bot. Other more advanced features such as the ability to download, analyse and send output files would be useful to have. So would the ability to set up notifications and alerts for RPA activities. And certainly, additions such as the ability to allow interactions via a voice interface as something that could allow hands-free robot activities.

Read the other articles from this RPA Implementation Lifecycle series:

Robotic Process Automation Index

Contact us at SQA Consulting, to see how we may assist you in developing the necessary skills needed for implementing RPA projects.