Building Blocks of a Bot—Packages

Imagine you’re taking a stroll in the downtown area of your city. You’re surrounded by street lamps, traffic signals, bus stops, sidewalks, roads, etc.—everything that makes a city a fully functioning microcosm. Everything you see around you plays an integral role in the city's day-to-day operations, ensuring that citizens who benefit from these items are not inconvenienced as they go about their lives.

Now think of the bots you use on a regular basis as a digital city. Their consistent and efficient functioning ensures you and your business are not inconvenienced. Just as the street lamps, traffic signals, and other infrastructure make a city, packages and actions make a bot. Your Automation 360 environment comes pre-loaded with more than 100 packages, containing more than 1,000 actions to simplify your bot-building efforts.

The extensible nature of Automation 360 also allows users to upload packages to develop their automation. Custom packages can be built with the Automation Anywhere Package SDK. The following video is designed to help developers who would like to create their packages.

Another resource for new and free packages is the Bot Store. The repository of packages on the Bot Store is replenished regularly, supporting automation of applications such as Microsoft Word, Kore AI, Salesforce, and AWS.

Fixes and upgrades

When it comes to city infrastructure, if a streetlamp or signal malfunctions or is due for an upgrade, the city will fix it or replace it as quickly as possible. Similarly, with Bot Store packages, the developers are continuously improving the offerings. They’re adding functionalities for new, better bots or to upgrade existing bots to take advantage of new actions, improve current actions, or even sometimes remove actions because they’re obsolete. Since packages are maintained and updated on a regular basis, make sure you have the latest version in your Control Room.

Here are the most downloaded packages in the Bot Store in the last few months.

Everything JSON

JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON as it is popularly known, is a data type that is used in various applications, especially web applications. It is a human-readable format containing a key-value pair. The JSON format is not bot-readable in its raw form, but since bots do understand dictionary data type, the JSON Parser Package can make the format bot-ready. Using the actions included in the package, the bot can process the incoming JSON data stream, convert it to the dictionary data type (which is also based on a key-value pair) and utilize it in the remainder of the bot's automation.

You can also parse the information packaged in JSON format. Since JSON is in a key-value pair, using the key, you can parse the values quickly. This method comes in handy when dealing with REST API services, where the responses to the API calls can turn into an avalanche of data. To aid you in this situation, we have the JSON Object Manager Package in the Bot Store.

Packages for document processing

Documents are ubiquitous in an enterprise, regardless of the size of the organization. And processing those documents that include structured and unstructured data can create a tremendous challenge, slowing down work and opening the door to errors. Automation can help meet that challenge by ensuring all documents are processed and necessary data is extracted and put to use—quickly and efficiently, with no errors.

Documents are most often formatted as Microsoft Word and PDF files. Our PDF Utilities Package can interact with data in form fields and help in merging multiple PDF files. Our Microsoft Word Package for Automation 360 can help you automatically process a wide variety of documents, including customized certificates, cover sheets, and invoices.

The packages listed above are only a drop in the bucket compared to the repository available on the Bot Store to all Automation 360 users. See what’s possible to keep your digital city up and running smoothly.