OpenRPA Demo and Interview with OpenRPA founder Allan Zimmermann

I had this great opportunity to interview Allan Zimmermann, founder of OpenRPA, an Open Source Enterprise RPA, which can easily be compared to the bigger (and more pricy) enterprise RPA solutions.

Allan tells us everything about OpenRPA as well as demonstrating all the features of both OpenRPA and OpenFlow/NodeRed.

OpenRPA is an Open Source Enterprise Grade RPA and offers easy workflow manipulation of workflows using Microsoft Workflow Foundation. Workflows can be saved either locally or in OpenFlow (RSA).

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0:00 Intro
Allan Zimmermann tells about himself and the open source RPA tool, OpenRPA.

0:51 First look at OpenRPA
It is build like most other RPA tools. We have toolbox with activities, which we can drag in. In the middle there is the design interface. OpenRPA is build into the .NET framework, which means that it will look like other RPA tools, you know (e.g. UiPath and Kryon). The best thing is that it is free 🤩

4:56 How we automate the Windows user interface with OpenRPA
The idea with RPA is mainly to automate the Windows user interface. In OpenRPA we can easily do so by using dragging in activities, but the main function in OpenRPA is the Record button, which records the user actions and automatically create the workflow. Allan also shows, how to automate Java.

8:45 Creating our first OpenRPA robot
Allan builds a simple workflow, that let us work in an application. In this example we use a simple application (the Windows calculator) and make additions. Assigning variables. Open the application (use Select Element to detect if the application is open). Type Text in the application.

13:15 Selectors in OpenRPA
The selectors in OpenRPA are using JSON compared to UiPath's XML.

15:45 Solving the Fibonacci Case
Creating a While Loop and using an If activity to solve the Fibonacci case. Download the OpenRPA workflow file below.

27:48 OpenRPA workflow to position applications around your desktop
A trigger based workflow, that can position application at a specific position on the screen.

31:27 Reading an Excel sheet and do a web search
We are reading an Excel sheet, doing a website search and writing the result back. Introducing API calls. OpenFlow/Node-RED. Node-RED is a powerful end efficient web based event flow engine.

39:22 Google Search and Data Scrape in OpenRPA
We want to data scrape the results of our Google Search. A guide to edit the selectors. Finally writing the scraped data to Excel.

44:50 The strengths of OpenRPA
OpenRPA is build as a value added product to OpenFlow. Meaning that we use OpenRPA, when we cant use APIs in OpenFlow. Of course being Open Source is a benefit too (= $$). Everyone can inspect the code and report security issues, which will get fixed quickly.

57:27 Solving RPA Challenge with OpenRPA
Solving the RPA Challenge about changing input forms. The challenge is a simple example of automating a dynamic CRM system.

1:02:35 Inputting data into My CRM
A common use RPA case about taking data from a source (Excel) and inputting it in to a CRM system.

1:09:18 Running multiple windows users with OpenRPA
This enables us to run multiple robots on the same server.

1:20:18 Make triggers in OpenRPA
Allan shows, how to make triggers. A trigger waits for something happening (e.g. clicking the help menu in an application) and then it will run a workflow.

1:26:28 Debugging
The video shows, how to debug in OpenRPA.

1:32:54 Throwing an Exception

1:37:30 Follow and get in contact with OpenRPA

🤖 Links

Connect with me:

#openrpa #rpa #automation

[kamilj]

Top Lads! The biggest strength in my opinion? It's free, including orchestration. It's an undoing for UiPath, AA, BluePrism and similar companies who dare to charge so high for 'their' software in the unattended mode. So, keep up the great work and let's promote openRPA!

[pablodonoso]

So guys, this is been very useful to me. I've learned a lot.Great work !

[gianhernandez]

Hi Anders I am most impressed by this video. Thank you guys for your hard work! I look forward to using this tool heavily in the future.

[Suigeneris]

Awesome! You guys are doing wonderful work! Kudos to you both!

[purushottamw]

This looks amazing. I will surely try this tool and will also recommend people to try it.

[safiot]

i recently installed openrpa. i use openrpa and outlook to filter email by specific words Openrpa does not find the filtered emails but uipath does. it seems to me that the outllook integration is not working properly with openrpa. please correct me if i am wrong

[bongoflava]

Nice Video, I appreciate. One thing to consider improving is to let the guest speak with less interruption from your side.
Thx

[suhail]

How OpenRPA communicates with OpenFlow or NodeRed,
is it a standard API or database query ?

Do we have API specs available in GitHub for integration of different components ?

Thanks

[Soumalyadey]

Hi Sir, cant set up shortest path logic in RPA Challenge.. A little help would be appreciated

[sandeepsinha]

Hi Anders, Thanks for this video. I have one request. I have string which i have extracted from webpage table, now wanted to save into excel sheet but it ask me dataTable. can you please let me know how to convert string to dataTable.

[James-gmcs]

The company i work for is outsourcing its rpa developments for extortionate fees, so my mind is blown by this.
If I made a robot for my department, is the code transferable into other platforms that are currently being used for the live rpa processes?

[chahinez]

Hi i'm looking for a tutorial to extract data from a web browser and put it in an excel csv file thanks :)

[angelgarcia]

Keep uploading OpenRPA videos Anders :D

[nschive]

Just out of curiosity - Some of this is VERY similar to UiPath. Are they allowed to do this? I feel like they sort of are creating a copy. Not trying to be difficult here really, just very curious to hear anyones thought on this :)

Again - very nice video!

[flzssolutionsgmbh-powerkno]

Do openRPA have "orchestrator-like" abilities? Run tasks on scheduled basis?😉

[jonathankee]

Having a timestamp on each subject matter would be good