Today it is unusual to find a large enterprise that does not have an RPA initiative, which is looking for ways to leverage the technology to increase efficiencies across their business.
451 Research says: "DAP AND RPA CONVERGE - Digital automation platforms automate complex structured processes and unstructured collaborations. RPA platforms automate repetitive manual tasks and supplement workforces with digital skills. They now coexist and partner with one another (e.g., Appian with Blue Prism, IBM with Automation Anywhere, and Oracle with UiPath)."
And per Gartner: "Do not try and make one RPA tool answer all your organizations automation needs."
As Winshuttle customers, you know that we can provide SAP automation that is easy to create and use. Blue Prism is a market-leading, enterprise connected-RPA vendor that provides the ability to create Digital Workers to perform repetitive tasks, as well as integration to multiple systems. Winshuttle partnered with Blue Prism in April 2019. We created a template integration to accelerate our customers' ability to easily integrate Winshuttle with Blue Prism, automating the typical Winshuttle Runner tasks via a Blue Prism VBO – Visual Business Object – and it is on their Digital Exchange here: Blue Prism Digital Exchange
https://digitalexchange.blueprism.com/dx/entry/8160/solution/sap-excel-add-in-for-blue-prism
Some of our customers have successfully used the Winshuttle VBO to marry the best of Winshuttle with the best of Blue Prism to provide complete, end-to-end automation.
You can see a demonstration of this on February 20th in our joint webinar. The registration link is: https://more.winshuttle.com/200220_Global_Webinar_Finance_RPA_Blue_Prism_Registration---guided.html
As of today, there are 3 ways to integrate Winshuttle with Blue Prism, or other RPA vendors:
1. Winshuttle Excel Add-in surface automation of common Winshuttle Runner tasks:
This option leverages the Winshuttle Excel add-in interface and uses RPA surface automation to automate the common Runner tasks, such as Open Excel file, Login to Winshuttle, Login to SAP, Select Script and Run, Validate or Simulate. The results are captured from the Run ribbon, so that the process can be driven based on the outcome. The documentation for the Excel add-in is here:
Transaction: https://docs.winshuttle.com/studio-en-12-1-x-online-help-studio-w-connect/12/excel-addin-transaction.htm
Query: https://docs.winshuttle.com/studio-en-12-1-x-online-help-studio-w-foundation-user-gov/12/excel-addin-query.htm
For this option, we created a template integration, or Blue Prism VBO, that was mentioned above. It automates the most common Winshuttle Runner tasks. It is the preferred integration option when you are executing multiple scripts which may depend on each other, i.e. output from one may be input to another, and there may be Excel transformations and/or formatting of the data, as well as running Macros or VBA as part of your SAP process.
See an example video of the Blue Prism VBO automating Winshuttle Runner activities in the Excel Add-in integration below:
2. Winshuttle's Command Line Interface:
This option leverages Winshuttle Command Line Interface (CLI). The documentation is for version 12 is located here:
Transaction: https://docs.winshuttle.com/studio-en-12-1-x-online-help-studio-w-connect/12/run-from-command-line-transaction.htm
Query: https://docs.winshuttle.com/studio-en-12-1-x-online-help-studio-w-connect/12/run-from-command-line-query.htm
This option works very much like an API, requiring input parameters of the Script, Template, SAP credentials and several optional parameters. It runs efficiently and works well for running individual scripts, however, there are no return codes. You can check the results via an optional email sent by the CLI or by inspecting the SAP Log message in your Excel template. Most RPA tools have easy ways to read data from Excel, and Blue Prism makes this easy with an Excel VBO, i.e. Excel integration.
See an example video of the Command Line Interface integration below:
3. For Foundation customers, Winshuttle's SOAP APIs:
This option works well for Foundation customers who want to use a true API. Winshuttle developers create a Script mapped as XML and publish it as a SOAP web service. The documentation to publish Scripts as web services is located here:
Transaction: http://winshuttle-help.s3.amazonaws.com/studio/en/central-sap/help/11/publish-transaction-script-web-service.htm
Query: http://winshuttle-help.s3.amazonaws.com/studio/en/central-sap/help/11/publish-query-script-web-service.htm
As part of the publish step, a WSDL path is provided to the web service. They are stored on the Foundation User Governance site, where you can view them. To use, the web service needs authentication to the Foundation site, then map data to the to the SOAP web service parameters and execute it. SAP log messages are returned, and the results can then be used to drive the rest of the process. As an API, this is the easiest integration in most RPA products.
See an example video of the SOAP web service integration below:
Winshuttle customers and partners have used a variety of these options to create end-to-end automations of SAP processes with multiple RPA vendors, including: Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere and UIPath. Please share your use cases with us – we're eager to hear about your successes!
Again, if you want to see an example with Winshuttle and Blue Prism for end-to-end Invoice processing, which is often one of the first use cases our customers want to automate in Finance, please register for our webinar on February 20th here:
https://more.winshuttle.com/200220_Global_Webinar_Finance_RPA_Blue_Prism_Registration---guided.html
There is also more information on our website, including our partnerships, here:
https://www.winshuttle.com/what-we-do/robotic-process-automation/
Happy Automating!
Sigrid
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Sigrid Kok
PSE | Winshuttle NA
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