#ThrowbackThursday - What was the first automation you developed?

anisjolly

anisjolly

Administrator
Hi all

Happy #ThrowbackThursday. It doesn't matter whether you are new to RPA or considered to be a veteran, I'd like to hear about the first automation(s) you developed / launched within your organisation.

Here's my memory:

I was tasked to capture every single menu option available within a very well know Mainframe system. The task was to import User Profile IDs each day and use those IDs to login to Mainframe to capture every menu option available for the profile. If the ID had a specific set of menu options available, then to flag them as these particular options were only available to a specific set of administrators.

The first Menu screen captured usually had around 10-18 options available, with each sub-menu having around the same number of subsequent options. The tree-level sometimes was more than 6-7 levels deep, hence I needed to make sure when I returned back to a parent option, I started from the correct location and did not capture menus / screens that I had previously captured.

All of the menu options / branch levels captured was then output to a document which clearly displayed the branch levels and menu options available under each screen, which in turn was stored in a central location for the business area which vetted the output.

Sounds easy, but to be fair being my first automation - it was quite a challenge. Enjoyed it thoroughly though.

Look forward to hearing about your first automation(s)!
 
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RDawson9

RDawson9

Geek
Staff member
Hi Anis,

My first automation was using a browser-based ticketing system. I had to download an input file from the website, input this into a work queue and then search through the records, one by one, checking whether the work had been completed and closing down the ticket if so. If it hadn't been completed, I then had to either chase the resolver team or moving the workflow onto the next team.

The cool thing is that it's the first process I used to follow manually when I first joined the company so I went from manually performing the process to automating it! I believe the automation is still being used to this day.

Given the pain of some of the browser apps I've worked with since, I wish everything was as easy as that site was! (Even though it didn't seem it at the time!)

Looking forward to hearing everybody's stories!
 
bnastase

bnastase

Member
Hi Anis,

I searched on Google for Hello Kitty photos and downloaded all of them.

On a serious note: I scraped six different websites of live data and I was inputting all into a mainframe app from time to time. All of this was done manually before by people all over the globe.
 
vincix

vincix

New Member
Hi Anis,
I have done my first automation 10 years ago... The task was a report for the CEO and COO... every morning the robot take data from intranet web site and after some elaborations send an email. Every day at 7.00am.
This by itself has produced saving for 12k/year... task made in 3days... :)
 
adebroise

adebroise

RPA Ninja
Staff member
I think mine was to develop the full end to end process required to book a field visit for a gas meter operative from industry flows.

This included:

Reading the industry flow (using Surface Automation)
Creation of the metering account
Deriving fields from market domain data
Creation of the meter asset details
Booking the field visit
 
A

ACracknell

New Member
My first build was actually two processes, because I was cocky and thought it would be easy. One was to retrieve a list of accounts to be closed, get the transfer balance and close the account. The second was to perform a transfer request on an application and check the mainframe for any in flight deals. To get it done I worked 12 hour days and came in at weekends rather than confess I’d bitten off more than I could chew, however both we build, tested and delivered on time. Not the best way to prove a point, but it worked.
 
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