Although RPA has been a hot technology for few years It was very difficult to find any decent book to learn it.
I wrote this book to bridge the gap. It gives you insight into RPA basic and takes you to a journey with many step by step guides to build bots. It is now available in the market. Go grab one.
Today I was looking at provident fund website, while it is appreciable that it is online (can’t see my passbook yet), why should it be so shabby?
There is no professionalism in the design especially UI/UX. For registering members there is one site and for the passbook there is another (Why mere bhai?)
Can’t they make it a hyperlink?
There are various ways to make it user friendly or at least less frustrating, granted there might be less budget, separate projects. you may simply redirect the user or make it a hyperlink.
When you somehow reach to another website http://www.epfindia.gov.in then you find member passbook link, which will take you to another website i.e. https://passbook.epfindia.gov.in which is another shabby site which looks like being developed by a 5th grader. the blurred header image is not because, my screen capture program, it is like that!
Notice the 4 notes at the bottom of the screen, 3 of them of due to lethargy of the architect/developer. And above all how the product owner allowed it all. First user is already frustrated that you did not give the information on the same site and now you are asking him to enter the credentials again.. on top of that if you have changed the password you have to wait for another day to login!!!
Last but the least, I was are able to enter the website to see the passbook and I received following message.
Hail Digital India!!
Pioneer machine learning researcher Arthur Samuel defined machine learning as: “the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed”.
Tom M. Mitchell provided a widely quoted, more formal definition: “A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E”.
Machine Learning is a subfield of computer science and engineering which evolved from the computer learning theory and the study of pattern recognition in AI (Artificial Intelligence). Machine learning studies computer algorithm for learning to do some stuff. It explores the construction and study of algorithms that can learn from and also make a prediction on data. The process of learning data is being done is always depend on some factors, observations or data, such as direct experience, examples or instructions as well. So machine learning is all about learning to do better in future based on what was experienced in previously. In this article, we’ll explain some examples of machine learning technology.
Samual wrote a checkers program back in 1959, which learned to play chekers slowly and become better player than Samual.
Some examples of Machine Learning:
There are some most popular inventions that uses the concept of machine learning algorithms such as:
Google Car uses machine learning: The developers of Google car use the machine learning algorithms to create a prototype model of objects and person on the road. Once it knows that the cars are in space, it can initiate the work of developing and modeling the behavior of other dynamic objects such as bicycles, cars, person, and pedestrians. Every single mile of driving is logged and the data stored into computers that classify how different objects behave in a variety of situations.
IBM Watson: IBM Watson is another example that uses the machine learning but for limited behavior. It’s regression feature doesn’t work on large datasets. It ingestion of more than 600,000 medical evidences, more than 2 million pages from medical practices and search through more than 1.5 million patients records for further information gives it a huge amount of knowledge, no human doctor can ever match. IBM Watson is already capable of collecting and storing far more medical information than normal human doctors and its decisions are all evidence-based and free of overconfidence and cognitive biases.
Robotic Process Automation: Robotics process automation (RPA) is the output of the technology which allows employees in a company to configure a “robot” or computer software to understand and interpret existing software application for manipulating data, processing any transaction, communicating with other digital system and the triggering wide range of responses. These robots are learning to respond automatically for an event using their past experience. They help to reduce time, create user-friendly environment and increase the growth.
The Reality Behind All the Fuss on RPA
Automation has caused job displacement in a wide range of industries, especially those that has little to zero tolerance for mistakes, something that humans are bound to make at one point or another. If robotics process automation (RPA) goes into full swing, jobocalypse is sure to happen. Or so, a lot of people think.
Despite the hype about RPA, robots are not about to replace humans in the workplace any time soon. Although machines have several advantages over a living, breathing employee, there are still limitations to their impact and usability. Before any robots or automated processes can be developed, perspective users have to identify first the type of transactions that can be delegated to robots. An industry that has a rapidly changing environment is also cause for concern, as this can mean frequent updates and changes in the automation system, which will take a toll on a company’s finances. Whereas with humans, businesses only need to invest in training or a refresher course to update their skills and knowledge, which are considerably more affordable. Of course, the world can’t help but be amazed at the possibilities that RPA presents.
What is RPA?
RPA is software that is configured to mimic the actions that employees perform to carry out a particular business process. On example of which is the RPA system that health care provider Ascension Health used for transfer of data from one source to another, which the company calls the ‘swivel chair’ activities. Instead of giving the task to employees, it was carried out by RPA.
What are the advantages of RPA when used with existing applications?
RPA definitely has huge potentials and is bound to change the face of business processes. Still, it is not perfect and RPAs in practice have yet to eliminate jobs.
What are the limitations of RPA?
It is best used on processes that are repetitive, done frequently, and are based on rules, similar to jobs that are often outsourced. These include routine decision making, dual data entry, requests for similar data extraction, and processes where inputs from different sources need to be integrated. This limits its application to certain industries. Simply put, RPA is not for everyone.
While RPA is marketed as a means to lower overheads, initial investment is not that cheap. If it doesn’t help reduce the number of staff, business expenses could double instead of being lowered. Companies that have existing RPA, however, says that it has the potential to help carry out additional workload without the need to add more staff.
True, RPA is very attractive, especially in terms of eliminating errors in business processes, but companies must first determine if it is the ideal solution before they invest in RPA.
One fine day in office few people started complaining that they are getting password prompts on outlook, which was not big concern for me as long as they are sending & receiving mails.
To understand the problem I started looking, thanks to google I reached here http://serverfault.com/questions/186384/outlook-requiring-password-after-exchange-reboot it pointed towards “outlook anywhere”
“..when exchange is rebooted, it will lose connection and restore it once it is back online, and it will not try to connect via https – Outlook Anywhere.
I normally advice my user to restart outlook.”
I sat down comfortably and started taking steam to cure my bad cold, thinking I will advice same to my users. However when logged back on Monday my account was not getting connected to exchange and showing offline. My cold started to aggravate and I knew the problem is related to password prompts. And then many users started complaining of not reaching exchange and few more about password prompt.
Thankfully I could quickly found the culprit could be System “Attendant service is on the Exchange server” and it was not running. I started the service and to my relief things started working.
But meanwhile I deleted my configuration in outlook and reconfigured it, it will show its own complication (calendar/task etc.). Need medicine now for the increasing headache.
It took more than expected time to figure it out. Since I do not code often so I thought accessing web service from jQuery should be quick and seamless. However this cross domain issue kept me busy for 2 hours.
The web service in question is ASP .net web service. There are various solution available, if you google. Some suggested using jsonp other suggested CORS. I chose CORS.
However CORS does not work on IE9 and below it does work with IE10, I am implementing it on Firefox so no worries. To implement CORS I made following changes in web.config of WebService
Added following Under <system.webserver> section
<httpProtocol> <customHeaders> <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="*" /> <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Headers" value="Content-Type" /> </customHeaders> </httpProtocol>
And
<webServices> <protocols> <add name="HttpGet"/> <add name="HttpPost"/> </protocols> </webServices>
Under <system.web>.
This will allow your anyone to access this webservice.
And while accessing the webservice I kept dataType and contentType as default.
var fstval = $("#txt1").val()
var scndval = $("#txt2").val()
$.ajax({ async: true,
type: "POST",
url: "http://ggn-nss-web1/testservice/service1.asmx/DataSave",
data: {id: fstval ,Name: scndval },
success: function(msg) {
alert("done" + msg)
},
error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
alert("Error" + errorThrown);
}
});
Last day I was booking a ticket on IRCTC site but I could not. Although I was logged in with train searched in advance and was waiting for 10 AM to start booking tatkal ticket. It is so frustrating for a celebrated ecommerce site. India is considered to be world IT hub and it’s one of the most used website is so badly designed. You will be surprised to know that this site is “created” by a Chinese company, yes Chinese company.
By the way IRCTC is not most used site in India, it is 22nd in alexa’s top site rating http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/IN. Flipkart is 8th and I have not seen it failing, forget about google, youtube and facebook.
There were 13.5 million transactions made in May 2012 of which only 71% were successful. Of these 54 % was done through net banking and 29% with credit/debit cards. 29% of the transactions are failing there is serious problem here.
One of the executives said “Sometimes, customer gives a berth preference and it takes time for the system to find a particular berth. By that time a ticket may already be booked.” Oh! It seems they are the first one to see this problem. There is problem with the design, why is it finding lower birth when 90% of time it is not allocated? First reserve the seat and then allot it.
The solution to IRCTC woes lies in clever, fast and efficient IT infrastructure and smart software design. Making a ticket reservation portal is no brainer a high school student might be doing it in their school project, but it is about structure of database, flow of booking, clever coding. Distribution of workload may have to be taken in consideration to get customer delight.
For instance a simple change of dividing the booking procedure in multiple steps may ensure less failure. e.g.
Step 1: Keep only 4 columns in inventory table “train number, date(int), class, seats” and only 120 rows for each trains. Read availability and show when searched.
Step 2: When booked, reduce inventory and pass to payment gateway.
Step 3: if payment is successful then pass other information in a queue to booking engine (on separate server) to allocate seats and other sophisticated business rules and notifications.
Step 4: if payment is not successful then increase back the inventory and bring user back to step 1
Although steps specified above may not be best and may require many other use case study to reach final solution but I am sure it is going to improve performance of site to great extent.
And if they are doing something better than above , just in case, then their hardware infrastructure sucks.
Remember “Dir” command? No? Sorry I am talking of very old time. Windows explorer on Microsoft OS is used to browse files and supposedly used to organize files in your computer.
However for a common mobile/computer user, why they should organize their files? Just because our mom told us to keep things tidy, it does not mean I have to keep my hard disk defragmented(this is another story altogether). Ever wonder, why we need to organize our stuff in file system? System should do it for us!
The idea is to give capabilities to applications to organize their own file. Modern applications are doing it and not bothering users to remember where they kept their files. e.g. iTunes, it searches the computer and find out all the files related to it and organize it in the file system; for a user, iTunes is the place to look for music. Picasa and other music/photo apps are also doing the same.
File System interface should go away! On a different (less revolutionary) note, it should be revamped.
Every application should handle their own files like word should organize all docs files opened or created using this application. What else you would want to do with a doc file other than reading or editing? Perhaps deleting and sharing; deleting is easy, just give a delete capability within the app. However sharing is difficult because while sending a mail you may want to include other type of files as well; then you need to browse files from mail app.
Sharing/mailing option within MSWord(Editor application) will not solve this issue, because there might be various situations where user may want to share files with others while he/she is on a different application (like facebook, yahoo mail, outlook etc.).
To solve the problem of sharing various file types from a different application other than the file originator, the file browser should give capability to browse files by file/application type and application should give interface to list these files the way they list files in their own interface. Screen below shows a listing of music files, a similar interface should be given to browse music files while sharing attaching to mail etc..
To start with, applications should provide method to delete currently opened document. This feature can also be seen as an enhancement of recent file list feature provided by various applications.
In this given scenario users interact with application while OS is in background. Interface of OS should be reduced to provide shortcuts of applications and switching on/off the computer; rest should be behind the scene or available under administrator/geek module.
Enter 3 dashes "—" and press enter you get a line. Very handy…
My favorite word processor is MS Word (I am a very common man 🙂) and to post blogs it is very difficult for me to use something other than MS Word.
I use to simply type my post in MS word and then copy the content in other programs. However it was not most elegant way to create blog post because HTML produced was not tight and clean and most of the time post did not look same (No WYSIWYG).
MS word 2007 has must better option, simply click on File->New->New blog post
If you have not configured your account it will ask you to configure one. This post was created using MS Word 2007.
Simple Complexities 