So you have finally decided to begin your journey as an RPA developer! You are fully versed as one can be on the idea and theory of RPA without any hands on experience of your own. The question is now “Where do I start?” and “ Which platform do I choose to go with in order to get experience”? Today’s post will answer that second question. I give a comparison between Automation Anywhere’s free fully cloud integrated Automation 360 Community Edition and UiPath‘s Studio.

Lastly, just because the question will come up at some point during or after reading this, I did not consider Blue Prism for this post because there is no free version of Blue Prisms software outside of their 7 day free trial. It will likely take a newbie more than 7 days of practice in order to feel confident using a new RPA platform, therefore it doesn’t make a lot of sense to consider Blue Prism in this discussion.

Automation Anywhere Automation 360

Automation 360 was released in June 2020 and is Automation Anywhere’s latest version of their RPA platform. It is the successor to Automation Anywhere Enterprise v11.x which is a desktop client application that needs to be installed on your PC. Automation 360 , in comparison, is the first and only cloud based development environment for RPA. This means all bots built with Automation 360 are built using your internet connection and web browser and there is little software to be installed on your PC. This has its advantages and disadvantages.

Pros:

1. Incredibly simple interface to understand and to read

Automation Anywhere did a great job of creating a user interface that is simple to understand at first glance. All actions are neatly lined up along the left side of the browser and can be dragged into the workflow with precision. Automation 360 provides both a flow diagram view as well as a linear line by line code view. The workflow diagram view gives a high level overview of your bot and its steps which is great for beginners with little coding experience, while the line by line view allows for a more granular view of the steps one by one which is great for when you need to dig deep into the details for debugging.

2. Restricts the users functionality, but in a way where you cannot fall for traps within typical programming languages

Automation 360 is very rigid and limited in comparison to Studio when it comes to coding and end to end bot building. Some would see this limitation as a negative but I would argue that it is a positive – especially for new programmers. Automation 360’s rigidness makes it very difficult for a developer to make simple programming mistakes that we all make when first learning to code (i.e. segmentation faults, infinite loops, forgetting to deallocate memory). All of these things are near impossible to do in Automation 360 . This makes Automation 360 an excellent platform to start with for users who have very little object oriented programming experience.

3. Can be programmed from any PC (Mac, Windows, Linux) with a web browser – as long as you are not doing any UI based development.

As of writing this Automation Anywhere’s Automation 360 is the only 100% cloud-native RPA platform. This is a huge plus because it means that bots can be built using any major operating system. As long as you have a laptop and an up to date web browser you are able to build bots. This is a significant win for Automation 360 over its competitor UiPath where you have to take a lot of round-about steps in order to get Studio to work on Mac OS. The only caveat is that user interface manipulation within Automation 360 (like clicking on buttons, checking checkboxes, selecting items from dropdown boxes, etc) can only be done on a Windows PC.

Cons:

1. Much Slower UI Programming

Because Automation 360 has a development platform that must take place in a browser your internet connection is always going to factor into your development speed. Every time you decide to object clone a UI object Automation 360 will need to re-establish a connection to the PC you are using at that current moment. If you have a slow internet connection then this will always be a pain in the you know what. If you have a blazing fast internet connection at very best this will be a minor annoyance that you will have no way of getting around. Not only is this process cumbersome, but (just to reiterate) it is also only possible to do on computers using Windows operating system.

2. Can’t Import New Bots From Bot Store

One of my favorite things about being an RPA developer is being able to import functionality created by someone else that has already figured out a modular way to do all the heavy lifting. This allows me to just plug in their bot and use it however I desire. Unfortunately this is not possible with Automation 360’s Community Edition – it is only available to their premium clients who can afford their paid Enterprise version which currently starts at $750/month. This means as a new budding RPA developer you will likely have no access to the importing of bots until you get your first paid gig as an RPA developer or unless you are willing to shell out the $750/month yourself.

UiPath Studio

UiPath was founded in 2005 by Romanian entrepreneurs, Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă and is currently headquartered in New York City, NY. Studio was released in December of 2018. As of the writing of this post bots can only be created and executed on Windows PCs.

Pros:

1. Allows seamless integration of VB.Net & C#

Everyone has heard of the term “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”. Well the same exact thing can be said for completing end to end automations within Studio. Studio pairs incredibly well with the very well documented VB.Net programming language. For example if you want to build a data table within Studio you can use the “Build Data Table” activity or you can write your own code to build and initialize a Table Data variable. Between UiPath’s awesome online documentation for each activity and VB.Net’s impeccable documentation supported by Microsoft there is always a solution to our project to be found.

2. Has IDE features 

Not only does Studio have VB.Net and C# flawlessly integrated into it but it also provides features that are found in many integrated development environments (IDEs) and source code editors like Visual Studio and Sublime Text. These features range from intelligent code completion to providing a preview of function prototypes. These features are essentially what sets applications like Notepad++ apart from barebone applications like… Notepad.

3. Highest Demand in the Marketplace

Though this is not a technological pro it would be completely remiss of me to not note that as of the writing of this post UiPath has the highest demand in the marketplace. A simple search on Google Trends clearly shows the difference in popularity between Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and Blue Prism. According to Gartner market share data, UiPath advanced from #5 in share in 2017 to #1 in share in 2018. Thus UiPath has the most upside for developers who are trying to break into the RPA career field.

Cons:

1. Hard To Understand At First Glance

My inception into RPA started with Automation Anywhere’s v11 platform. It was simple to write code line by line. On my initial introduction to Studio I was confused and turned off. A colleague of mine showed me a project of his and to my untrained eye it looked like a bunch of boxes within boxes within more boxes. It was honestly the thing that deterred me from wanting to learn UiPaths toolset. Flowcharts make looking at and understanding the code much more doable for a beginner.

2. Prior Coding Experience Needed to Fully Take Advantage

Studio is a powerful RPA tool that in and of itself will suffice for most projects. However, in order to unleash the full power of Studio one will need to roll up their sleeves and do some coding with VB.Net or C#. This presents a learning curve that is not present with Automation 360 . The upside is usually you will only need to use 1 or 2 very well documented functions that are easily understood after a couple of Google searches for smaller projects.

Conclusion

Which RPA tool is best for you to start with depends on your prior programming experience and your desired outcome for engaging in the realm of RPA. If you have no prior programming experience at all Automation 360 is probably the best option for you. If you have prior object oriented programming experience, or if you are willing to undertake the task of learning RPA alongside learning VB.Net or C# programming, or if you are looking to maximize your value in the marketplace as an RPA developer then Studio is probably going to be your best option. Either way the best thing you can do is start. If you learn either of these tools you will pick up the other one with ease.