Automation Anywhere (AA) Reviews

We have so many use cases. One of them is in finance. We have a finance portal where the team updates the billing records. Based on the Excel input, the file bot creates entries in different modules based on conditions. One error bot maintains a log. It takes value input dynamically and the tool is very flexible so in case of any changes in the future, the developer or user doesn't have to change the code. They can do it with the help of configurable files. At the end of the process, the bot sends an intimation mail to the end-user with the bot execution status.

With the help of Bot, it has increased the productivity of the current process and we do not need to spend more time on error resolution and rectification.

While doing processes manually, the user has to manually open all the Excel files and needs to check each and every row one by one to check a few validations and conditions. For that, the user has to filter all the unique records that were very time-consuming. In case of invalid records, the user has to manually update a few fields into that. Now, with the help of Automation Anywhere Bot it's being handle automatically, and work that would take one week is now being completed within an hour.

There are many valuable features available but the Automation Anywhere learning portal has very good learning materials and videos in place which is very user-friendly and can be learned easily.

From a Commands perspective, below are some most valuable features:

1. Metabot (User can develop the code offline just after capturing the screen, easy to drag and drop commands, reusable, and easy to use).

2. Object cloning (helpful to capture most of the controls with its Object properties)

3. Excel operations, Emails, Default Error handling features, Version control, etc...

Many clients use the Citrix environment but AA has very low functionality to automate a Citrix environment.

I would like to see improvement in advance Excel commands like lookups, Pivots, etc. 

After changing the name of the ATMX file, the developer has to remap all the variables again manually at all place and it does not auto handle the renaming of ATMX or variable. In older version 10 it worked fine but from version 11 due to enhancement, this function does not work and faces issues during the development.

I have been using AA for the last three years. 

Automation Anywhere is the best in terms of customer service/technical support. 

We have used Ui Path, Python with Selenium. Automation Anywhere provides effective training videos and material which helps users to understand the tool easily and we can easily drag and drop commands to automate with a user-friendly user interface. Automation Anywhere also has better customer service support.

The initial setup was easy with the help of Automation Anywhere team support.

They're very flexible around pricing and licensing.

We have evaluated Blue Prism, Ui Path, and Workfusion.

Within just a few years Automation Anywhere has different versions and closing their support to the older version soon. Migration of each bot to a new one becomes a bit difficult for clients.

Automation Anywhere should have a single and stable version which can be easily accessible and easily migrate the processes.

I started my career in RPA and the first tool I learned was Automation Anywhere v11.3. Within a month, I learned the tool and was Master Certified in it.

I had noticed that the majority of clients for my company demand developers who know AA well. I wondered why, with so many other tools available, why clients are so interested in AA as the only RPM. This is when I realized that AA is much easier, more reliable, and has value for money also with good and vast customer support.

In the past two years, I have become somewhat of an expert with Automation Anywhere. As a senior RPA developer, I deal with clients alongside my project manager and I always suggest AA. It is worthwhile to know that most of our clients are already aware of this tool, its market popularity, and its capabilities. This makes it easier to solidify a business relationship with them.

Thanks to the benefits of Automation Anywhere, 90% of our clients trust and use this tool.

I love its reliability, ease of use, and the vast customer support that are always present to help us.

In the new cloud-based version, A2019, some good upgrades have been added. I feel that everything has been covered in A2019 that was missing in the older v11.3. These advancements have helped to impress our clients and create new business opportunities with them. As a cloud deployment, it saves clients problems with desktops that occurred with the previous version, v11. There are also more commands and features that have made it more awesome for me to explore and play with new commands.

I love the user interface and the automation commands they have provided in the AA 2019 version.

Especially while using v11, I often experience freezes with OCR extraction from PDF files. It just didn't work properly. I had to work around this using Python scripting. It would be a big improvement to have the inbuilt OCR capability work seamlessly. A perfect OCR would be awesome. 

I have been using the Automation Anywhere tool for the last two years.

The new version offers no compromise regarding stability. 

I will rate this product a ten out of ten for scalability.

I had contacted technical support two or three times and they solved my problem on the same day. I will rate them a ten out of ten on support. In my opinion, they are the best and I hope that they maintain the same.

I started working with AA and have moved to the A2019 version. I never switched to another tool, as AA is one that I have found reliable, and has everything that I need for RPA.

ROI is something my management knows, but as a developer, I cannot say for. However, I am pretty sure that AA has benefited our company.

The cloud-based version comes at an increased cost, although our clients are happy with the new features and have not complained about the pricing. Precious things are valuable, and they know that.

I started with AA and have not evaluated other RPA products.

It has now been two years and I have migrated to AA 2019. I now consider myself an expert in Automation Anywhere. Thanks, AA, for providing such a big and powerful platform to us.

I always recommend this product, and that clients implement AA first.

I am using this tool to automate one process in a Citrix environment. The process is used to launch one website from which data is captured. After this, another application is opened and the data is pasted into it. The result is our final structured data.

Using Automation Anywhere saves us time, money, and eliminates errors. When the same process is done by humans there are a lot of errors that require us to doublecheck and cross-reference all of the work.

The most valuable feature is the screen recorder, which helps to automate processes easily.

There are a lot of other helpful features such as schedulers and triggers to do things like sending emails after a task is completed. 

MetaBots and IQ Bots are also good features.

There are a lot of options and commands, making this a flexible tool.

We need more commands for PDF integration to make it more flexible.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past three years.

Automation Anywhere is the leading RPA tool in the present market.

One thing that we have used it for is uploading reconciliation files. These files usually come in hundreds. Previously, users used to do this work manually everyday. There were around 1,000 users, so that process has been completely automated. Now, these users can focus on more valuable work other than this manual task. This has really helped them.

Apart from this, we also have invoice processing where we are using IQ Bot. For that, even if the invoices are in different formats, the IQ Bot learns, then it works on them. That has helped us a lot.

Apart from the thing which Automation Anywhere is meant for: To automate manual tasks. I feel IQ Bot is the cherry on top, as it has helped us process a lot of unstructured data and it learns over a span of time. So, it has really helped us.

The IQ Bot is the latest feature of Automation Anywhere. It uses cognitive abilities to learn over a span of time, in which we have to train the IQ Bot. It will eventually learn after about 10 files, then it will start learning on its own and it will be able to do the task on its own. 

We use IQ Bot for invoice processing. It can be any type of document. It could be a PDF or any sort of document. It will convert those PDFs into CSV files, which is a structured format. It takes it from an unstructured to structured format. That is why we use IQ Bot.

The Excel command has some limitations. They are working on it. Now, from what I have heard, it has 40 plus commands in the Excel operation, so that is a very good thing. Once that comes up, it would be a 10 out of 10 for Automation Anywhere.

Stability will come down to how the code has been made up. It should definitely handle the code. If anything fails, like the website is not working, it should inform the users. So, it depends on how the code has been developed and it should be able to handle the code if any error comes along. The stability depends on the factor of the developer's coding. Otherwise, the tool is pretty stable.

There have been problems with scalability. It comes down to how we handle the code. It should be handled properly, then there shouldn't be any problems.

Automation Anywhere has very strong game because it is always up for asking feedback. It doesn't just ask for feedback. It actually works upon it. So, every time it releases a new version, we always see that feedback being implemented into their tool. That's a very good thing from Automation Anywhere which I have seen. They actually take the customer's feedback very seriously.

I was working on a workload feature called Workload Management, where I was facing a few issues here and there. For that, I raise a ticket and in the next release it was actually implemented. It was glitch type of thing, and it was handled in the next release.

For evaluating, there is a visibility team which does a visibility check for how the tool should be implemented. I haven't been a part of that.

I wasn't part of the decision-making process since I am the developer. Management sees the tool visibility and checks.

I would give it an eight (out of 10) because there is still scope of improvement which I see in the upcoming tools they have already implemented. I'm still waiting for it. Maybe after that, it could be a 10 (out of 10), but for now it's an eight (out of 10).

We use this solution for application automation in both web-based and Windows applications.

Our automation is specific to the insurance and hospitality industries and has to do with automating email, PDFs, and updating them inside our ERP application.

This solution allows us to more fully automate our clients' specific tools.

The automation of data entry is the most valuable feature for us.

Built-in HTML features are lagging in this solution, whereas in UiPath, they are very good.

We would like to see more improvements in the ability to retrieve region data because, currently, this is the reason that some of our automations fail.

The stability of this solution is good, but it still needs to improve. We are not confident with its capability to automate in every case.

This is a scalable solution. For us, we will be scaling more into the future.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

We have used UiPath, and some of the features in that solution are superior.

My backend team handles the implementation of this solution.

There is a return on investment. The automation and scalability provide benefits in terms of reinvesting or reusing what we have developed.

This is a good tool to work with.

Our automation is running well, but there is a lag in features when compared to other Windows tools that are coming out.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to consider the type of automation that needs to be done. If it is not overly complex then this is a solution I recommend.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We want to automate our business processes.

It eliminates redundant work from our offshore team to free up FTEs.

The speed of the delivery is its most valuable feature.

The solution doesn't offer all the capabilities that we need, so we have to use it in conjunction with other software.

The bot creation process is a little tricky, since our company is not setup to accommodate a bot. Therefore, it has been a bit tricky and time consuming. However, we are getting there.

I would like to see more capabilities in the next release.

We started with a complex process, so it has taken us over a year to scale our bots.

The technical support has been a little slow to respond to our inquiries.

We used a combination of employees and consultants for our deployment.

We measure ROI through our FTE savings.

Discuss the solution with other companies before purchasing. 

Learn from their website what other people have already developed.

We are headed towards integrating the solution with other software.

The cognitive document processing is new for our company.

I started, but didn't finish Automation University University. I have taken more classes with Automation Anywhere vendors.

We have use cases in multiple groups: Supply chain, HR, and finance, which has three or four currently identified. We have already implemented a few use cases. E.g., we are automating the entire payment process for accounts receivable.

It helps to improve and optimize processes. It eliminates some of the manual tasks, so we can save costs.

It's eliminating the manual tasks that accounts receivable does.

It was pretty easy to get a new team of developers set up with the tool and using it. 

The bot creation process is reasonable simple. It was very easy for my team to pick up and start doing it.

We are still looking into some of its current capabilities, like IT Bot.

We are in our initial phase with a few bots live. So far, we have no major issues. Keeping our fingers crossed.

The architecture allows us to scale. We are still working to get it to a right level of scalability for our environment.

I haven't heard any complaints from the team about technical support. I haven't interacted directly with the technical support, but the team hasn't complained.

We did not previously use another automation solution. I heard about this solution through conventions. When we were looking at optimizing our processes, we talked to few vendors and eventually selected Automation Anywhere.

We started our evaluation about nine months back. In the last six months, we started the process, and now we have a few bots online.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We had an implementation partner who helped with the deployment.

We measure ROI based on the optimization that we have done and how much cost we can save.

• With the rebate processing automation that we did, it has provided us a savings of around an hour or two a person on a daily basis, which is quite a lot of savings. 
• With our accounts receivable process, we are still in the process of implementing it. Once it will be implemented, we are expecting about 30 to 40 hours a month in time saved.

We had a detailed analysis process on all the capabilities of Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and a third vendor. Based on their scores that they got in each area, we eventually ended up selecting Automation Anywhere.

I would recommend evaluating all the vendors in this category and seeing what best suits your needs before making a selection. 

It was reasonably simple to integrate. This was our first time with it, so we had learned our way through.

The Automation Anywhere University was useful and a good head start for my team. I haven't taken of its courses yet.

We are not using IQ Bot. We are evaluating it, but we haven't made a decision yet.

We don't use Citrix automation.

We are currently doing automation on the ground level. There are a lot of unexplored areas of RPA (different scenarios) that we have not captured yet. 

On a daily basis, we had to update a few things on SAP where we had slight challenges. With the help of scripts and DLL, we could solve these problems.

The main things that we give to our clients are its Excel functions and the terminal emulator.

The main problem that we see is migrating data from one system to other system. This is where a human comes into the picture. While we can do Excel crude data going into an ERP system, we would like it going forward if the Excel to SAP integration had a higher focus in the coming features. 

The Excel functions that we see are currently very limited. While I have not tested it, I have seen these functions expanded in version A2019.

I would like more detailed activity logging of what the client does. Currently, it just shows that a task started, then a task has ended. We want more detail around this for our clients, especially for error logging. E.g., we had to create an encrypted log for our clients to see what happens every second for every step. We made this in a CSV, and that CSV can be accessed by anyone who can change it. If Automation Anywhere could integrate this into the Control, that would be great.

You cannot expect an ERP system or any third-party system to remain constant. You have to stay on top of those. You spend about 20 percent of your rebuilding or changing something.

I have no issues with the scalability. For a current client, we have deployed easily around 100 to 120 bots which are running in production.

It would be really good if they could give more priority to tickets which are raised by partners. Right now, Automation Anywhere customers and employees have higher priority.

As a partner, we usually use whatever is online or the Automation Anywhere website. We search that to see if anyone else has already faced this issue and provided a resolution on the site. 80 percent of the time it is there. If it is not there, then I raise a ticket or call a hotline number.

With our current knowledge, the initial setup process is fine. The setup was easy for me.

With the Community Edition, a new user to RPA can utilize the tool and start learning how to use it.

As a partner, we work with other competitors as well. Most clients prefer Automation Anywhere because it is easy to implement. You don't need to know rocket science to learn this solution. If you know logic, that is sufficient. Automation Anywhere is more user-friendly.