Get started as Automation Engineer
When you need to automate a scenario of high complexity, make your automation robust, and allow it to run unattended, you have to dive into Automation Engineering. Work.AI Developer offers Automation Engineers a set of tools to write, test and deploy a code that can run on a server installation of Work.AI unattended. To see an overview of components included in the Developer installation, go to Get to know Work.AI Developer | Components.
Step 1: Run Eclipse
Start by running Eclipse IDE suitable for enterprise-grade software development (including Automation Engineering).
Step 2: Set up environment
Automate the business operations to increase employee productivity, though Automation Engineer workflows sooner or later can achieve great acceleration if development operations are automated. The development operations environment we offer is based on a technology stack that includes Git, Maven, Nexus, and Jenkins, which are pretty often used in enterprise software development. We use a Maven-centric ecosystem of build tools to enable CI/CD practices. You may use a toolset different from the above-recommended tools. Then, it is your call to wire them together to establish an automated CI/CD process. Even if you are fine with starting doing operations manually to understand the platform better, you will need to perform some setup. To set up the local development environment, refer to Set up environment.
Step 3: Create first project
WorkFusion offers Open Development Framework 2 as a backbone for the creation of your automation code. Refer to Why adopt ODF 2 to read about benefits your organization can achieve by adopting ODF 2. Follow the Start new project guide to create a new project in Eclipse. After you create a project, it's worth studying its structure.
Step 4: Develop and debug automation code
Being a common-purpose IDE, Eclipse provides a coding experience that is not different from any other IDE. However, specific automation needs require code interaction with a user interface of different applications. For that purpose, Work.AI Developer has Inspector that simplifies exploring user interface elements' values and properties. When it comes to debugging, you may debug single Bot Tasks or entire orchestration of Bot and Manual Tasks into a Business Process. For debugging a single Bot Task, see Debug Bot Task. To create a Manual Task or orchestrate several Bot and Manual Tasks into a Business Process, you need to start a local Control Tower, one of the server components. See how to manage the server components in Work.AI Developer. After you start Control Tower, you can use its capabilities to create a Business Process, export it, and add the Business Process package into your project structure.
Step 5: Deploy your automation to environment
Deployment of the automation created with ODF 2 to the local environment of Work.AI Developer or the remote environment of the Work.AI platform happens pretty similarly using Maven. For more details, refer to Deploy Asset Bundle.
Step 6: Set up CI/CD process
After you mastered the Automation Engineering operations in Work.AI Developer, it's high time to think about automating them. Here is our guide for establishing a basic CI/CD setup. Feel free to follow it or go beyond it.