Process discovery by using Discovery Bot

You can use Discovery Bot to identify the processes in your business that can be automated. Discovery Bot identifies such processes by recording and analyzing user interactions with various systems for processes, comparing the potential ROI from automating these processes, and creating bots to automate the processes.

Note:

Automation Anywhere is discontinuing Discovery Bot in November 2025. This deprecation will impact customers using Discovery Bot.

For customers interested in continuing with task mining and help to discover opportunities for automation within your organization, we recommend exploring our Automation Anywhere Process Discovery Cloud offering: Process Discovery

For information about this deprecation, see:

What is process discovery

Process discovery is the first step in automation, in which the processes that can be automated in a business are identified. Process discovery is a method used to uncover business processes by recording user interactions with various systems and analyzing the recorded interactions to identify patterns. User interactions with any of the following types of systems can be recorded and analyzed:
  • Enterprise solutions, such as ERP, CRM, business process management (BPM), and ECM
  • Personal productivity applications, such as Microsoft Excel and Outlook
  • Terminal and virtual environments, such as Citrix XenApp and Remote Desktop

Why use Discovery Bot

Many companies begin their automation projects with manual process discovery and documentation. Manual review of process documentation requires interviewing business users and mapping work flows while performing daily operations involving additional resources, which can be time-consuming for businesses. This additional effort prevents or delays businesses from reaching the decision to automate their processes and reaping the benefits of automation. As a result, many of the automation opportunities are left undiscovered. Discovery Bot allows businesses to assess ROI from potential opportunities that can help with deciding and implementing automation for their processes.

Capabilities

Discovery Bot helps in the following ways:
  • Enables automatic process documentation and analysis, thereby saving time and resources
  • Identifies the correct processes for automation for business users and citizen developers
  • Enables business analysts and RPA developers to accelerate automation and maximize RPA ROI
  • Converts automation opportunities into bot prototypes for further development and deployment by the automation developer

How Discovery Bot is used

The Discovery Bot administrator creates processes and invites business users through an email invitation to participate in the recording of these processes. Business users record the steps they perform for various business processes. Discovery Bot aggregates the recordings and generates a proposed work flow. The business analyst can adjust the work flow to select and merge steps into branches from different recordings. From the work flow, the analyst identifies and prioritizes potential automation opportunities based on ROI. Opportunities are approved by the analyst, and Discovery Bot converts the opportunities to Task Bots for deployment.

The following image illustrates how Discovery Bot supports your automation journey from process discovery to bot creation.

Discovery Bot process flow

To view Discovery Bot tasks in an interactive visual format, see Get started with Discovery Bot.

For an overview of how to get started with Discovery Bot, watch the following video:

See Get started with Discovery Bot.