Record a Discovery Bot business process

Record, capture, and annotate steps for a business process using the Discovery Bot recorder. The process recording allows the Discovery Bot analyst to view all recorded steps for a quantitative and comparative analysis. The steps along with the captured metadata and user actions help the analyst make the decision to create opportunities and bots.

Prerequisites

  • This task is performed by the Discovery Bot user who records assigned business processes and submits the same for review and analysis.
    Note: Multi-role and custom role user can also perform this task depending on the roles or the permissions given to users. You will see a different set of menu actions (vertical ellipsis icon) available on a tile for a process.
  • Ensure that you have set your device credentials and installed the latest Bot Agent version on your machine before using the Discovery Bot recorder.
  • Ensure that the machine on which you will be performing the recordings is also duly registered.

    Prerequisites for Discovery Bot

Procedure

  1. Record a business process:
    1. From your local machine, log in to your Control Room as Discovery Bot business user.
    2. Go to Discovery Bot > Processes.
      The Processes page appears, displaying all processes assigned to the user for recording.
    3. Click the Start Recording icon from the tile associated with the process you want to begin recording a process.
      Note: You can also select, Start Recording from the from the vertical ellipse icon to begin recording a process.
      A message window appears notifying you that you are now recording and sharing your screen. The Discovery Bot Recorder window is displayed with Pause and Stop options. Pause and resume the recording as required. Allow for a few minutes for the recorder to start the very first time you begin recording a process.
    4. Perform the actions to record.
      For example, open an application and fill in a form or open a browser and search a website. Click the object control, for example, a button, form field, or a table. A red outline highlights the control when you move the mouse over it to capture the action. The red outline indicates that the recorder is ready for you to take the next action in recording the process.
      You can perform actions like double-click, drag-drop, click and hold, and text select while recording. Actions performed using keyboard strokes are displayed in the Data field.
    5. Click Stop to end the recording.
      You can click Cancel recording to cancel a recording at any time.
      Wait for a few seconds for the recorder to end. The details in the tile for the process is incremented to include the new recording in the Recordings section.
      Note: Once the recording has been stopped, additional steps cannot be added to the recording.
      Note: A maximum of 8 hours worth of user actions can be captured in a single recording.
    6. Enter a name for the recording in the field provided.
      The character limit is 50. Special characters are supported.
    7. Click Save to save your changes.
    8. Click Cancel to discard the recording.
      Note: If you discard the recording, you cannot recover it.
  2. Review the captured steps, annotate them, and submit a process recording for review to the Discovery Bot analyst:
    1. From Processes, select a process by clicking the process name or anywhere within the process tile body. From Processes, click the vertical ellipsis icon and select Edit my recording to edit and review recordings.
      If you click the process tile body or the process name, the Opportunities page appears. Only approved recordings from the Opportunities tab are displayed for the analyst.
      For Discovery Bot multi-role and custom role users, click the vertical ellipsis icon and select Edit my recording to edit and review recordings. If you click the process tile body or the process name, the View process page appears. Only approved recordings are displayed for the analyst on the View process page.
      The Recordings page appears with the Recordings table on the left and single recording details on the right. The table displays the following information:
      Recordings Description
      Recordings (#) (# selected) The number of recordings logged in by users.
      Customize columns Click the table icon to display or hide columns (ID, Status, Process Cycle, and Recorder), or edit the layout of the header rows to display right or left as required.
      ID The ID number of the recording in the database. The system collects and sequentially increments the index for each recording captured by the users.
      Note: To search for a specific recording, select ID and enter the ID number in the search bar.
      Name The recording name.
      Status The status of the recording:
      • Pending: Initial state.
      • Approved: All user-required edits have been completed and recording is ready for review by an analyst.
      • Error: There is an error when storing the recording in the system.
      • Declined: Currently not being used.
      Note: To search on a process status, select Status and choose a status from the drop-down list.
      Process Cycle The recording duration, in minutes and seconds, excluding the time that the recorder was paused.
      Recorder The name of the user that created the recording.
      Note: To search on users assigned to a recording, select Recorder from the drop-down list and enter the user name in the search bar. The search is case-sensitive.
  3. From the Recordings table, select a recording to view all captured steps. In the right pane, the header displays the recording ID details, including the total steps captured during the recording session, recording name, process time, and current recording status.
    Each recorded step includes: screenshot image with the Screen option (icon), application type, data (keyboard entered text), and step description (annotated user text) fields.
  4. Optional: To provide a description for the recording, click in the Description area. Using the Description field that appears, share the context and the purpose of the recording with the analyst.
    The character limit is 255. The description entered is displayed in the PDD.
  5. Click Save to save the description you entered in the Description field.
  6. Optional: Click the Screen icon to display or hide the screenshot image.
    Use the Screen option icon when you do not want to share personal image details with the Discovery Bot analyst, multi-role, or custom role users. To remove personal information, for example username and password credentials from the image, edit the Data field prior to submission for analyst review.
    Note: If you hide an image and Click Submit, you cannot display the image again.
  7. Click the screenshot to display the image in full size.
    The Screenshot shows the state of the application at the time of performing the associated action. The red outline highlights where you have performed actions like click and hold and text select.You cannot edit the screenshot. Click the image when you want to display a larger view of the screenshot. Review the step action in more detail from the modal window. Click the pagination located below the image to select a step number or use the right or left arrows to quickly display all captured images. For actions not captured by the recorder such as double-click, drag-drop, and click and hold, you can document the individual steps in the Step description field for the analyst.
    The duration of the recorded step is displayed in minutes and seconds below the screenshot. Use this information to help prioritize what step or sequence of steps are a better candidate for automation. For example, if a sequence of steps takes longer to perform, you can automate this first for a process to save manual effort.
    • Click the Hide image icon to hide the image.

      The image will not be submitted to the analyst for review. Click X to close the frame. Click Save to save your selection.

    • Click Show image to display the image.

      The image will be submitted to the analyst for review. Click X to close the frame. Click Save to save your selection.

  8. Optional: Update the application name used in the process recording in the Application text field.
    The Application field represents the name of the application on which the action was performed. If required, the user that made the recording can change this.
  9. Optional: Update the keyboard entered text used in the process recording in the Data text field.
    The Data field represents any data entered by the user at that step during the recording.
    Note: You must follow the keyboard data entry with a left or right mouse click. For any step in which the data was entered, you can make changes to the data in the Data field. You cannot enter any data for steps which do not have any data entered during the actual recording of the process.
  10. Optional: Update the context associated with the step in the Step description text field.
    The Step description text field represents any additional description that you would like to provide regarding the operation being performed. The maximum character limit is 2000.
  11. Optional: Delete any step that is not required to be included in the process recording.
  12. Repeat the above steps for each step as required.
  13. Optional: Click Save to save your changes.
    Use the Save option when you want to edit and compare the recording data (including application, keyboard entered text, and annotation text fields) across multiple recordings captured in the Recordings table.
  14. Optional: Click Delete to the delete the recording for that process.
    Use the Delete option when you do not want to submit the recording data to the analyst for review.
    The recording and associated data is deleted from the Recordings page for that process.
  15. Click Submit.
    The recording is submitted to the analyst for review and approval.
    Note: After a recording is submitted, it cannot be edited to make additional changes.
  16. Click the Download option to export the opportunity data into a Process Definition Document (PDD) with the same name as the opportunity. Select the type of PDD (Word or PDF) that you want to export. The PDD includes the process recording flow chart and the time on each individual step in hours, minutes, and seconds.
    When an opportunity is created, the PDD begins processing in the background automatically. When the PDD is generated, the field changes from Processing PDD to Download. You can now download the document. An email notification to the business user is also sent to the email address on file. If an error occurs when you download the PDD, click Download again to generate the PDD again.
    Note: If you are a multi-role user, you will receive two email notifications for the exported data, one for the recording data and one for the opportunity data.
    Note: You must be the owner of the opportunity to be able to download it; otherwise, the download option is not available.
    On your machine, the document is saved in the folder that is configured for downloads in your browser.

Next steps

Analyzing opportunities for automation

Log in to your Control Room as a Discovery Bot analyst to review and analyze the recordings to create opportunities or bots as required.