Citizen Developer user

A Citizen Developer is a business user who can create and run bots, and share these automated tasks with peers. Citizen Developer is typically not a technical expert but a specialist such as a marketing analyst, HR manager, and accounts manager.

Overview

Users with bot creation capability can create, edit, run, or schedule bots on their device. While users with bot execution capability can access a public folder to run or schedule published bots. Citizen Developer users combine these capabilities to create bots, access the public folder, and clone published bots and run them on their devices.

Capabilities

In an organization, an administrator typically creates the Citizen Developer role with the necessary bot permissions and specifies the database or folder access. The administrator assigns this role to existing or new users and allocates the Citizen Developer license to them.

A Citizen Developer user can then perform the following tasks:

  • Create bots and run them on their devices.
  • Add and delete event triggers for bots on their devices.

    Citizen developer user can create a private event trigger. However, the associated bot must be checked in to a public folder for other citizen developer or Bot Runner users to access that event trigger.

  • Publish their bots to the public folder where other Citizen Developer users can access them.
  • Access the public folder and clone published bots (including bots with triggers).
  • Customize cloned bots and run them on their devices.
  • Check in bots from their devices to the public folder.
  • Check out bots from the public folder.

The following image illustrates the capabilities of a Citizen Developer user:

Citizen Developer user capabilities

Example

Consider a scenario where an organization has Marketing and Finance teams. The administrator creates the following two Citizen Developer roles:
  • CD (Marketing): provides access to all Marketing team folders
  • CD (Finance): provides access to all Finance team folders
The administrator then assigns the Citizen Developer license to users within each team. Citizen Developer users with the CD (Marketing) role can create and run bots on their devices. When a user with the CD (Marketing) role publishes a bot to a public folder, other Citizen Developer users within the Marketing team can clone and run this bot on their devices.

Similarly, Citizen Developer users with the CD (Finance) role will have the same capabilities within the Finance team folders. However, users from one team cannot access any folders and published bots from the other team.

Comparing Citizen Developer and Bot Creator licenses

Understand the capabilities available for each user to help you choose license based on the automation requirements for your organization.

Citizen Developer license
Citizen Developers are business users who can create simple automations with little to no coding knowledge. A Citizen Developer license is designed for a business user such as marketing analyst, HR manager, and accounts manager. They have limited technical knowledge but have strong practical experience in the business processes. This helps them create simple, easy-to-use applications to improve the business processes. Based on the business requirements, an administrator can restrict package access for bot development to a Citizen Developer to provide a simplified developer experience. Complex packages are hidden from Citizen Developers so that they can focus on easy-to-complete automation.
Note: For information regarding licenses, contact your account manager. See, Citizen Developer Licenses.
Bot Creator license
Bot Creators are advanced developers who design, develop, and implement bots to improve business process efficiency and have substantial coding knowledge. A Bot Creator license is designed for professional developers who have strong technical knowledge and can build complex and critical applications. Depending on the privileges provided by the administrator, they can access more functionalities in the Automation 360 platform such as advanced and complex packages, ability to create API tasks, approve code reviews submitted by Citizen Developers, and so on.
Review the capabilities available for a Citizen Developer and Bot Creator license:
Citizen Developer Bot Creator
Business user with strong process knowledge but limited coding skills Professional developer with strong technical skills and knowledge of system architecture
Does not have access to advanced packages or features Has access to advanced packages and features
Low coding knowledge In depth knowledge about coding and system architecture
Builds simple applications to simply business processes Build complex and critical applications for business processes
Does not have to follow the software development lifecycle to build applications Follows software development lifecycle to build applications
Low cost and resource is easily available High cost and resource not easily available

For more information (including advanced packages restricted for Citizen Developers), go to Restricted User Terms for AAI Citizen Developer Licenses → Citizen Developer Licenses section.