Get started with recorders

You can use two recorders in Automation 360, the Universal Recorder and the AISense Recorder, to automate tasks by recording interactions with objects such as click, read (data extraction), and write (data entry).

An integrated Recorder

In versions 2.0.9-20201105-164103 and later, the Recorder package contains both the Universal Recorder and AISense Recorder. This offers the following benefits:

Feature updates are delivered as delta updates, which reduces the time spent downloading the newest Recorder package each release.
The Start recording icon serves as a common entry point to both recorders.

Note: The AISense Recorder fails if you manually upgrade the Recorder package version, such as by importing a bot that contains the integrated Recorder package (Version A2019.17 and later) to a Control Room that has a build from Version A2019.16 or earlier. Always upgrade the Recorder package through the Control Room. Do not attempt to manually upgrade by importing a .jar file or bot.

Choosing which recorder to use for your task

Before you start building your bot, decide which recorder best fits your requirements.

Universal Recorder: Use Universal Recorder when you want to record interactions such as click, read, or write with user interface objects on your business application. After you have captured the object, you can specify your requirements in terms of the action to be performed on that object.
For example, if you capture a hyperlink, you can select an action to click the link or to retrieve the link text. Similarly, if you capture a table object, you can specify to either retrieve the total number of rows from a table object or retrieve each row one by one and perform any actions on it. This is the most reliable form of automation because it is performed on user interface objects rather than coordinates, images, keystrokes and so on.
AISense Recorder: Use AISense Recorder when you are building and automating your bots on applications that are exposed over Citrix or accessed over RDP. You can also reduce the time spent on building and automating your bots for legacy applications where object-based automation is difficult.
The recorder's resiliency to screen resolution, browsers, and user interface alterations reduces limitations and obstacles when recording tasks across your business applications.