Create your first bot

Perform the following steps to create your first bot that prints the message, Go be great!, the Automation Anywhere version of Hello World!

Prerequisites

This task is performed by the user who wants to build and deploy bots. You must have the necessary rights and permissions to complete this task, and authorization to log in to the Control Room as the licensed user.

  • You must have the Bot Creator license to create bots in the Control Room.
  • You must have the following permissions:
    • Check in
    • View packages
    • Create folders
  • Bot naming conventions: Keep the following considerations in mind when creating and naming bots:
    • When creating a bot, ensure that your bot name does not include the following special characters:
      Slash (/) Asterisk (*) Comma (,)
      Backslash (\) Less than sign (<) Left or right braces ({})
      Question mark (?) Greater than sign (>) Left or right brackets ([])
      Pipe (|) Double quotation marks (") Plus sign (+)
      Percent sign (%) -- --
    • Bot names must be unique within accessible folder locations. If a bot with the same name already exists in a folder in the Public workspace that you have access to, you will not be able to copy or create a bot with the same name in your Private workspace.
    • A folder name conflict in the Public workspace, when combined with an existing bot of the same name in the Private workspace, can also prevent bot creation or check-out operations.
    • Do not use bot names that are reserved for the Windows operating system. The reserved bot names are as follows:
      CON PRN AUX NUL COM1
      COM2 COM3 COM4 COM5 COM6
      COM7 COM8 COM9 LPT1 LPT2
      LPT3 LPT4 LPT5 LPT6 LPT7
      LPT8 LPT9 -- -- --
    • Ensure that a bot name does not end with a period (.) or space.
    • For more information about file naming, see Microsoft guidelines.
Note: These steps describe the guided workflow for first time users. The guided workflow is only displayed the very first time you complete these steps.

Procedure

  1. Log in to your instance of the Automation Anywhere Control Room.
  2. Create a new bot:
    1. On the left panel, click Automation.
    2. Click + Create > Task Bot.
    3. Select the required platform as the target runtime environment. For example, Windows or macOS.
      Note: Windows is the default pre-selected platform.
    4. In the Create Task Bot window, enter the bot name.
    5. Accept the default folder location: \Bots\
      To change the default bot storage location, click Choose and follow the prompts.
    6. Click Create and edit.
      When you create a bot, the platform type is also logged in the audit entry. The event type is logged as Create bot.
    Note: The default maximum size for individual bot is 50 MB.

  1. Insert a Message box action.
    1. Click Actions.
    2. Search for the Message Box package.
      Click in the Actions search box and enter message. Click the arrow to expand the Message Box options.
    3. Double-click or drag the Message box action to the Bot editor (open space to the right).
  2. In the dialog box on the right, specify the conditions for the Message box action.
    1. In the Enter the message box window title field, enter My first bot!.
    2. In the Enter the message to display field, enter Go be great!.
    3. Accept the defaults in the Scrollbar after lines field and Close message box after check box.
  3. Click the ellipsis at the top and select the Ignore unexpected pop-ups check box.
    You can now test the pop-up handler feature while building your bot to ensures that any system pop-ups (such as anti-virus alerts, Windows update notifications, and so on) are ignored during automation runtime. This option is applicable for run now, debug and run from here options, and is not selected by default. You must enable this every time you create or modify a Task Bot.
    Note: The Ignore unexpected pop-ups option is only available for selection if it is enabled by the administrator.

    For more information, see Configure pop-up handling.

  4. Click Save.
    Your bot is now ready to run.
    You can view the time spent to create a bot by navigating to Automation > Home > My metrics. The Active Task Bots table displays the time taken to create every bot. When a bot is edited, the table shows the total time spent on the bot.
    For example, if you spend 10 minutes on creating and saving a bot, the Active Task Bots table displays the time spent as 10 minutes. If you spend 5 more minutes on editing the same bot, the Active Task Bots table displays the total time spent as 15 minutes.
    Similarly, the Average time spent to create a Task Bot field on the My Metrics page displays the average time spent across all users on all bots.
    For example, if user 1 spends 120 minutes on Bot A, user 2 spends 2 minutes on Bot B, and user 3 spends 4 minutes on Bot C, the average time is calculated as (120+2+4)/3 = 42 minutes.
  5. Click through the Bot editor options for viewing and editing bots:
    They are located at the top of the Bot editor.
    Note: You can use the search box in the Flow, List, or Dual view to search for text, variables, or actions in a bot. This feature can be helpful when you view or edit a bot with longer code lines.
    • Flow: Displays actions used in an automation as a flow diagram (Default)
      Note: The Flow view is not available when you create or edit a bot and the bot exceeds 500 lines of code. Use the Show list view option to navigate to the list view.

      flow_view
    • List: Displays the actions used in an automation as a list
      Note: Drag the selected actions within the task logic.

      list_view
    • Dual: Displays the actions used in an automation from both Flow and List view aspects
      dual_view
  6. Run your bot from your device.
    See Run your first bot.