Glossary

This glossary includes the specific definitions for terms used in Automation Anywhere documentation.

A

Agent
An entity that takes in data, makes decisions, and performs actions (based on those decisions) to achieve specific goals.
Agentic
AI-powered automations, systems, or assistants with varying levels of autonomy, reasoning, and adaptability.
Agentic Process Automation
A combination of process orchestration across multiple technologies with AI Agents embedded within the process for particular sub-steps or decisions of a larger process.
AISense Recorder
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered capability to identify and automate objects from an image or application with a complex user interface (UI), or an application accessed remotely.
AI Agent Studio
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered automation offering with ability to build intelligent applications with AI Tools, and build strong guardrails with AI governance.
AI Assistant
Any AI system designed for individual user interaction, which includes the use of AI Agents. Automation Anywhere Co-Pilot is an AI-powered assistant for automation that helps users get work done.
AI Tools
Empowers developers to build and share reusable AI Skills connected to foundational models with easy integration within automations, through an experience embedded within the Automation 360 Control Room.
AI governance
Drive stronger governance by mandating use of approved foundational models, and monitor and audit artificial intelligence (AI)-data use for security and compliance.
AI governance dashboard
Ability to track, monitor, and govern the use of generative AI during the creation and execution of automations with a unified view of the aggregated data consolidated into a visual representation.
AI governance code analysis rule
AI governance rule that can be used in a code analysis policy to ensure responsible and compliant use of AI by monitoring and enforcing an enterprise's AI-use policy via notifications for immediate remediation.
Automation Anywhere Enterprise Knowledge
This is a native RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) service offering that makes it easy to use for your businesses by enhancing information retrieval and ensuring accurate responses.
API Task
An application programming interface (API)-based cloud automation solution to facilitate data exchange between disparate systems and applications.
Attended automation
Automations ready and waiting to be activated by employees whenever needed. Assists with front-office tasks by collaborating with employees and teams.
Automation 360
An enterprise automation platform that is foundational to delivering the automation of complex business processes securely and at scale.
Automation Center of Excellence (CoE)
An in-house team/department that analyzes the automation requirements of the organization based on the required business outcomes and formulates the enterprise automation blueprint, implementation, and rollout plan accordingly. This team complies with enterprise automation best practices, provides research support, and is the enterprise automation subject matter expert in the organization.
Automation Command Center (ACC)
A personalized dashboard to quickly gain an understanding of and easily view operational details and metrics for scheduled automations, automation run status, and license and device utilization.
Automation Co-Pilot for Business Users
An on-demand intelligent automation assistant that is embedded in business applications to help knowledge workers and customer service agents accelerate routine business processes.
Automation lifecycle management (ALM)
Refers to capabilities and tools that enable you to manage the end-to-end automation program lifecycle, centralize governance, and increase collaboration.
Automation Operating model
Lays the foundation for the Automation Center of Excellence. This model takes into consideration the entire organization, the present governance, the enterprise automation technology under evaluation, the processes to be automated, and the people and roles this effort impacts: for example, IT, Human Resources, Finance, and so on.
Automation outline
A preliminary framework generated by Autopilot transformer, provides an initial structure of an automated process with usable code that can be further refined and edited to develop a complete automation.
Autopilot
A Generative AI-based product that transforms a description of a business process into usable Automation Anywhere automation code.
Autopilot transformer
Converts a process description into an automation outline, translating steps, operations, inputs, outputs, conditions, and logic into usable automation code.
Automation roadmap
A rollout plan that is based on automation design. This takes into consideration the enterprise automation best practices, data integrity, security, and other vital aspects of business processes.
Automation templates
Out-of-the-box templates containing prebuilt automation code structures to quickly build new automations and automate common business tasks rapidly.
Automation Workspace
A web-based workspace that provides the tools and capabilities to create, upload, and deploy automations to automate repetitive tasks and processes.
Automator AI
A suite of on-demand, intelligent automation capabilities that enable developers to build enterprise-grade automations using the power of generative AI.
Automator AI Platform Base
Automator AI Platform Base is a suite of on-demand, generative AI-powered intelligent automation capabilities that allows both citizen and professional developers to build enterprise-grade automations faster and better, thereby making it easier for our customers to scale automation programs and accelerate their return on automation (ROA).

B

bot
A software robot that does an automated task and contains business process logic.
Bot Agent
A lightweight application that enables you to run automations on your device by connecting it to the Control Room.
Bot Creator
Bot Creator (BC) software is used to author and upload bots.
Bot Insight
An analytics platform with out-of-the-box dashboards that provide real-time, interactive insights about business processes and operational intelligence.
Bot Runner
Bot Runner (BR) software is used to run bots that were authored using Bot Creator. Bot Runners download bots from the Control Room
Bot Store
An online marketplace containing ready-to-deploy automations.
Breakpoints
Breakpoints are used to pause the debugging process at a specific line and inspect the current value of watched variables.

C

Call stack
It is a stack data structure that shows a stack list of all bots in the Assistant window while debugging. The list is typically displayed from the most recent bot to the oldest.
Code analysis
A capability to implement coding best practices by enforcing coding conventions to easily review and fix coding errors in automations.
CoE Manager
(Abbreviated for Center of Excellence)

A cloud-based solution powered by the Shibumi platform to get visibility into the end-to-end automation lifecycle and manage automation pipeline and delivery.

CoE Manager Plus
(Abbreviated for Center of Excellence)

Provides advanced capabilities in addition to those provided by CoE Manager, customizations, and integrations to optimize automation program performance.

Cognitive Automation
Cognitive Automation uses specific AI techniques that mimic the way the human brain works. It learns in part by association. It takes unstructured data and uses that to build relationships and create indexes, tags, annotations, and other metadata.
Connector Builder
A no-code tool to create custom connectors for web applications or services that use APIs.
Control Room
Control Room is an element of Automation Anywhere automation software used to manage, monitor, and deploy bots.
Control Room cluster
A Control Room cluster is a group of servers that are used to manage, monitor, and deploy bots.
Co-Pilot for Automators
An on-demand, intelligent automation assistant that builds automations using an interactive, natural language instruction-based conversational interface.
Credential Vault
A security software feature that facilitates Enterprise-wide security.

D

data key
During installation of Automation Anywhere Credential Vault, the system generates an RSA 2048 bit public/private key pair and an AES 256 bit key. The private key of the RSA 2048 pair is referred to as the main key, and the AES 256 key is referred to as the data key.
default device
Device on which your automation will run. This might be either a local device or a remote device.

Also called bot running device.

Deployment models
Automation 360 deployment models provide solution and flexibility to meet customers' requirements on how they want to use Automation 360.
Document Automation
A Cloud-native, intelligent document processing solution that is integrated into the Automation 360 platform to automatically read and process documents using pre-trained models and validation feedback.

E

Enterprise Platform
Enterprise Platform is a product that includes enterprise-grade features to manage uber-scale automations, performance, and users for enterprise customers and automation partners.

F

FIFO
Stands for First In, First Out, and is a method for organizing and handling data. In Microsoft 365 Outlook, FIFO might refer to how your emails are organized in your mailbox, with the oldest email first or at the top.
Flow Graph
The visual output produced in a flow-based mining run, showing loops and common steps in a process.
Fine tuned Model connection
An option to customize supported foundational models via testing and fine-tuning for connecting to the AI Skills.

G

Generative Recorder
A capability to build automation resiliency through generative AI-powered fallback mechanisms, especially relevant to dynamic web application automations.
Grounded Model connections
An option to create Model connections using the Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI native RAG capability. Create Grounded by knowledge base and Grounded by data store Model connections to generate accurate and contextually relevant information.

I

IQ Bot
IQ Bot is the only native AI solution that can be easily set up and used by business users to automatically read and process a variety of complex documents, faster.

L

LIFO
Stands for Last In, First Out. In Microsoft 365 Outlook, LIFO is the default method of sorting emails in your mailbox, with the latest or most recent email first or at the top.

M

master key
During installation of Automation Anywhere's Credential Vault, the system generates an RSA 2048 bit public/private key pair and an AES 256 bit key. The private key of the RSA 2048 pair is referred to as the Master Key, and the AES 256 key is referred to as the data key. The Master Key is presented to the installing administrator for safekeeping in a physically secure location off system.
Model connection
Connect to a curated list of foundational models from hyperscaler vendors to integrate the power of generative AI into your automations.

N

Node_Manager
Enables communication between the Control Room and the registered Bot Runner device using the WebSocket client channel. Node_Manager collects the bot execution status and forwards this information to the Control Room.
If an unattended bot is deployed on a device, Node_Manager attempts to execute that bot as a run as user.

P

package
A package is a self-contained collection of actions, iterators, and conditionals that are the basic building blocks of bots. Each package is managed and updated individually from other packages in the Control Room.
Process Composer
An offering that leverages low-code features to enable developers to collaborate and build end-to-end process automations.
Process description
A detailed outline of the steps, operations, inputs, outputs, conditions, and logic involved in an business workflow, serves as a blueprint to ensure accurate and efficient execution of tasks.
Process Discovery Sensor
A lightweight application that integrates to the machine’s video card to record user activities.
Privacy Enhanced Gateway (PEG)
A capability of the Process Discovery cloud platform that redacts personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data included in video frames collected by the Process Discovery Sensor.
Prompt Template
Use fine-tuned and tested Prompt Templates with foundational Model connections to accelerate creating automations and make them available for reuse across solutions.

R

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
This capability generates relevant and accurate responses by language models using a combination of the Retrieval and Generation components referencing documents or information from a large data-set, knowledge base, or external source that provides additional context to support the generated response.
Robotic Process Automation
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables you to create your own software robots with tools to automate any business process. Your bots are configurable software set up to do the tasks you assign and control.

S

SMB File Share
An SMB File Share is used by all members of the Control Room cluster to store or cache bots and configuration information. It must be accessible by every Control Room server.
Standard Form
A document with minimal variation of layout with a lot of content.

T

Task Bot
An application that automates rule-based, repetitive processes.

U

Unattended automation
Runs task automations without any human intervention and is capable of functioning 24/7. It can be scheduled or triggered based on events.
Universal Recorder
A capability for object-based automation to record interactions with user interface (UI) objects on the desktop, taskbar, or in an application or browser window.

W

Watched variables
Watched variables are used to watch the values of the specific variables when debugging your automations.
Workload Management
A Control Room module used by Queue and Pool admin users to manage small yet logical work items to be deployed via the process of queues for automation on a Bot Runner of Unattended type.
Work item
The data in a row or line of a CSV file used for processing in Workload Management.