AutoHotkey Community

Complex yes. Nothing will ever be as robust as a mature scripting language. As far as building out frameworks, if you move into a formal RPA I suggest Blue Prism. Blue Prism has limitations but can be extended with VB or C# quite easily. It is currently building in some cognitive automation capabilities; which from an insurance industry standpoint, will be supremely valuable and something you cant easily do with AHK. Workfusion might be another product to focus on for similar reasons. The added benefit of an RPA solution is a control room and credential vault.

@Tank / others- Any opinions on HP QuickTest Professional QTP/UFT? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_QuickTest_Professional

Opinions like what it's end of life discontinued could put dead as a doornail

tank - Thanks for the insight. Have you had firsthand experience with BP and WF? Do these allow for database integration? BP is appealing if it can be extended with custom code. Control Room and Credentials Vault are also appealing, but I've handled credentials by encrypting them and storing them in a database or ini file and have the script decrypt it prior to using it.

Joe - I've used QTP/UFT previously in QA automation. It is very QA-centric, aside from the fact that it keeps changing hands and being renamed. Seems like one of those legacy type tools nowadays. BTW, I connected with you via linkedin about a year ago. I've found your website informative and useful since then.

@ E_Miranda - Thanks for the commentary and feedback! Have you attended any of our webinars? They are "fun" and interactive...

No first-hand experience with WF, but yes with BP and yes you can ODBC to databases.

Thanks guys... very helpful.

Joe - I haven't attended "live". But I've watched a couple after the fact on youtube. Just finished up the one with tank. I love what you're doing for the AHK community. I wish it was a skill and language that was as sought after as Python and Ruby. But like tank stated in the video, seems like a lot of IT people are aware and use it - it just doesn't get the mentions.

CORRECTION QTP is not going away. OK so i will bother with its pro and con
CON
No segregation of duty between prod and say UAT
no credential management
automations are executed from a code console
No centralized management of script execution
No audit log
Pro
Uses VB syntax now 3 decades old and robust
convenient window spying tools
decent recorder
API support for IE without having to navigate COM
Excellent terminal support without navigating COM
Excellent library management altho libraries are tied directly to implementation and can, therefore, become mismatched.

Thanks Tank!

I heard about it because I was watching some videos from https://www.qtptutorial.net/ and some of them were pretty good at explaining some of the overall concepts around web scraping. I also like this resources which provides a source for practicing web scraping.

Has anybody dabbled with this? https://www.integromat.com/en/

nope

Hello,

As of now all the leading RPA Tools were rocking the IT market. But I found Automation AnyWhere is good among them. Because it creates mechanical process robotization programming to enlarge and scale learning work at the world’s biggest organizations. If anyone wants to move their career into RPA I suggest to go for AA.

Thanks!

Hello,
I have done the basic UIPath certification and I am an experienced user of Autohotkey mainly for lean IT project. For mature RPA project I am collecting Tools and Library like Drakon or FindImages.

UIPath is pretty impressive especially for:

• - Screen scrapping . I have no clue how to do that so easely with AHK despite your nice tuto Joe

• - Image driven robot. It’s simple, your record, adjust a bit and it’s done.

• - UI selector. Is there a way to use them in the same manners in AHK?

But, I don’t like the “full” task automation aspect. I like to propose new interfaces/GUI to do the task. UIPath didn’t propose a GUI to interact with you robot as AHK can propose.

Regarding MS office application and mailing Tools... AHK already has many nice libraries’ or examples not harder to learn.

I would say that UIPath is mainly dedicated to handled many robots with a team mainly focus on Lean IT & Process instead of development.

PS: For Autohotkey novice, I strongly recommend to do the UIPath certification because many concepts are similar.

@Jdriele- thanks for mentioning the certification. I was looking at it and saw this 30-minute video on UIPath. Overall, pretty impressive. I signed up for the community edition and am going to try some of the training in UIPath Acadamy

E_Miranda, this is just my two cents' worth, of course: you don't have to give up AHK at all if you use UiPath. One distinct advantage is it doesn't cost a thing to install it and experiment. I did, got my certification, and the price was certainly right.

I don't have that much experience either with AHK or UiPath, but I have been able to easily integrate AutoHotkey scripts into my UiPath workflows using any of four methods:
1) "Run Auto Hot Key Script" [sic] from an add-on package "UiPath.Script.Activities", which is at least a partial implementation of https://github.com/amazing-andrew/AutoHotkey.Interop. It requires scripts with functions if you're going to pass arguments in, and at least in its present incarnation you can only get a String return value.
2) Use the "Invoke Code" activity to write some VB.Net, add a reference to AutoHotkey.Interop, and use the methods from the link in your code. You can pass variables in and out, UiPath -> VB.Net code -> AHK -> VB.Net -> UiPath without too much trouble.
3) Use Florent Salendres's 'AHKActivities' package at https://discourse-cdn-sjc1.com/business ... 1988.nupkg, which uses an IDictionary<of String, String> for arguments in and out to scripts.
4) Include an AHK executable (I generally use AutoHotkeyU32.exe) with your workflow and use "Start Process." Arguments in and out work well with this method.

I also use AHK to build GUIs for my UiPath workflows, one area where it's a little on the light side.

Some things are easier for me with UiPath, some are easier for me with AHK, some are easier for me with a combination. The tools are there, they're free, so I use them.

I've also given WorkFusion's free RPAExpress a very quick run, and uninstalled it almost immediately. Although it appears quite powerful, it is a Javasaurus. Just the mysql daemon it loads eats up a gig of RAM even when it's idle. Three jars run simultaneously and eat up another gig and a half of RAM - idle. For my old machine, quad-core Intel from around 2008, 8 gigs of DDR2 RAM, it's just too much. If you have an i7 machine with 16 to 32 gigs of DDR3, I would expect you'll be fine trying out RPAExpress. I didn't get far enough into to it to see if AHK will play nice with it.

Regards,
burque505

@burque505 Thanks for your input and thoughts!

Thank you, Joe!
By the way, I use your ScreenClip2Win on a daily basis, thanks again for that too.
Regards,
burque505

@burque505- Glad to hear it! It's one of my favorite's too! I'm amazed more people don't use some kind of tool similar to it. (especially when working from a laptop)

I don't know about it. that's why

Here's a link to the forum post.

The Clipping itself is amazing but having it automatically write emails and attach it, push to IMUGR, and save locally are awesome too!