RPA Free Community Edition Downloads

[SOTE]

Automation Anywhere Free Community Edition
(Must fill out form before download)
https://www.automationanywhere.com/lp/rpa-editions-comparison

UiPath Free Community Edition
(Must fill out Community Edition Request Form)
https://www.uipath.com/developers/community-edition-download

[burque505]

SOTE, thanks for that link to the Automation Anywhere community edition.

In case it might help someone, you have to first sign up for the Community Edition. It's fast. Then you have to log on to the website provided in the email you'll get, and download the client from there. (I chose to add Java plugins and put files in Public Documents rather than Program Data during the install process.)

Installation proceeds painlessly. NOTE: Save ALL the information in the email you receive, especially the Control Room URL. You'll need to enter it either during installation or on first run. Of course you'll need your user name and password.

(You'll probably get a "Quick Start" email shortly after you download and install the client. I did.)

first login small.png (49.59 KiB) Viewed 8742 times

Once you've entered all the information above and log in, you'll get a screen very much like the following:

AA CE login.png (330.27 KiB) Viewed 8742 times

Regards,
burque505

[Tigerlily]

Thank you both for your insightful posts!!

I am looking forward to learning more about RPA|RDA / utilizing RPA|RDA.

I will download these both and test when time warrants.

[Tigerlily]

So I've installed them both - going to start tinkering with them here and there in my free time - not sure where to start though, what did you guys/gals do first?

Automation Anywhere's interface seems a little more slow and clunky than UiPath's.

Here is a pic of what it looks like once you get inside AA:

[burque505]

This github link to RPA repositories might be interesting. Some of the projects appear to be good candidates for incorporating AHK in one way or another.
Regards,
burque505

[burque505]

G1ANT offers a free developer addition (from the website: "Developer;Free;£0 forever;free for your personal use;limited by captchas". I think the expiration date in the .png below refers to a trial or something, but I guess I'll find out in July ). Very interesting indeed. I've completed the beginner tutorials, takes less than an hour.

Some things that set this apart from a lot of the RPA offerings out there are 1) heavy use of scripting as opposed to drag-and-drop/WWF-type entries, 2) its own unique scripting language (I do mean unique, see the GIF - those hearts indicate a variable and are entered by hitting Ctrl-4. All the special entries have keyboard shortcuts like this), and 3) inline C# macros (The little "⊂⊃" brackets as in "⊂System.DateTime.Now.ToString(♥format)⊃" below surround a C# macro).

I'm still exploring this but calls to e.g. System.Windows.Forms work (sometimes with errors for me so far that appear to be related to return values). I believe this will be able to call AutoHotkey.dll at some point; there is a free SDK to download from github.

I'm trying to compile it with VS 2019, but it is throwing errors related to "Microsoft.VisualStudio.CoreUtility" and "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Threading", both of which were built on higher .NET versions than the SDK requires. I'll try to get that worked out and then edit this post. The platform appears worthwhile even without the SDK, though. Almost everything just works right out of the box. The program is a single executable. You have to jump through a few minor hoops to get your license, but all in all it's really easy.

Regards,
burque505

[burque505]

Another offering, while not a community edition, is Zappy, available free upon request. It may take a few days to receive your free license key. The developers were kind enough to contact me personally, which is definitely a nice touch.

Check out Zappy here.

It's likely AutoHotkey can be incorporated. See this post.

So far I've been able to get PySide GUIs working in it without jumping through too many hoops.

Regards,
burque505