Expert Insights

Every RPA Developer understands the struggle of trying to automate a process that requires some type of Citrix or virtualized environment interaction, it’s a constant battle of trying to reliably interact with the underlying system while at the same time considering the validation criteria required to satisfy the business requirements.

Here are the top 2 best practices to follow when automating in a virtualized environment:

• Use “Anchors” whenever possible: In a virtual environment, the bot is essentially looking for a “picture” on the screen. Due to possible resolution changes and the like, it is a good practice to use some type of an anchor such as a logo or a fixed header that the bot can look for prior to interacting with the intended target.
• Use While Loops with Image Recognition conditional statements: You are asking the bot to look at a “picture”, “pictures” that can be interpreted differently depending on the tool’s computer vision capability. Therefore it is a good practice to use a While Loop that will attempt to search for the intended target multiple times in order to account for system lag and resolution changes.

While there are many techniques that can be used to automate a process requiring interactions with a virtualized environment, you will see that the above points will add an extra layer of reliability while at the same time not significantly affecting the development timeline.