Automation Framework-Zima

Custom activity demo in workflow that creates the chart from excel data
ZIMA, your personal assistant

Inspiration

Most of the times we face this in real life that the laptop that we carry goes down on battery, or we forget some file in our PC which is in our Office/Home.

It was required that we could get some files like sales figures, reports that we have already prepared from our PC to our mobile while on the move. Also from our mobile we could give commands to our PC to prepare charts, reports etc, while we moving, and get back on the mobile as attachment.

What it does

It send an email, which is received by outlook configured on the PC. These emails are read by the UiPath automation framework and then it takes the appropriate action based on the subject/body it receives in the email. Like

Send any file from PC as attachment
Prepare the excel report
Prepare any chart from excel data received in email body etc.

How I built it

Used the Outlook to configure the email.
Used the c#/.NET to build custom activities for creating chart
Using Uipath, which keeps reading the emails activities get activated and response is sent by email

Challenges I ran into

It was planned and thought very deeply, but still got many challenges like:

How to Open and manipulate the excel activities
How to send the file back as attachment
How to decide the commands which should be easy to use

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Workflow, that could be very beneficial for the organizations
This could be useful for colleges/students
Used the Excel application scope to build custom activities, so excel manipulation tasks were streamlined.