Who doesn’t know them? The physical Robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers that take the work out of your hands. So you can focus on the more complicated tasks around the house or garden. You turn on the Robots yourself, decide in which area they will work and check the result afterwards. A fantastic invention to save time in private life. What if something like this also existed in your working life? A Software Robot assistant that helps you with your (administrative) tasks, so you can focus on the complicated ones?

Difference between Unattended and Attended Robots

In the world of Software Robots (read: Robotic Process Automation), there are 2 types of robots: Unattended and Attended. The main difference between the two is that an Unattended Robot has its own machine and account to work independently on, and an Attended Robot assists an employee. Unattended Robots work at set times, without the intervention of an employee. For example, they perform daily checks or process outstanding purchase invoices every hour. This means employees have almost nothing to worry about. But what if you want to start tasks at a time that suits you? Or need to provide the Robot with the necessary input before it can do its job? The solution: Attended Automation.

How do Attended Robots work?

Attended Robots do not have their own machine, but are installed on employees’ machines. Such an Attended Robot can be put to work via the UiPath Assistant (software), in which the automated tasks are visible. The employee himself can click the start button and thus determine when his/her Attended Robot starts working. An additional advantage is that you can provide the Attended Robot with the necessary input. Think of entering week numbers, file names, employees or order numbers.

Example: entering sales orders to create TRACES documents

Case study: creating trade document in EU portal

TRACES (TRAde Control and Expert System) is the European Commission’s online management tool that tracks the transport of animals, food, feed and plants. For products imported from outside the EU, or traveling through EU member states, Darling Ingredients must create a trade document. This is done by the Sales Back-Office department and involves approximately 5,000+ documents per year.

What steps does the Attended Robot perform?

1. Employee starts task from within UiPath Assistant
2. Employee enters order numbers
3. Robot retrieves order data from JDE database (SQL)
4. Robot opens Traces system
5. Robot creates new trade document
6. Robot fills in all order data
7. Robot saves document as draft
8. Employee reviews draft document

Picture-in-Picture mode: no mandatory lunch or hike

As of 2021, the UiPath Assistant features a Picture-in-Picture mode. With this functionality, the Attended Robot performs its tasks in an isolated Windows environment. This ensures that the actions of the user and the Attended Robot do not interfere with each other. This allows the worker to continue with his/her other tasks while the Attended Robot is running. Thus, twice as much work can be done in the same amount of time!

The Attended Robot at work in its own window via Picture-in-Picture mode

The Benefits of Attended Robots

In practice, we see that >90% of all automations are performed by Unattended Robots. And that there is a lot of untapped potential when it comes to deploying Attended Robots. The benefits of Attended Robots at a glance:

• Being a good employer: express your appreciation to employees by giving them a personal Robot Assistant
• On-demand: decide when to perform a task
• Automation mindset: inspire your employees by asking themselves with every task if they should do it themselves
• Visibility: make the potential of RPA visible in your organization
• Scalability: even the tasks that only save 5 minutes become interesting
• Reduce development costs: publish an automation to all employees

Want to know more about Attended Robots?

Are you curious about the uses of Attended Robots in your department? Please contact Ebert Knol for a no-obligation consultation.