This article talks about how web services can play a pivotal role in RPA

1. Web Services allied with RPA
Conventional approach Vs Reimagined approach
Conventional Web Automation Approach
 Generally all automation tools provide web connectors to integrate web applications, here we
need to capture individual web pages, web controls and object in a fixed sequence as
mentioned in the requirement documents
 Development efforts are required (~2-3 days, depends on requirements)
 Automation flows or steps are then created post all the required web pages and web controls
are captured or created alongside
 Developers are required to set correct matching rules set to identify individual web components
within automation development environment
 Web connectors has few other explicit settings as well and same needs to be set prior to the
above steps
 Automation execution speed depends on the base application’s behavior and its response
Reimagined Approach – Using Web Services
 Instead of using GUI automation we can effectively use web services to retrieve the desired data
from web application or perform certain actions
 Web services works on server and returns the result over http response
 No user interface is required and hence no point of GUI automation and also resilient to UI
changes as well or version upgrade
 Response from web service is fast as compared to web application
 Easy for developers to consume web services and integrate the same in there solution
 More secure since application is not exposed
 Confined inputs through query string and hence no chance of other irrelevant input
 Zero infrastructure since it can hosted on cloud
 Response time is less in XML/JSON output

2. Use Case A: Conventional Web Automation
 Below use case where funds information are fetched through workflow application over the
web and later applied against the policies information stored inside Application B
Use Case A: Reengineered via Web Service usage
 Fetch fund information via web service created for Workflow application, information is then
parsed to obtain the correct data, application of funds against policies information stored inside
Application
A
B
A
B
C