We have formed a list of Robotic Process Automation RPA interview questions and answers so that you can confidently prepare for your RPA job interview.
Go through these RPA Interview questions and answers carefully and prepare for your interview.
1. What is RPA – Robotic Process Automation?
Robotic Process Automation can be explained in the following manner:
Robotic: Robots are machines that perform the same actions of humans.
Process: Process is a flow of steps that lead to a meaningful activity. For eg. washing machine process
Automation: There is no human assistance in automation process. The robots perform the task through rule-based process.
2. What are the benefits of using RPA?
- You can decrease the size of your workforce and hence decrease costs because RPA can automate most of the manual and repetitive tasks.
- The significant point is that computers don’t do any mistakes. They perform exactly what they are told and hence are more accurate.
- There is no coding needed for RPA. A simple drag and drop is enough for any automation.
- The process of RPA can be compared to any desktop tool or web application. Suppose the process is repetitive it can be automated. There is requirement of only little coding.
3. What are the characteristics of RPA?
There is no requirement of programming skills with RPA. Staff with any subject expertise can be trained to automate RPA tools in a quick manner. The RPA chart is the key to this. It offers a flowchart designer to graphically link, drag and drop icons.
RPA projects are in need of minimum IT skills and less investment, As a result, the automation is lowered at a reasonable rate.
RPA eliminates complexity and risk. The software robots access to end user’s systems through a controlled user interface. This eventually decreases the requirement of underlying systems programming.
4. What is the difference between traditional / IT automation and RPA?
- Traditional IT Automation is a strenuous process and needs reasonable manpower, time, effort and significant cost.
- RPA is a good solution for immediately generating improvements.
- Both traditional automation and RPA require good energy and planning. However, the implementation of RPA is instant.
- The objective of both is automation. However RPA is faster and cost-effective than traditional automation.
5. What are the general requirements of RPA for front and back office processing?
RPA is popular for its flexibility and is capable to meet the dynamic IT standards without giving up on security. Robotic software can be used for both front office and back office. Most of the requirements don’t change for both.
6. What is the difference between Mainframe and Non-Mainframe Applications?
Mainframe applications:
- It’s a single screen and is dependent on keyboard.
- There are distinct set in-built commands supported by Blue Prism specifically for mainframe applications.
Non-mainframe applications:
- It comprises multiple screens
- Control shifts from one screen to another screen
7. What Are The Popular RPA Tools & Vendors?
Popular RPA Tools & Vendors are:
- Automation Anywhere
- Blue Prism
- Openspan
- UIPath
8. What are Limitations of Robotic Process Automation?
There is no doubt that RPA enhances company efficiency by taking care of repetitive human effort. However, there are limitations to the nature of work that it can be used for especially one that requires discretion.
- RPA doesn’t act as a cognitive computing solution. It cannot learn from experience.
- When you implement RPA to a broken and inefficient process then there is no solution. It is not a Business Process Management solution .
- RPA cannot comprehend any data that is non-electronic with unstructured inputs.
9. Is Robotic Automation Like Screen Scraping Or Macros?
Robotic Process Automation’s role goes much more than a macro. It is a dynamic, flexible tool which compromises for the disadvantages in macros. For example, total dependence on their designer etc. The flexibility of RPA and its ability to adjust to a specific scenario makes it far more operational than macros. Macros has the ability to repeat only elementary steps over and over again.
10. How to implement Robotic Process Automation?
There are primarily 6 steps to be considered for a successful RPA implementation.
- Look out for the Automation Opportunities
- Optimize the spotted processes
- Form a Business Case
- Select an RPA vendor
- Develop a Pilot RPA
- Enhance and continue forming competent RPA bots.
11. Why Blue Prism is much preferred over other RPA tools?
- Blue Prism supports both internal encryption/decryption and external encryption/decryption.
- The process and the structuring of automation in Blue Prism can be closely supervised.
- There is the provision of enabling the audit log by ourselves.
- The customized .Net code is synched for the presence of highly robust systems within the process automation.
12. What are the framework types used in Automation Anywhere?
- Data-driven automation framework.
- Modular automation framework.
- Hybrid Automation Framework
- Keyword Driven Automation Framework.
13. What are the important Phases of RPA Life Cycle?
Phases of RPA Life Cycle:
Analysis: The first Phase in RPA starts with assessment. Business team and RPA Architect function together to comprehend a business process for RPA development
Bot Development: RPA developer begins working on the requirement in their environment.
Testing: Certain organizations do testing by a separate testing team. Other companies haven a dedicated testing team. Having a dedicated testing team which takes up QA of developed bot is the best practice.
Deployment and Maintenance: Once the development and testing phases are completed, a bot is ready for distribution and gets into maintenance phase.
14. What is Citrix automation?
Citrix automation is applied to automate process including filling fields in form and submitting the form in a virtual desktop application. You can make use of processes comprising data entry form filling with the help of Citrix automation.
15. List the Industrial applications of RPA.
- Banking- Automation of credit card application in bank etc.
- Retail- Update orders, control fake accounts, process shipping notifications etc.
- Telecommunication- Manage subscriber feeds, fraud management and customer data updates
- HR- Candidate sourcing, payroll automation etc.
16. What are the different types of RPA?
There are three types of RPA as Unattended or Autonomous RPA, Attended RPA, and Hybrid RPA. Unattended or Autonomous RPA will be ideal for decreasing work through processing the data in the background and it does not require any human intervention. It is launched using specified intervals, bot-initiated, and data input. Attended RPA will be in the user’s machine and trigger by the user when embedded on an employee’s device, automatically based on predefined conditions, and leveraging the RPA client tool. Hybrid RPA is the combination of autonomous and attended RPA bots and addresses the front and back end of the enterprises.
17. How can you execute exception handling in UiPath?
The exception handling is the important error management method of UiPath that executes the following four options
- Rethrow: The bot throws an exception or error that caught while executing the workflow and this activity does not require providing any special message.
- Terminate workflow: We can ask the bot to terminate activities when there is no data to execute. It requires the exception message to log the error and it will be referred by the developer to access more details of the execution.
- Throw: It is the mechanism where the bot fails to execute the mentioned activity and it throws an error with the particular error message to help the user to understand where the bot is failed.
- Try Catch: It contains three parts as Try, Catch, and finally. Try executes when there are any errors found and make it caught by the “Catch” Section. Then the bot executes the block in the given condition at the “finally” section.
18. Explain the breakpoints of UiPath
Breakpoints are implemented to pause the debugging process to trigger the execution problems and they can be placed to update a breakpoint in an activity as below
- From the context menu, select right-click an activity, then select Toggle Breakpoint
- On the debug menu, select the activity and click on the breakpoints button.
- Just press f9 when the desired activity is chosen.
19. Define Macro Recorder
The macro recorder allows the user to record the activities of the mouse and keyboard to create automation scripts. These activities are arranged according to the action sequence to be executed on the screen. It is saved in the workflow there we can use them later to playback the recorded activities.
20. List some of the features of RPA
- Rich Analytical Suite: Robotic Process Automation is used to monitor and manage the automated functions from a centralized control that can be accessed from anywhere and provide basic metrics on bots, workflows, and server, and so on.
- Simplified Bot Creation: RPA allows the developer to create the bots quickly through numerous built-in recorder components, and capturing the mouse and keystrokes.
- Scriptless Automation: RPA tools such as Blue Prism, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere are code-free and used to automate any application in various departments. The programmers who have less coding skills can develop bots through an intuitive GUI.
- Highly Secured: RPA tools are providing high-secured development through configuring and customizing the encryption capacities to secure the data types and protect against the interruption of internet communication.
- Simplified hosting and deployment: RPA automatically deploy bots in groups of thousands. RPA bots can be implemented on desktops and launched on servers to access data for redundant tasks.
- Debugging: Some of the RPA tools are asked to stop running to rectify the errors and other tools enable dynamic interaction while debugging.
21. List the activities of UiPath
- All the automation processes as core activities
- Language translations as cognitive activities
- Retrieving the data from the terminal as terminal activities
- Perform SOAP and HTTP requests to any web APIs as web activities
- Provision making for Salesforce automation as Salesforce activities
- Test the system through package as testing activities
- Invoke python scripts and methods as Python activities
- Performing MS Word automation as Word activities
- Enabling the addition and deletion of credentials as credential activities
- Executing queries and transactions as database activities
- Facilitating the MS excel tasks as excel activities
- Digitizing and scrapping as intelligent OCR activities
- Performing with IMAP, POP3, Outlook, and SMTP as mail activities
- Data extraction from PDF as PDF activities
- Performing functions in the FTP server as FTP activities
22. What is the process of the control room in automation anywhere?
The control room is a web-based platform that controls automation anywhere and it deals with user management, source control, dashboard, and license management. It has two types of licenses such as Dev License that enables the developer to create, edit, and execute the tasks and Run license that the user can only execute the bot without making any changes.
23. Define Bot Runner
The bot runner is the machine that the developer can run the bot and we can have multiple bots to run in parallel. It requires only a Run License to run the bots. The bots will return the status of execution such as logs/pass/fail to the control room.
24. Define Task Bots
The bots automate repetitive tasks in rule-based areas such as document administration, claims management, HR services, and IT services.
25. Explain meta bots
The Meta bots are used to automate the building blocks and they are designed to update the applications whenever it requires the changes of minimal edits of the bot.
26. What is IQ Bot?
IQ bots are the advanced tools that they can learn themselves and perform a task as per the requirement. It offers automation using highly advanced cognitive technology.
27. What is the difference between screen scrapping and robotic automation?
Screen Scrapping is implemented by applications to capture the screen activities and that depends on the captured information to precede the process execution. Robotic Automation, on the other hand, has more capable and robust that can integrate with windows applications and web applications.
28. Define Thin and Thick Clients
Thin Clients are the applications that need several attributes and features for implementing the RPA tools such as computer, internet explorer, or calculator. Thick Clients are the applications that do not require any specific properties when using the RPA tools. It involves the automation of browsers like opening or navigation.
29. What provides instruction to bots?
The robot controllers are providing instructions to the robots.
30. What releases data to the master repository?
Process developers are publishing the data to the master repository.
31. What handles the individual screen components?
The individual screen components are handled by the component layer.
32. What are the things that can be enabled by RPA?
Robotic Process Automation can enable cost-based reduction, 24/7 operability, and accessibility, and reduces the delivery risks.
33. What is the difference between chatbot and RPA?
The Chatbot is a bot that is programmed to chat with users like a human but RPA is a bot that is programmed to automate any manual business process for executing the activity within a business function. Chatbot can’t replicate the features of an RPA system.
34. Mention few user events of UiPath
- On click element to monitor the events of specified UI element
- On keypress element to monitor the keyboard events
- On click image to monitor the images of target UI element
- Monitor Mouse to monitor the specified mouse-key combinations.
35. What is the process of the UiPath Orchestrator?
The UiPath Orchestrator is used to centralize the robot management dashboard where the user can easily deploy, manage, and secure the UiPath robots at scale.
We believe that these RPA interview questions and answers are useful to you. Go through them with confidence and crack the interviews with ease.
All the best for your future endeavors and happy job hunting.
