Introduction:

In this blog post we will see how SAP Intelligent RPA can be helpful in simplifying invoice consolidation process using easy steps. We will see creation of a project, building the RPA and Testing the workflow successfully.

Let us consider a use case where any business in receipt of multiple invoices over email, the process to consolidate invoice information into a single sheet to verify / review being a very tedious and time-consuming process and may also lead to human errors. The SAP Intelligent RPA can ease the use for complex functions like PDF read, Value Lookups etc., by using loops, conditional statements in the workflow to show codeless consumption experience.

The SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0 can be used to build and test rapid models. We can create a project, build it with very easy and readable configuration steps to process any data from any number of PDF files within minutes and test it to see results.

The various options like process, web capture and automations are available to us as a centrally accessible bundle of features in SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0

PDF is one the most widely used formats by individuals and organizations to exchange information and to create business related documents and therefore plays an important part in most process automations.

PDF SDK introduced by Intelligent RPA 2.0 is used in extracting data from documents with the help of activities from machine readable/generated PDFs to text.

Overview:

In the workflow “Get File Collection” is used to return all the files in a specified folder path, for the file collections “foreach” loop is applied to perform set of commands which executes for every File from “Get file Collection” to process required data from files.

“Open PDF” in the loop is used to open an instance of PDF document then “Search Text Items” searches text items that matches the search parameters and gives the position of the string as output, if no match is found 0 value is returned, if there are any matches then values are extracted from that opened PDF else the PDF instance is closed and released.

“Order Id” and “Grand Total” are extracted with the use of “Get Text After” which retrieves words after the matching search parameter, “numWords” is used to get number of words after search string is found in the document.

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The complete workflow of automation:

 

First Step: Project and Package

New Project is created from the Projects tab in Cloud Factory

. Create a New Project

 

Once project is created add SAP Intelligent RPA Core SDK and PDF packages are added in dependencies, we can acquire these packages from the Cloud Store.

 

. Next Step: Select Dependencies – Manage Dependency and Add Dependency

 

. After Adding the Dependencies will get the packages List shown in the below image

 

.  Next Step is Automation – Select Create – Automation

. The Configure agent version is displayed – Select the agent version and click Confirm

 

. Next step in the screen, required activities are added

 

Sample Document

 

. First Step in Automation – From activities drag and drop “Get File Collection” and give the Folder path in which the PDF is saved to the input parameters.

 

. Next step in Automation – Use “For Each” loop from the Activities. Inside the loop “Open PDF” to open an instance of PDF Document which opens each file in the given folder.

 

. Next step in Automation – “Search Text items (PDF)” is used with a search string value in the input parameters, to search text items in that PDF which returns the position of the string in the document.

 

. Next step in Automation – Use “Condition” from the Activities and the condition expression given is “Step4.textitems. length! =0” if condition is true then it executes the “Get Text After” workflow else it displays Message saying invalid document in a dialog box.

 

. Next step in Automation – “Get Text After (PDF)” step is used from the activities and given a search string value in the input parameters and also the number of words to get from the PDF document given in “numWords” which extracts the words from PDF.

 

. Next step in Automation – “Open Message Dialog” is used open Message dialog box for giving relevant messages.

. Last step in Automation – “Close and Release PDF” activity closes and releases the opened instance of PDF.

 

. Results of this Automation

 

Link to the running bot with details

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9KnaUAl3J4

Link to the running bot in simplified version 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEbG-jWfIuA

Conclusion:

The extracted data that is displayed can be inserted into excel, spreadsheet or to an email etc., with simple steps using SAP Intelligent RPA features with codeless experience.

The intention of this blog post is to get customers, business managers and RPA developers to get into thinking about using SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0 in numerous automation scenarios by using simple steps for achieving great results.