Despite the advent of web and cloud-based solutions, desktop apps remain essential for organizational operations. A manual test of a desktop application can be time-consuming and tiring, especially if operations have to be recreated. Then, desktop automation was born to solve such problems.
Desktop automation employs robotic process automation (RPA) technology to automate testing operations. Nowadays, many industries apply it to their businesses with automation tools like Octoparse AI and benefit from it. Go ahead, you’ll find everything you need to know about desktop automation in this article.
What is Desktop Automation?
Desktop automation, also known as robotic desktop automation (RDA) or attended automation, refers to software running on a user’s local workstation that automates repetitive, rule-based tasks people do manually. Such tasks might include data entry, navigating between multiple desktop applications, copying or formatting information, and responding to desktop events.
Desktop automation is meant to assist individual employees in managing their everyday workload. These bots are programmed to conduct operations such as data entry, option selection, and output validation right in the desktop application interface. As a result, human mistakes and variance can be reduced, and processes can be carried out accurately and consistently.
Macros, Visual Basic for programs (VBA) scripts, and third-party solutions that provide APIs for automating Windows-based programs are some typical methods for implementing desktop automation. The technique used will be determined by individual apps and procedures that need to be automated.
Desktop automation vs. Robotic process automation(RPA)
RPA tools allow “bots” to mimic user actions across one or more applications: logging in, copying data, filling in forms, interacting with GUIs, even when APIs are unavailable. They often offer low-code or no-code configuration.
As a branch of robotic process automation (RPA), desktop automation also uses software robots or ‘bots’ to automate repetitive tasks and workflows. However, it specifically focuses on automating processes within desktop applications that are developed for Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems and installed locally on PCs or laptops.
What are the Benefits of Desktop Automation And Why Utilize It?
Automating testing procedures and enhancing productivity are among the benefits desktop automation offers firms. While manual testing of desktop apps is still widespread, using automation technologies helps teams to increase productivity, improve accuracy, and save expenses.
Time Savings & Workflow Efficiency Improving
Automating repetitive, manual tasks allows users to complete them much faster than doing them by hand. Tasks that involve copying data, navigating between applications, entering the same information repeatedly become nearly instantaneous. This lets workers focus their effort on more complex, creative or high-value tasks.
With every code change, complex testing involving multiple applications interacting with backend systems can be difficult to replicate accurately. However, bots ensure such interdependent processes continue executing seamlessly in the background at scale without requiring human oversight each time. Automation runs tests around the clock, so development teams receive faster feedback. As a result of continuous testing, issues can be identified and addressed before they impact downstream dependencies.
Reduced Errors & Improved Accuracy
Whereas humans are prone to occasional errors in correctly repeating each action, bots perform all steps identically without deviation between executions. Whether filling out text fields or selecting menu options, each automated operation is replicated free from human mistakes. With this level of consistency and precision, bugs can be discovered earlier, before they have a chance to propagate further into the development process. Even subtle interface bugs may be found that could otherwise slip by human testers.
Cost Reduction & Better Return on Investment (ROI)
If you eliminate or reduce manual labor on routine tasks, labor costs drop. Also, fewer errors mean fewer rework costs. Over time, faster task completion and fewer mistakes lead to savings and good ROI for the automation effort.
Cost Reduction & Better Return on Investment (ROI)
Once an automation is in place, it is easier to scale up. As demands increase (more tasks, more frequent tasks), the same automation can often be reused or replicated. Also, many desktop automation tools support branching logic, conditional actions, loops, etc., enabling them to adapt to slightly varying circumstances without manual intervention each time.
Automating repetitive validation processes for standard features or compatibility testing across new versions speeds up work that might otherwise take time. Bots can complete checklists of typical test cases considerably faster than humans. They allow QA team members to devote more time to higher-value tasks, such as designing better user experiences and developing new test methodologies. Engineers who use automation may focus on improving the entire product rather than spending hours checking fundamental functionality unaltered.
In addition to what was mentioned above, more benefits like consistent testing outputs each time as well as simplified root-cause analysis when failures occur. Automated record and playback capabilities also enable integration with various third-party tools for enhanced analytics. Adopting desktop automation cuts costs by avoiding expensive fixes for quality issues that make it into production due to human oversight lapses. Finally, automation scales easily to meet the demands of large distributed teams without requiring additional headcount.
How Does Desktop Automation Work?
Desktop automation is meant to assist individual employees in managing their everyday workload. As such, it tends to be far more accessible and user-friendly than enterprise-grade or highly bespoke automation platforms.
There are several approaches to desktop automation, including but not limited to prebuilt workflows and screen recording. Depending on what kinds of tasks you do, different methods may offer better balance between power, flexibility, and ease of use.
Prebuilt workflows or templates
With prebuilt workflows (or templates), you select automations that match common patterns in your work, things like file-organization, email handling, form processing, or report generation.
You can chain or order these workflows to suit how you actually get things done each day, so that simple, frequent tasks are handled smoothly with minimal setup.
Screen and UI recording
Screen recording captures your actual behavior: clicking, typing, switching between apps, etc. The automation tool learns what you do step by step and can then replay those actions. This works well when tasks are very visual or involve apps that don’t expose clean APIs. Some recorders also incorporate image/x-y coordinate clicks, OCR (optical character recognition), or image recognition so that they can deal with UI elements that are not easily identifiable by standard selectors.z
Desktop Automation Use Cases
Desktop automation provides solutions across many industries by streamlining repetitive and error-prone workflows.
Healthcare
In healthcare, bots help maximize efficiency by automating common yet time-consuming administrative tasks. They can handle patient check-ins, retrieve insurance information, schedule appointments, process medical billing, and adhere to compliance requirements. This allows clinicians to spend more quality time with patients rather than on paperwork.
Healthcare bots automate time-consuming but frequent administrative tasks to increase efficiency. They can manage patient check-ins, insurance information retrieval, appointment scheduling, medical billing, and compliance needs. Because of that, professionals can spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork.
Manufacturing
Desktop automation can help optimize production planning in manufacturing because bots can continuously track inventory levels and material requirements to ensure adequate staffing and supplies. They can also help schedule preventative maintenance of machinery to avoid downtime, conduct data analysis of operational metrics on the shop floor automatically, and provide real-time visibility to bottlenecks and inefficiencies. With such valuable information, production managers can make more informed decisions to improve throughput.
Financial institutions
Financial institutions similarly benefit from robots streamlining back-office tasks. Bots reconcile accounts, process payments, and perform credit analysis seamlessly without the risk of employee mistakes or fraud. They also handle portfolio tracking and reporting to maintain compliance. With bots handling high-volume transactional workloads, human staff can upsell services and focus on serving customers.
Software development firms
Bots play an important part in quality assurance for software development organizations. They run test suites at scale to evaluate desktop applications across operating systems, browsers, and devices.
Bots provide thorough logs that capture the processes taken and data such as response times to help identify issues. Therefore, developers can catch issues early before releases with the continuous validation of bots.
Supply chain firms
In terms of supply chain firms, bots are applied to manage ordering, fulfillment, and shipping. Bots audit purchases and send inventory alerts, place replenishment orders, track shipments, and handle vendor communications. Cycle counts can be handed over to warehouse robots as well. At the same time, they can help ensure accurate fulfillment of customer orders. Operations are streamlined as a result, and commodities movement is visible in real-time.
Besides these industries, almost any company can benefit from desktop automation even individuals who run a business alone. Through the simplification of repetitive activities that are otherwise prone to human error or incapable of scaling, human specialists like you may now concentrate on more strategic jobs because of this.
Free RPA Tool for Desktop Automation -Octoparse AI
Octoparse AI is a no-code RPA tool that allows you to build a complete, functional workflow for desktop automation through drag-and-drop. It can also capture desktop elements in real time for clicking.
To help users experience automation faster, Octoparse AI’s automation experts have built nearly a hundred workflows for common scenarios as apps. Simply input the corresponding parameters to experience automation for free and quickly.
Conclusion
Desktop automation offers a practical option for scaling testing of applications deployed across different organizations. Robotic process automation, in this area, can help reduce repetitious processes while boosting output consistency, so the testers and quality teams can focus more on exploratory, value-added work and improving the user experience.
