How to use SAP intelligent robotic process automation to automate Excel

Robot process automation (Robotic Process Automation, abbreviation RPA) It allows users to repeat the enterprise 、 A solution to automate rule-based business processes .

And the process steps need to be ​​ Hard encoding ​​ Traditional automation solutions into the system are different ,RPA Using the latest achievements of machine learning and artificial intelligence , By observing how real users complete the process , To learn how to automate tasks .

If you want to know RPA How the solution works , Think of it as recording a macro . Once the recording is complete ,RPA Robots can perform tasks autonomously , Not only can it be used for complex tasks , And it can handle exceptions in tasks , Constantly accumulate knowledge in response to constantly changing input conditions , Utilizing automated applications UI change .

A more understandable RPA Working principle example , Consider predictive text capabilities in email and text messaging applications . When we type email 、 Text isochronous , The application will remember some of the grammar and words we use , Then automatically make suggestions based on these when typing in the future .

RPA All these efforts , All for end users from tedious , repeat , Get rid of boring physical work , So that it can do other things with higher technical added value , This is also what smart enterprises advocate ​​ Work smarter , Instead of working harder ​​ One of the guidelines for .

In addition to the common use of programming language operations Excel Outside the document ,SAP Newly released SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation( abbreviation SAP iRPA), It provides a powerful enterprise level automation process solution , Make good use of , It can be done without programming , Operate as flexibly as using a programming language Excel.

Let's take a concrete and simple example , use SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation Operate one Excel file , Write a string to the inner cell , Set the background color and turn it off .

open SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation Desktop Studio, Import SAP Preset operation Excel Of nodejs Script library file .

Select... In the library file Excel Integration. You can see from the figure below ,SAP iRPA except Excel outside , Also support Office Other applications in, such as Word and Outlook.

A new one named jerryExcel Of workflow, In the workflow activities Input in the panel seq, Found type Sequence Of Flow Control . This control allows us to define a series of sequential steps in the workflow .

hold Sequence Drag the control to the workflow editing area , double-click , You can define the detailed steps to be performed .

Excel Lib There are many presets around Excel Operations performed , Such as Init Excel,Open Excel,Close Excel wait , Each operation corresponds to a paragraph nodejs Code .

For example Init Excel Drag and drop to Sequence The control of Activities After the list , Once saved , You will immediately see the automatically generated nodejs Code .Excel Lib Each inside step, All correspond to a paragraph nodejs Code . In this way , Even if SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation Desktop Studio Our users have no programming foundation , It can also develop and operate Excel Automated workflow .

The image above Init Excel Step is all operations Excel An initialization step must be performed for all workflows . After initialization , hold Open Excel Drag this step to Sequence Activities in , Specify the... To open Excel File path , stay Desktop Studio There is a red prompt in .

The local Excel The absolute path of the file is maintained ：

The third step , Set open Excel The first 1 That's ok , The first 1 The value of the column is ’Hello Jerry’:

Step four , Set the first 1 Xing di 1 The background color of the column ：

Will be revised after Excel Save as another file . Execute this project , Will be in temp I see another one in the folder Excel file .

This is a very simple example , Let's see how it works .
Switch to Script panel , In the 45 Line open Excel Set a breakpoint in the code of , Then step through the debugging ：

Once the breakpoint is triggered , We can observe a Excel Application window prompt , Nothing is displayed ：

In the task manager, you can see that the application passes parameters /automation -Embedding Way to start ：

We want to debug step by step ctx.excel.file.open In the way , It is found that the breakpoint is not in open Stop inside the method , Instead, the method is directly executed , At this time, the application title on the taskbar starts from Excel It was replaced by open Method to open the file name ：1.xlsx.

From the task manager above /automation and embedding Parameters , We can already judge ,SAP iRPA operation Excel Implementation principle of , and Jerry article Use ABAP operation Excel Several ways to The first method mentioned in , That is, through OLE Way to operate Excel It's consistent .

If you have to get to the bottom , You can go to SAP iRPA SDK Installation directory , open excel.js file , find open Method implementation , Found it called _excelApp Object's WorkBooks.Open Method ：

and _excelApp object , stay initialize Through the method GetObject from OLE object Excel.Application In order to get ：

Remember Jerry article Use ABAP operation Excel Several ways to Mentioned in ABAP OLE Implement the source code ？ It is also obtained in the same way Excel Application object , Even the coding method is the same .

Now that we have talked JavaScript operation Excel The topic of , By the way , At present, another popular JavaScript operation Excel Open source library , namely Node-xlsx, The principle is based on Office Open XML Protocol to parse Excel file ,ABAP There are also corresponding ones based on Office Open XML The implementation of the ：CL_XLSX_DOCUMENT.

Compared with SAP iRPA Adopted OLE Solution , The advantage is to avoid the right Excel Application dependency , It is mostly used for server-side pair Excel The processing task of .

summary

This paper first gives the enterprise level Robotic Process Automation Solution ( abbreviation RPA) The birth reason and application occasion of , Then with Excel Take the automatic operation of files as an example , In detail SAP iRPA Use steps of the solution .