RPA Solution Architecture

“Worldwide Robotic Process Automation Software Revenue to reach $4.5 B in 2023“

Somnath Das Aditya P Dutta

Senior Architect Senior Architect
somnath.das@in.ibm.com adidutta@in.ibm.com
Who is an architect ? What does he/she do ?
Many specialists are
required to construct the Builder, Subcontractors
house: Framers, Plumbers,
Electricians, and Painters.

Architect
Occupants

The Architect draws up the plan to

meet the occupants’ needs and Occupants will
ensures that the builders meet the live in the house
specifications, understands the and have wants
influence of building codes, other and needs.
regulations, legacy, power and gas
services, and the neighborhood
architecture review committee
guidelines.

The Inspectors ensure that the The Project

house is built as per quality Manager manages
standards such as local the construction of Project
building codes. the house and
coordinates Manager
Building Inspector subcontractors.
 Who is an architect ? What does he/she do ?
Designers, Coders,
Package Specialists, Technical Specialists,
Testers, and others are
needed to construct the Designers, and Developers Architecture (as a
solution.
discipline):
Architecture is an
engineering discipline
Solution Architect
Business that studies methods of
Sponsor, designing systems that
Users provide a solution to a
The Architect creates the
solution architecture to meet
business problem. The
requirements and ensures that Users and their solution must satisfy
the development meets the delegates have functional and non-
specifications, regulations, and their
passes governance requirements. functional requirements
checkpoints. in a way that best
balances competing
stakeholders’ concerns
and must take
The Enterprise Architect ensures that the constraints into
solution architect complies with
enterprise standards, governance, and
The Project account.
Manager manages Project
roadmaps. the Solution
Delivery. Manager
Enterprise Architect
Architecture Types
Cross dimensional aspects

• Business Architecture ▪ Business Architects “do” BA

• At both EA and SA levels.

• IT Architecture ▪ IT Architects “do” ITA

• Mostly at the SA level.

IT Architecture
(BA)
Architecture
Business
▪
Enterprise Architecture Enterprise Architects “do” EA
• Across both BA and ITA.

Architecture
•
• They often own guidance at the SA level.
Solution Architecture • Solution Architect create solutions to business
problems – SA
• Typically within IT Architecture, but
• Can create BAs too

• Package Solution Architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA)
• Application Architecture
• Information/Data Architecture Solution Architecture (SA)

• Infrastructure Architecture
• ….
Technically significant requirements for RPA

Mimicking humans is not easy – Eyes, Brain and Hands.

Training Mode - Observe, Understand

Execution Mode – View/recognize, Apply understanding, Execute
Architects look at a problem in a number of
dimensions to organise their thoughts
• Functional
• Interact with screens
• Record and play
• Monitoring & Analytics Application level

• Operational Quality (NFR) Technical level

Physical perspective
• Secure / Compliant Logical perspective
• Exceptions management Functional Operational
• Resilient / Robust aspect aspect

• Scalable
Screen Scraping / Visual recognition
UI access using UI frameworks

• Most automation tools are based either on the coordinates of the controls or the
text they contain, but this is not always reliable. A good RPA product understands the
internals of the major GUI frameworks, from Win32 to WPF, HTML, and Java. It can
recognize graphical objects by their platform-specific attributes and provides a
unified GUI automation API that works the same way everywhere. In very particular
scenarios, where object recognition is not available (such as with remote desktop
apps or in Citrix environments), it uses image and OCR text-based automation.
Record and Play

• Use GUI automation framework

• Desktop apps
• Web apps
• Virtual machines (Citrix)
• Record, Edit, Play
• Need not be a programmer. Easy for techno-functionals
• Pre-defined actions available
• Accurate (Not lost in translation)
• Faster time to market
Monitoring dashboard and Analytics

• Monitor Bot status

• Monitor Process status
• Calendar status of Bot execution

• Analytics and Reporting at Bot, process and business levels

• Automated triaging
• AI diagnostics and auto-remediation

• Business process mining

Monitoring dashboard and Analytics

• Real-time view of calendar

slot hotspots with predicted
runtime duration
• Schedule recommendations
during on-boarding
Security

• Authentication

• Role Based Access Control

• Data security
• At rest
• In motion
Security - Authentication
Security - RBAC
Security – Data Encryption

• Encryption keys and credential vault

• Data at rest
• Data in transit
• Data in use
Security – Other standard items

• Network security
• Anti malware
• Secure Deployment
Exceptions management

• Catching a failure event / Handling an exception

• Pre-checks to avoid a failure situation
• Retry / Recover / Resume
• Compensate
• Hand off to Human

• Best practice guides

• Reusable components
Resilient and Scalable

• Distributed / HA architecture
• Single points of failure
• Components with high transaction processing usage

• Scalable – Cloud, as-a-service models

Deployment considerations

• Connectivity (Bot farm to enterprise apps)

• Bot IDs / provisioning

• Prevent rogue usage

RPA Layered Design Approach
RPA @ Cloud
Monolithic vs Microservice Architecture
RPA Reference Architecture
RPA Solution Architecture