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Getting started with Anymate

Watching your first users manage a software robot you wrote is an exciting moment. We have made the journey there as fast and flexible as possible. Follow the steps below and you can have a robot running in no time. If you have any questions please reach out to your customer success manager.

Use this article as a roadmap to a successful and fast proof of concept. We link documentation for each step

The greatest hurdle to success: Process design

Through interaction with our users, we have found that the greatest hurdle is when designing the process and choosing the different features to implement. Especially whether to use task management or not.

Please consult this page on designing processes if you have any doubts

1. Decide what to automate

You need a process to work on. Either you pick one from your pipeline, or you pick one that you already automated to refactor. We suggest you think of the following when you pick the process:

  • Choose a process with mild to moderate complexity
    You should choose a process that you can handle. Anymate is built to handle extremely complex processes with many actors, rules, and dependencies, but there is no point in going for the deepest end of the pool on first jump.
  • Pick a process with task management
    There is a lot of great features in Anymate related to the flow of tasks through your automation. You, and your business, will get to see more if you built a process with tasks. (The opposite is a process that dont rely on task management)
  • Pick a process where you have a super user on the business side
    This will ensure that you also gets to see how business works with their automation and how Anymate improves and stabilizes their work flow. If business don't want to play along then no tool in the universe, no matter how good, can perform. Anymate is built to serve business - with their demands and challenges in mind - so as long as they set aside a bit of time, you should be fine.
  • When you pick one process it doesnt have to mean its only one process in Anymate
    It is very valuable to modulize your scripts so they can be used in different ways. You might choose a process that ends up being best designed using 2 or 3 Anymate Processes. More about this later.

2. Create a Mate account

Before you can use the API you need a Mate-account in Anymate. Mate accounts can only be used by scripts. Multiple scripts can use the same account and also on the same time.

Call it something human so your business side has something to relate to. If you need inspiration, Marvin and Hal seems to always work.

3. Create a Team

We put you in a default team to start off. You can rename that one if you want, or can make a new team to put the chosen process into. Teams are usually called something like Customer Service, Finance North, or IT Development. Simply go to the Teams tab and create new or manage settings on the default one. You can then put you and Marvin into the team so you can see it.

I cant see myself / i cant see the team

We currently have up to a 10minute delay on authorization to kick through. Get a cup of coffee and do a CTRL F5 in a few minutes.

If this doesnt work, please check the team in the Teams tab again to see if you are actually in the team

4. Create your first process

Go to the Processes Tab and click create new. Name the new process and put it into the team you want.

You now end up on the most important process-settings: the Task Data. The biggest decision here is: Do the process require task management?

5. Create Keys and Input Fields

If your process has tasks you want to design what the data on the task should look like. Here you can use Keys and normal Input Fields.

Keys are your specific data keys that you use in your different core systems. Stuff like Customer ID, Good Number, Client ID, Employee #, etc, are obvious keys, but we have also seen a lot of more technical keys like Sequence, Inventory Location, and Tracking Number. Behind the scenes we handle a key as a string.

Anymate handles keys differently from normal Input Fields in the following ways:

  • Keys are always required
  • Keys are easily searchable, forever.
  • Keys can be used to detect if two tasks are duplicates / identical
  • Keys can be used to mass-create, if you need the same task to happen to 200 different keys.
  • Keys are cross-organisation so you can use the same key in different processes and teams, and tie it all together

6. Hook the process to your automation tools

You decide how you want to solve the process. We have extensive documentation on the API and specific pages for the most popular technologies.

7. Test everything

8. Add Employees

9. Get the team up to speed

The Learn part of this documentation is focused on training your business users to use Anymate.

Send them the link to the Learn page.

10. Launch your first robot