Chapter 2: Installing Automation Anywhere
The latest Community Edition of Automation Anywhere is a fully cloud-based platform. It is also available to students and small businesses for free. There is no limit on the number of bots you can build; the only limitation is that they can only be deployed to one device. This makes it ideal to learn how to start building RPA bots.
The basic components needed for any version of Automation Anywhere to run are Control Room and the Client. Control Room functions as a management tool. It is used to manage your user accounts, devices, bots, and schedules, as well as giving bot insights. In previous versions, the Client was the bot development interface, but this has been superseded in the latest Community Edition A2019 and all the development is now done from within Control Room. So, there is no need to install any client application.
The previous chapter showed how to register with Automation Anywhere. This registration process will create a user account for you and allocate your account to a control room. You will receive an email with the Control Room URL details as well as your login credentials.
In this chapter, we will get Automation Anywhere up and running, ready to start building bots. You will learn how to connect to the control room and update your profile, and we will move forward to setting up the machine you would run your bot on, known as a device. After creating the device, you will learn how to configure and set up any credentials needed to log in to the device. By the end of this chapter, you will have completed learning how to set up the environment and get ready for your RPA bot development journey using Automation Anywhere.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- Connecting to Control Room
- Preparing your device
- Configuring profile and device credentials
