The hardware and software that will be required for this project are as follows:

• A PC with UiPath Community edition version 19+ installed (we covered the hardware relating to installation in Chapter 1, 
  Getting Started with RPA).
• A Chrome browser with a UiPath add-on.
• A Zoho Desk SaaS application. You can sign up for free at https://desk.zoho.com.
• Microsoft Excel 2007 and later.
• Check out the following video to see the Code in Action: https://bit.ly/36gX89C.

You can find the code files present in this chapter on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Robotic-Process-Automation-Projects/tree/master/HelpdeskAgentAttendedAutomation.

We will automate the creation of help desk tickets using data from an Excel sheet. 

In this project, once the bot is invoked, it will check whether there are new request files available to process. If available, the bot will read the ticket data from this spreadsheet. The data is then used to create support tickets in the Zoho Desk application.

Here is the high-level workflow for the project:

We believe it should take you around 1 hour to build and run this first project. Obviously, the amount of time it will take will vary depending on your background. 

Now, let's dive into the details and step through the creation of the automation. 

Let's now look at the overall flow for this project in terms of the components we will be building and their interaction.

We will have a main workflow called Main.xaml, which will invoke other workflows and orchestrate the automation. Within this workflow, we will keep checking for the trigger Alt + S. Once triggered, we will check whether the Request.xlsx file is available. If the file is available, then we will invoke ReadRequestExcel.xaml from Main.xaml.

Within ReadRequestExcel.xaml, we will use the file path as an input argument to open the Excel file, read the content, and store it in three output arguments – Name, Email, and Subject.

Next, Main.xaml invokes ZohoAutomation.xaml with these three arguments (Name, Email, and Subject) to create the ticket in the Zoho desk. If all goes well, a Successful message is returned.

Finally, once the Successful message is received, request.xlsx is moved to the Processed folder and the bot is ready to process new requests:

This was an overall flow to give you a high-level view of what we will be doing to create this automation.

Before we configure our main workflow, let's undertake some groundwork that is required for the project. 

As part of the project groundwork, we will create the project folders, along with a spreadsheet for the ticket data, and also log in to the Zoho SaaS application.

Let's create two folders, one to accommodate the spreadsheet containing the data to process, and the other to accommodate the processed spreadsheets:

1. Open Windows Explorer on your machine and create a folder for the project.
2. Within this project folder, create two folders, called Requests and Processed, as shown in the following screenshot:

We will place the spreadsheet in Requests, and then the bot will move the processed sheets to the Processed folder.

Next, let's create the requests spreadsheet. 

Now, let's create a simple spreadsheet with ticket data:

1. Open Excel and create a sheet with three rows and two columns, as shown in the following screenshot:

The first column contains the data labels, and the second column contains the data you like for your support ticket.

2. Save this file as Request.xlsx in the Requests folder that we created in the previous section. 

Let's now log in to the Zoho application. 

Perform the following steps:

1. Go to desk.zoho.com and choose the option to log in. You should be directed to a page to log in or sign up if you do not have an ID. Create a free desk account by filling in the details if you do not have one:

2. Once you register with your details and company name, you will be walked through the steps to get started. You should eventually end up on the Zoho Desk view with the current tickets: 

Leave the tab open with the application logged in for the automation.

That was all the project groundwork we needed to implement.

Now, as mentioned in the Project detail section, we will create the workflows for the automation. Let's start with the main workflow.

Let's start by opening the UiPath Studio. This is one of the UiPath components we installed in Chapter 1, Getting Started with RPA. On your Windows machine, you can go to Start and then select UiPath Studio.