Automating web-monitoring without coding: How to implement RPA using BPMN based-tools

Let's imagine I am a business owner and there is the local catalogue of companies that I am interested in to prospect and approach. Most likely businesses that are already listed in the catalogue have been contacted by me or my Sales - but what if not? What if some new businesses are being added to the catalogue and to the category that is my target group? How do I not miss them and at the same time do not spend hours manually checking the updates?

The answer is simple: You go RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and use either noCode or lowCode approach (in order to save the drama and hours when developing it from scratch and instead and do it in 20 minutes, or give your devs a noCode/lowCode tool so they can do it in 10 minutes - based on your needs).

This means that we will translate manual steps that a human would perform into a controlled and automated browser that will do all of the work for us on a daily basis.

As a result - we will save the data straight into our CRM, database, excel file. We will be able to notify the sales team about new opportunities immediately after new leads (companies) are added into the lists of our interest: categorised by location, industry, revenue and so on, by using an e-mail or text message.

So let's start simple - a blank canvas! Since our design is basically a business process let's use universal notation for business process modeling called BPMN! Easy to use, drag and drop. You can use one of the tools below:

• bpmn.io - open source platform for business process designing and modelling;
• frends.com - a target automation platform I launched my process at - using 30 day free trial;

So first thing first what you need to set up is schedule - when you would like your process to run.

Let's set it up, for example, for every day from Monday to Friday at midnight. You can also add manual and API triggers (you can design your own API using swagger in frends) and queues.

Then, based on the steps that I would do if I were to do catalogue browsing manually to search for new companies, I replicate the whole process but in a visual form:

My steps would include:

1. Open the browser;
2. Navigate to the page and target category;
3. Go to page one of my category;
4. Iterate over each business
5. For each business - I would check if it is already listed in my HubSpot or any other CRM:

• (If-Yes) If it's something new - send me and my sales team an e-mail or text message;
• (If-No) Update business info in my CRM;

6. Go to next page in category in (3); and repeat steps until (8), if there are no results - stop.

All steps above can be visualised in a following process design:

The benefit is that it saves time, as it's a 5 minute job, and anybody can understand it, both tech and business team members.

What we do next is that we will have to add some variables and statements to our tasks (the white fields) - to specify which pages we would like to iterate through, and give some parameters to the loops.

So our software (machine-controlled-browser) will know where to go and what information to retriev.

After the above process is ready, the final stage will be to the following steps still using a web-browser:

1. Deploy it to some server/local machine (or you can use cloud with the license);
2. Trigger the manual run (click on one button);
3. Watch and monitor execution (frends guarantees SLA on web-app - so it never fails).

Note! For more advanced users you can add fullCode, external C# libraries, JS code to be injected in the browser. So you can implement everything!

In addition, frends include all CI/CD features, like:

• Version control out of the box;
• Environment management and monitoring;
• Environment variables for configuration purposes;
• Possibility to publish your API's and trigger processes that connect different systems.

Interested in trying it for yourself? Get your own free 30 day trial of frends. If you wish we also can save this process to your trial frends account.

Learm more about the frends trial

Not ready yet for a trial? Schedule a demo with one of our integration consultants, or just contact us from below!

Learn more:

Webinar On-Demand (English): How to secure your ERP and CRM implementation project with low-code integrations

Webinar (in Swedish): frends iPaaS – det moderna sättet att göra integration och automation

Blog: What it is like to develop integrations with frends iPaaS?

Use Case: Real-time Data Aggregation for Service Delivery: How to automate a supply chain