Adding Decision Management to Robotic Process Automation

• Published in: Business Process Management: Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation Forum Vol. 428; pp. 23 - 37
• Main Authors: Völker, Maximilian, Siegert, Simon, Weske, Mathias
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2021; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing
• Subjects: Decision management; Robotic Process Automation; RPA design
• ISBN: 9783030858667; 3030858669
• ISSN: 1865-1348; 1865-1356
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85867-4_3

Robotic Process Automation promises to release employees from repetitive and monotonous work, providing space for creative and innovative tasks. RPA tools provide a wide range of techniques to automate user interactions, including filling forms and copying values between applications. While it is accepted that decisions play an important role in business processes, they are not a first-class citizen in RPA. This paper proposes a framework and a software architecture that integrates decision management into RPA. The work is evaluated by a prototype that introduces Decision Model and Notation (DMN) capabilities to the RPA software tool UiPath by utilizing Camunda’s decision engine.