Review: UiPath aces robotic process automation

Early attempts to streamline repetitive front-office tasks often involved macro-driven mouse tricks and screen-scraped regex voodoo. Those brittle solutions were tripped up by the slightest interface change. Uptime was spotty and maintenance never ending. Today, robotic process automation (RPA) builds on those early solutions but with a better-honed set of tools and technologies that ease both development and maintenance. RPA tools can adapt more readily to input changes, coax field-level data out of complex PDFs, and even turn terminal and thin client screens from mainframe or VDI applications into live, actionable forms.