Outcome
Virtual Professor Assistant RPA BOT
Streamlining Automating Student Query Management for Professors: Enhancing Efficiency and Data Security with RPA using UiPath.
Decreased response time will help provide resolution to a greater number of students.
Increase in professor’s productivity (as they only have to focus on core problems to resolve)
Manual handling of email queries by professors results in inefficiencies and delays in responding to students' inquiries.
Problem Statement
What it does?
Tools
Techniques / Skills
UiPath, and MS office applications
The RPA bot designed for this project aims to streamline the process of managing email queries sent to a professor's email account by students. By automating the collection and compilation of student queries, the bot enables the professor to efficiently track and respond to these queries in a timely manner, minimizing manual effort and reducing the risk of data errors. The bot will log in to the professor's email account, identify all student query emails from the current day, and extract relevant data such as the sender's name, email address, and query content. The extracted data will be compiled into an Excel file, which will be saved offline to ensure data security. Additionally, at the end of each day, the bot will automatically send an email to the professor's account, containing the compiled Excel file as an attachment.
By implementing this RPA solution, academic institutions can optimize communication channels between professors and students, enhancing the overall educational experience while leveraging technology to improve administrative tasks.
RPA, Email Parsing, Data Extraction, UiPath, PDD (Process Definition Document), As-is Process (Current State), To-be Process (Future State).
1.1 Objectives
1. Filled in Process Definition Document
2. Credentials (user ID and password) required to logon to machines and applications
3. Test Data to support development
4. Access to UiPath RPA technology
5. Understanding of email protocols used by the professor’s email (like SMTP or IMAP)
6. Access to an Excel software
7. Knowledge of data processing and automation
8. Understanding of error handling and exception handling
The business objectives and benefits expected by the Business Process Owner after automation of the selected business process are:
♦ Increase efficiency by 85%: Automate the process of collecting and compiling email queries into an Excel sheet to reduce the time spent on this task by 85%.
♦ Improve response time: Automate the process of collecting and compiling email queries into an Excel sheet to respond to email queries within 24 hours of receipt.
♦ Reduce errors: Implement error handling and exception handling mechanisms in the RPA bot to reduce errors and improve the accuracy of the data in the compiled Excel sheet.
♦ Improve tracking: Automate the process of collecting and compiling email queries into an Excel sheet to improve tracking of emailed recipients and details of every query.
♦ Increase productivity: Automate the process of collecting and compiling email queries into an Excel sheet to increase productivity by enabling the professor to focus on responding to email queries instead of manually compiling them.
♦ Improve data analysis: Automate the process of collecting and compiling email queries into an Excel sheet to improve data analysis by providing a consolidated view of all email queries and their details.
♦ Reduce response time variability: Automate the process of collecting and compiling email queries into an Excel sheet to reduce the variability in response time, regardless of the number of queries received.
1.2 Minimum Pre-requisites for automation
2.3 As IS Detailed Process map
2.2 Applications used in the process
The table includes a comprehensive list of all the applications that are used as part of the automated
process, at various steps in the flow.
2.4 Additional sources of process documentation
The activities OUT of scope of RPA, are listed here.
1. Urgency of email
2. Prioritizing emails
3. Email content creation
4. Complex queries which require human decision / intervention
5. Responding back to the respective students' mail
3. To BE Detailed Processed Map
The activities in scope of RPA, are listed here:
1. Verify emails for attachments.
2. Email processing means differentiating between students and other faculties email.
3. Handle exception if query is unclear or unattached files or missing subject line/ student ID.
4. Create record of queries in spreadsheet
5. Sending email with attached excel to the professor
3.1.1 Change/Improvement details
Some known and unknown business exception handling scenarios have been identified and are listed below as follows.
3.1.2 Areas already automated
The table below reflects all the business process exceptions captured during the process evaluation and documentation. These are known exceptions, met in practice before. For each of these exceptions, defining a corresponding expected action that the robot should complete if it encounters the exception.
3.2 In Scope for RPA
3.3 Out of Scope for RPA
Certain scenarios like Server Connectivity Issue, Integration with Other Applications, System Resource. Limitation Error will not generate any data and will display a pop-up error message as data not generated.
3.4 Business Exceptions Handling
3.4.1 Known Exceptions
If there is an Unforeseen Changes in Email Structure, Changes in Business Processes, Integration with Other Systems, Network and Infrastructure Issues, and Human Error, an email will be sent to the George Brown Management and Bot Support regarding the matter.
3.4.2 Unknown Exceptions
3.5.1 Known Errors or Exception
A comprehensive list of all errors, warnings or notifications should be consolidated here with the description and action to be taken, for each, by the Robot. Errors identified in the automation process can be classified as:
2.1 Process Overview
General information about the process selected for RPA prior to automation.
3.5 Application Error and Exception Handling
3.5.2 Unknown Errors and Exceptions
Process Definition Document (PDD)
1. Introduction
2. As IS Process Description
Below section provides the overview of the student query compilation with current process
3.1 To BE Detailed Process Map
Below section provides the overview of the student query compilation after automation.
4. Other requirements and Observations
Student queries would be documented and archieved on a weekly basis for report generation and analysis.
Working of the automation, documents that are created, and the process flow created in Uipath are all in a short video mentioned below,
