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What is Zoan Automation

Zoan Automation is a platform to create software robots (also called bots) that automatically do repetitive tasks that today a person performs by hand on the computer: copy data between systems, download reports, fill out forms, read emails, process invoices, generate documents.

This category of tools is known as RPA (Robotic Process Automation). We are not talking about physical robots: a Zoan Automation bot is a program that uses applications just as a person would—opens the browser, clicks, writes, reads the screen—but without getting tired, without making mistakes and at any time.

What can I automate?

Section titled “What can I automate?”

Almost any repetitive process that you do today with digital systems. Some real examples:

  • Data extraction: download a report from a web portal every morning and upload it to Excel.
  • Integration between applications that do not speak to each other: take data from an email and register it in an ERP.
  • Document processing: read PDF invoices, extract totals and consolidate them.
  • Reconciliations: compare two data sources and mark the differences.
  • Notifications and reports: Send an email or automatic summary when a condition is met.
  • Bulk Upload: Take a list of 500 records and fetch them one by one in a system without API.

A good candidate for automation is a task that is repetitive, based on clear rules and of significant volume.

How does it work, big time?

Section titled “How does it work, big time?”

The life cycle of an automation has five steps:

  1. You design the automation in Designer, combining activities from the Zoan Automation catalog.
  2. You publish that job to the platform as a package with a version number.
  3. You configure a process, which associates the package with an execution environment.
  4. The agent — a program installed on your computer or server — receives the order and executes the process.
  5. You monitor the result, logs and status in real time from the web portal.
flowchart LR
  D["Designer<br/>diseño"] -->|Diseñas| N["Zoan Cloud<br/>paquete"]
  N -->|Publicas| A["Agent<br/>corre"]
  A -->|Ejecutas| P["Portal<br/>logs"]

To understand what each term means (environment, agent, process, execution…), read Key concepts. To build your first automation from start to finish, follow Getting Started.

Attended vs. unattended

Section titled “Attended vs. unattended”

A bot can run in two ways:

Modehow it runsExample of use
AttendedIn your Windows session, while you work. You launch it.An assistant who fills out a tedious form when you ask him to
UnattendedAlone, on a server, with no one present—even at dawn—and usually scheduled.A process that reconciles sales every night at 2 a.m.

The same playbook can be used in both modes. The difference is where and when you run it, not how you design it.

The three pieces of the platform

Section titled “The three pieces of the platform”
PiezaWhat is itWhere do you live
Zoan CloudThe central brain: web portal and API where you manage everything and see the resultsIn the cloud (your tu-empresa.cloud.zoansoftware.com subdomain)
DesignerThe desktop app where you design and test automationsTu computador (Windows)
AgentThe program that runs the bots in your infrastructureTu computador o servidor (Windows)

Designer and Agent come together in a single installer, Zoan Platform. See Architecture for details on how they communicate.

Who is it for?

Section titled “Who is it for?”
  • Operations teams and business areas (accounting, HR, purchasing…) that want to get rid of manual tasks without depending on IT for each run.
  • Automation analysts and developers who build the bots by reusing activity packages.
  • IT administrators who centrally manage environments, agents, users and credentials, with control and traceability.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”