Top 39 RPA Interview Questions and Answers

1/Sep/2021 | 16 minutes to read

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Here is a List of essential RPA - Robotic Process Automation Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers and mid level of Experienced Professionals. All answers for these RPA - Robotic Process Automation questions are explained in a simple and easiest way. These basic, advanced and latest RPA - Robotic Process Automation questions will help you to clear your next Job interview.

RPA - Robotic Process Automation Interview Questions and Answers

These interview questions are targeted for RPA - Robotic Process Automation and related tools like UiPath, Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. You must know the answers of these frequently asked RPA developer interview questions to clear Robotic Process Automation jobs interview. The companies which are using these tools are TCS, Infosys, Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini etc.

1. What is Robotic Process Automation? or What is RPA?

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is a technology that is used to automate the tasks or work in software applications and systems just like humans are performing on them. In RPA Robots can be trend based on some flow or steps to perform some actions. RPA enables organizations to make use of these software robots to finish repetitive, time consuming tasks for better satisfaction of customers.
So in simple terms RPA is a process to automate other softwares, these softwares will do repetitive and time consuming tasks which are done by humans now.

2. Give some RPA use cases or examples.

There are few examples or RPA use cases that we are listing here as below.

• Process customer orders
• Transfer data from one application to another
• Processing incoming email queries
• Payroll processing
• Call center operations
• Forms processing
• Claims processing
• For more RPA use cases or applications you can refer this - RPA Use Cases/ Applications/ Examples

3. What different types of RPA tools are available in the market?

Many different types of RPA tools are available in the market by different companies. Here is a list of commonly used Robotic Process Automation tools.

• Blue Prism - It's a company which invented the RPA (Robotic Process Automation). This company provides software robots to process clerical back office processes in an agile manner.
• RPA UiPath - A web based application to deploy, schedule, monitor, manage processes and robots.
• Automation Anywhere - A web based application to perform end to end automated business tasks.
• OpenSpan- This tool can be integrated into Visual Studio by plugins or can be used as it is standalone.
• WorkFusion- AI driven automation software, used to create and manage robots for knowledge based work. It's mainly built for Data-First companies.
• Jacada
• Pega
• Nice Systems
• There are many others.

4. What are the stages of the RPA life cycle?

RPA Life-Cycle has different phases as below.

• Identification- RPA architects and experts identify business processes with the RPA business team for RPA development.
• Analysis- Analysis of a business process for RPA development is done by RPA Architects and the business team.
• Design- In this phase PDD (Process Definition Document) is prepared by RPA Architects based on analysis in the previous phase. This document describes the information of each phase in every process.
• Bot Development- RPA developer team starts the development part by referring to PDD.
• Testing- It's a normal SDLC flow testing performed by the testing team. A dedicated team starts testing of the developed bot.
• Deployment and Maintenance- After testing is completed, the Bot is ready for deployment and use. It's followed by a maintenance process.

5. What are the characteristics of RPA?

RPA has the following characteristics.

• No Code- Making use of RPA does not require any programming language knowledge. Employees only need to trend on how RPA works. This concept keeps RPA above other automation methods.
• User Friendly- RPA softwares is very easy to use, there is no special knowledge required by the users in order to use RPA.
• Non-Disruptive- Traditional automation methods involve complex processes for transformation but In RPA transformation process is very easy and straightforward.

6. What are the advantages of RPA tools or Robotic Process Automation tools?

An Organization can get benefit in many ways by implementing RPA solutions.

• Reduced Cost- By automating the process cost savings can be achieved. Software robots also cost less than an employee.
• Quality Work- RPA softwares performs the work error free as compared to work done by humans.
• Simple and Flexible- RPA automation does not require any coding skills. Complex processes can be transformed easily.
• Better Customer Experience- RPA automation delivers error free work that results in better customer satisfaction.
• Less Operational Risk- Human errors are big mistakes, so RPA reduces the rate of errors by providing a lower level of operational risk.
• Internal Process Improvement- When AI and RPA comes together that means faster internal reporting, on boarding and other internal activities.
• Better Control- Most companies outsource the business process work but RPA provides better control over transparency, visibility etc. since all RPA development is in-house because of less effort and cost.

7. What is bot in RPA? What are the different types of bots available in RPA?

RPA Bot is a software program to perform or automate the tasks very quickly as compared to humans. RPA bots can learn and clone. In RPA, There are many different types of bots as below.

• Task bots- used for Front-end automation and best for repetitive, rule based tasks and to process structured data.
• Meta bots- perform visual captures that include GUI components and used for front-end automation (Facilitates scalability with next-gen integration). These bots are best for complex and scalable processes.
• IQ bots- These are next generation intelligent bots with some AI techniques that learn from every human error and best for managing fuzzy rules and processing unstructured data.

8. How RPA is Different from Scripting and Macros?

9. What is Attended versus Unattended Automation?

10. Explain Thin Client and Thick Client in RPA Automation.

11. What are the limitations of RPA?

RPA performs very quickly for repetitive and complex process tasks but like any other technology RPA also has some limitations.

• Incomplete Process Automation- Any Process which requires multiple department judgment (human interaction) can not be automated. It does not bring an end to end solution.
• Any Process which is using non-digital with unstructured input sources can not be automated.
• RPA does not learn from experiences so it's not a cognitive solution.

12. What are the different components of RPA Solution Architecture?

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) architecture is a very critical phase of RPA life cycle. RPA solution architecture defines how well suited the RPA solution you are developing. RPA solution is the combination of many tools, platforms and various infrastructure elements to make it a complete working RPA tool or solution. So All these blocks are decided in the architect phase. So RPA Architecture is the combination of different blocks, let's understand these blocks.
RPA Tool - The capabilities of RPA Tool that you are going to use has ability to automate the applications for any environment such as web, desktop, citrix. These tools have the ability to read/write from/to different data sources or not.
RPA Platform - A shared central repository that is used to store all the software robots and resources created using RPA tools, it's preferable in the cloud. RPA Platform has the capability to schedule, distribute and monitor other software robots where All RPA software logs can be stored. RPA Platform acts as a repository for reusable components shared across multiple software robots.
Infrastructure for RPA Execution - RPA execution infrastructure is the collection of virtual or physical machines that can be scaled up or down based on data patterns, on which software robots are executed for attended or unattended process automation.
Configuration Management - When RPA software version is important then configuration management comes to constantly update software robots to newer versions. When multiple team members are working on shared components then it's needed to maintain code versions and branching.
Other Considerations - There are many RPA vendors in the market providing all components as a single unit for RPA development. You should consider the tools or platforms which are providing more configuration management capabilities.

13. What is Screen Scraping in RPA?

Screen Scraping is the process of capturing the screen display bitmap data. Bitmap Data is cross checked against stored information to decipher it. This data is stored in databases or spreadsheets and used for other applications.
Screen scraping is well suited to work with application interfaces which can not be directly accessed by any UI framework or code. Screen scraping for Text is very common, when UI frameworks or code is not able to extract text from applications then Automation captures the text blocks and decipher it.

14. How is RPA different from Traditional Automation?

RPA and Traditional both are used for automating the business process tasks. But there are few differences as below.

• For traditional automation, programming languages and many APIs are required to integrate the systems, On the other hand RPA just mimics the user action at UI level just like humans.
• For Traditional Automation complexity matters as developers require good knowledge of system and programming language but in RPA robot software is performing the tasks so complexity does not matter as long as robot software is following the instructions.
• Sometimes there is no access to source code, APIs or skilled resources not available then traditional automation might not be an option. But RPA works only on User Interface so here RPA will be a good option.
• RPA does not require a lot of time, complex programming knowledge and robust testing efforts, it's just a trend and applied concept. Traditional Automation requires complex programming, testing efforts and time as well.
So RPA is the process of performing repetitive and redundant tasks faster and similar to humans without any programming knowledge and human intervention.

15. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Screen Scraping?

Screen Scraping has some advantages and some disadvantages as below.
Advantage

• Sometimes UI elements are not accessible with the UI Frameworks or Code then Screen Scraping is the option.
• When Scanned or Image based text is not accessible with Code or UI framework then it's achieved using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

16. For the selection of RPA tools what key points should you consider?

While selecting any RPA tool you should keep these points in consideration.

• AI/ML - RPA tool is supporting AI based techniques or not.
• Platform Independence - How Flexible the tool is as RPA tools should run independent of platform.
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition) - should provide the OCR capability.
• User Friendliness - How easy to understand the RPA software to process the tasks.
• Maintenance Support - Every Software has bugs and errors so what is the service support for that RPA tool?
• Cost - Every organization has a limitation of cost for their software budgets.
• Scalability - If companies plan to expand their automation then how scalable is the tool to perform the tasks?
• Security - How secure is RPA Tool for very sensitive data like health care and financial?
• Hosting and Deployment Option - How easy is the deployment and maintenance of Software robots?

17. What is the goal behind RPA?

The Main goal of RPA is to perform repetitive and complex business tasks (which are performed by humans) very quickly, with minimal cost and zero rate of errors. RPA also provides many AI capabilities.

18. What are the 2 scripting standards that you should consider during automation?

Two standards that you should consider in scripting are:

• Naming conventions should be uniform.
• Indentation should be adequate.

19. Can RPA automate any business process?

RPA is not responsible for all business process automation. A business Process which involves repetitive steps based on some business rules is perfectly fit for RPA. A Process which makes decisions based on some scenarios, and performs some reasoning is not fit for RPA.

20. What is a Test Automation Framework?

A Testing Automation Framework is defined as a set of best practices or certain guidelines and tools to write test cases and to achieve expected results. These best practices could include object repositories, test data handling methods, coding standards, process to store test results and information about external resources.

21. What different types of Test Automation Frameworks do you know?

There are 6 different types of Testing Automation Framework with their own advantages and disadvantages as below.

• Linear Automation Framework - It's most basic automation framework also known as 'Record and Playback' framework. In this framework No coding is required to perform the tests. Testers can record the navigations, user inputs, checks and then can play back the recording to perform the tests.
• Modular Based Testing Framework - This framework is based on modular programming concepts as testers are required to divide the application into separate units or sections. For each individual unit tests are performed in isolation and then combined to achieve larger tests. If any changes are made to the application then test changes are only made to a particular module not in full application.
• Library Architecture Testing Framework - It's similar to modular based testing framework with some additional benefits as Application is divided into separate scripts on the basis of objective or function so that similar tasks in the scripts can be identified and grouped by the functions. All these functions are stored in a library and can be used by scripts any time.
• Data-Driven Framework - It's a framework where data used in scripts is stored separately in external resources. Sometimes there is a requirement to run the script multiple times with different data so this approach makes it easy as No code changes are required in script, just you can change your data source.
• Keyword-Driven Framework - It's similar to data driven framework but here keywords associated with the object or to parts of UI the action is being performed on, are stored in a separate data table. All keywords are the part of scripts that is being executed to test GUI of an application.
• Hybrid Testing Framework - It's a combination of any above to take the advantages of one and to mitigate the disadvantages of another. Hybrid Testing Framework is mostly adopted now a days to take more benefits to achieve expected results.

22. What are the benefits of Test Automation Framework?

A Test Automation Framework provides many benefits as below.

• Increases test speed
• Improve test efficiency
• Lower maintenance cost
• Code reusability
• Maximizing test coverage
• Improve Test Accuracy

23. What are things you should remember for successful RPA Implementation?

You should keep certain points in mind for successful RPA Implementation.

• Plan - There should be a proper step wise plan for the expectations from automation.
• Process Selection - Choose which process in an organization needs to be automated.
• Partnership - means there should be good collaboration in all involved departments.
• Training - Employees should be trained on the benefits and uses of RPA Technology.
• Testing Plan - There should be a proper initial and fall back plan for automation.
• Core Team - There should be a core team of experts for big automation Projects.

24. How long does it take to automate a Process in RPA?

Generally, RPA Process takes 1-3 months for the automation part. But there are certain scenarios where you need to put some breaks and not let them enter the process for delivery. These scenarios can be:

• New Technology
• New Process found
• On-boarding New Team Members
• Code changes, Access, Testing etc

25. Does RPA require programming knowledge or special skills?

RPA operations do not require any prior programming knowledge or special skills. Anyone can get some training on RPA tools and start the work. So RPA works on just trends and applies concepts.

26. What are the most popular RPA tools?

Blue Prism, UiPath and Automations Anywhere are the most popular RPA Tools in the market.

28. Why RPA fits for Data migration?

Data migration is a common task for most organizations as they do mergers, acquisitions, retirement of old legacy systems, perform modernizations etc. Most organizations use Robotic Process Automation for data migrations as Robots are well suited to perform repetitive , rules based and highly structured data. RPA comes with following data migration benefits.

• Data migration speed can be increased by deploying multiple Robots.
• Cost can be reduced using RPA as it does not require any coding or specific UI skills.
• RPA reduces the errors by eliminating human intervention.
• RPA can bring the data in line from multiple systems.
• Robots are able to deal with multiple data formats.
• RPA can log the information in required situations.
• RPA has capability to detect inconsistent and low quality data and fix the errors in real-time.

29. How to choose the right process for Robotic Process Automation?

There are several factors which determine a process to be automated.

• Rules Based Process - In Organizations most work involves rule based tasks which are performed by humans. A Process which works around rules instead of employee judgment is well suited for RPA.
• Routine and Well Defined Process - A task which is performed on a routine basis, does not change frequently or rarely changes is good for RPA.
• Data Consideration - A Process works well for structured data like CSV, JSON, Database, Spreadsheets etc. When Data is not structured then Process can not be automated or difficult to automate.

30. How will you determine that, Does it make sense to automate a Process?

Sometimes to automate every process is not worth it for an organization. Process automation should have a positive and meaningful impact on organization. So consider the process to automate which has more likely effects as below.

• Repetitive Tasks - To automate a repetitive task has a positive and meaningful impact for an organization as compared to tasks which are executed occasionally.
• Time consuming and Time critical tasks are good to automate as these tasks affect the performance of humans but not Robots.
• Less Errors - As Humans can make the errors and it takes time to fix those errors but Robots can reduce these human errors and produce quality results in less time.
• When many systems use the same data, there are more chances of human errors but Robots can handle that data without any errors.

31. How to select the best processes to automate with Intelligent Automation?

Choose a process for Intelligent Automation for

• Unstructured Data - Intelligent automation comes with the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and is able to process unstructured data. Intelligent Automation is good fit for a Process that uses unstructured data as RPA is capable of performing automation of structured data.
  Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Advanced Image Recognition provides the capability of digitizing the data and Machine Learning can process that unstructured data from scanned images and documents.
• Judgment based Process - Intelligent Automation allows the automation of an end to end process which has minimal human requirement and certain cognitive decisions.

32. How to test RPA tasks?

33. How will you do RPA Source code Management?

Source code management acts as a backbone for any software development. There are many VCS (Version Control Systems) which are used to manage the code. VCS does not help only to manage the source code, it reduces efforts while pushing new code to delivery. VCSs should be configured properly in the RPA control room before you start your coding. Version control systems also help to recover your code in case of system failures.

34. How will you handle secure data like username and password in an automation project?

In RPA projects, secure data like username and password should be stored in centralized encrypted locations not in scripts and other in-secure locations.

35. What are the security risks associated with RPA? and how will you mitigate them?

Despite its benefits, RPA introduces some security risks.
RPA bot required privileged access to perform some piece of work or automated tasks such as login into the system, move data from one application to another application etc. To perform these tasks, Bots need credentials which are stored directly in script or some rule based process. Sometimes there is some step to retrieve these credentials from some location.
Credentials are kept unchanged and stored in insecure locations because they are shared and reused again and again. So Attackers can steal these RPA credentials easily to get privileged access into systems.
You can mitigate these security risks as below.

• You can use some encrypted centralized locations to store these credentials and should not store sensitive data in scripts and insecure locations.
• Use the principle of least privilege access for bots means assign the access of application which is required by Bot.
• Secure RPA console by credentials managed by Admins and should monitor the session activities and terminate the process if found any suspected session.

36. Which RPA Tool did you use? Explain the architecture of that Tool.

It's a scenario based question that may be asked in every interview. You need to explain the architecture of the tool which you worked on like UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere etc.

37. Explain Surface automation in RPA.

An Automation that is accomplished using visual techniques such as image recognition, screenshots and often also OCR is known as Surface Automation. In Surface automation we use visual techniques instead of application specific APIs and hooks.

38. Are there any open source tools for RPA (Robotic Process Automation) available?

An enterprise or a RPA professional initially explores open-source tools that help to understand automation without any cost involvement. There are many RPA open-source tools as follows.

• UiPath
• Blue Prism
• HelpSystems
• Automai
• TagUI
• RPA for Python
• Taskt
• Pegasystems
• LINX
• Automagica

39. What are the technical pitfalls in RPA projects?

To know more about technical pitfalls in RPA projects visit this page RPA Project pitfalls

RPA - Robotic Process Automation Quick Facts

• RPA Robotic Process Automation is becoming popular day by day for all sizes of business, as it's doing their business tasks automation for their operations to run continuously and smoothly. It's also reducing any human errors. RPA vendors are introducing some advanced techniques like AI - Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning techniques, Speech Recognition etc.
• It's used to automate the complex and repetitive business processes which are done by humans now by software robots in very less time, with quality results, and at minimal cost. It does not make any changes in the system, just replacement of humans by software robots.
• Many companies accept that they spend 20 to 30 percent of human work hours on repetitive business tasks and they spend a lot of money on that, so RPA is going to reduce this.
• RPA does not require any prior programming knowledge.
• RPA is being used by most Industries like Finance, IT, Retail, health-care, telecommunication, Banking, Manufacturing industries etc.
• RPA involves a lot of cost but benefits are more as compared to cost involved.
• RPA is not replacing humans completely as RPA users specify which steps are being performed by robot software and other would be implemented by the system.

Future of RPA - Robotic Process Automation

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is doing very well in all industries to automate their business tasks and being adopted across all industries. RPA has very good future scope as It's providing many benefits to the industries as compared to cost involved in it. Operations are running very smoothly and less chance of human errors.
RPA vendors are also introducing new techniques to provide more capabilities like AI Techniques, ML (Machine Learning), Cloud support etc. Industries are providing many RPA Jobs opportunities in which you can make your career with attractive salaries. RPA developers are being hired across all industries.

Some General Interview Questions for RPA

1. How much will you rate yourself in RPA?

When you attend an interview, Interviewer may ask you to rate yourself in a specific Technology like RPA, So It's depend on your knowledge and work experience in RPA.

2. What challenges did you face while working on RPA?

This question may be specific to your technology and completely depends on your past work experience. So you need to just explain the challenges you faced related to RPA in your Project.

3. What was your role in the last Project related to RPA?

It's based on your role and responsibilities assigned to you and what functionality you implemented using RPA in your project. This question is generally asked in every interview.

4. How much experience do you have in RPA?

Here you can tell about your overall work experience on RPA.

5. Have you done any RPA Certification or Training?

It depends on the candidate whether you have done any RPA training or certification. Certifications or training are not essential but good to have.

Conclusion

We have covered some frequently asked RPA - Robotic Process Automation Interview Questions and Answers to help you for your Interview. All these Essential RPA - Robotic Process Automation Interview Questions are targeted for mid level of experienced Professionals and freshers.
While attending any RPA - Robotic Process Automation Interview if you face any difficulty to answer any question please write to us at info@qfles.com. Our IT Expert team will find the best answer and will update on the portal. In case we find any new RPA - Robotic Process Automation questions, we will update the same here.