I was part of an initiative to learn a new tech. And to do it fast. How would you react in such situation?
The involvement was to learn as much RPA as possible, in order to prepare for a discussion with a potential new client who used this tech. All the learning, practice and preparation were done using UI Path as the main technology. What did this involve? Let’s see.
The starting point is to look at the certifications available for this tech, which can be found in the UI Path Academy page. The options they offer are quite vast, and we preferred to go with some option close to the first steps available. We pendulated between Automation Developer Associate (first level) and Automation Developer Professional (second level). The goal became to try and achieve one certification as proof of practice and experience with UI Path. As a learning model, we took the Professional level certification, because the learning path contained all from the Associate part, plus a few more hours extra.
Luckily, UI Path has a very well structured learning plan prepared for each certification. The content is vast, the progress is trackable, and the format is a mix of text, video, images and occasional quizzes to check intermediary progress. Thee content I chose to follow stated: 84 hours 45 minutes to complete.
Following all the concepts, with practice along the lessons with my own local UI Path Studio, I’d say the whole preparation took over 100 hours. But the great factor into this is due to the self-practice done in parallel with the tutorials, not just resorting to following said content. The main practical activities included creating, editing and testing various workflows for automating different types processes using regular applications or web browsers.
One of the best features that I kept in memory was the option to record a set of activities, and turn it into a workflow.
The process felt a bit familiar because the UI Path Studio editor used VB as the main language for customized code, a language in the same family as my base language – C#. But overall, this UI path tool system is clearly a low-code automation solution. So in short, I believe you don’t need a lot of coding experience to use UI Path for most common use cases. The UI in Studio is pretty visually intuitive, mostly consisting of drag-and-drop operations.
Unfortunately, the project for which we did this preparation was put on hold shortly after we finished our preps. We were just about to schedule the certification exam when my team received these news. But after all this effort invested, I feel like I gained some nice, valuable new knowledge about a tool that might be useful in the future.
Conclusions 2 weeks later
- I found out about a cool new tool, which could be useful in future projects, both professionally and personally. I even thought of a little project for personal use – automating posting products for sale on an online platform, to clear out my shelves of old books
- Sometimes, the goals you prepare for do not end up the way you expected. You may invest time and effort and the outcome may be different that what was initially estimated. But in the end, you can leave with valuable pieces of experience and knowledge. And you never know when and where your knowledge may be useful in a random conversation, and you can share that value with others
- UI Path Academy has well structured programs, if you decide to follow a clean, easy to fragment learning path. Even though taking the certification was strongly encouraged by the team I worked with, I decided to postpone it for now. You can use the certification-linked learning paths to cover most of the concepts available in the technology, without necessarily taking the exam. Most steps are accompanied by documentation, communities and various forms of support, and the experience in general felt good and supportive.
- Obviously, the time set for this “challenge” is not enough to replace actual practical experience, especially in professional environments. We did all we could on a short notice and I feel quite confident to consider myself a novice UI Path, but after all these resources, I still believe I would take another 2 weeks to prepare, in case I would decide to sign up for the certification exam, the Associate level. And for the Professional level, I believe I would require even more, probably close to a full month
- Practice took some resilience. I got stuck multiple times. Sometimes, the fix was not readily explained by the trainer or the learning materials, some times I had to search online for potential causes – sometimes I found solutions, sometimes I did not. And having nobody around with more vast experience to offer direct, personal support, was quite an additional difficulty. But this encouraged a more independent attitude and got me an extra point on the “self-study” skill.
So…How would you react in such situation? If given 2 weeks to learn something new, what would be your concerns, your challenges?