Greetings!
I was intrigued with this topic and saw that RPA was mentioned as a possible testing tool.
I’ve been working with RPA for about six months. I was asked to lead a team to develop a bot for an internal process (how I got this role is a different story). As the name says, I was developing process automation and not test automation. In my opinion, the primary difference between the two is that process automation has no asserts within the code that provide results of a workflow. In process automation, the only result is the process performs work previously executed by humans.
My understanding is that RPA did not start out as a testing tool. It is primarily aimed at business teams - not IT or IT teams. One question above claims some promotion for testing. Are there examples of this?
I’d be very surprised that RPA could be valuable as a testing tool. It can be very expensive to purchase, while the development is not as complicated as, say, .Net, a workflow (desktop or website) can be complex to implement (read: require months to develop a good bot), and reporting would be clumsy for testing purposes. In my opinion, RPA would add friction to a project that is dependent on automation for pace.
Lastly, in our experience, a very strong development background assists with design and implementation.
Thanks!
Joe