Is it better to do the same task every time by hand or is it worth investing time to automate it? There is only one aspect that matters to answer this dilemma:
number of times the task needs to be performed
Re-performing the same operation (or sequence of operations) involves several risks and inefficiencies:
- Repeating the same operations implies, over time, the acquisition of a presumed security that generates errors of distraction or superficiality
- The probability of making errors is directly proportional to the number of parameters to be adjusted each time the task is re-executed. In fact, with each execution there is the risk of not having updated a parameter with the consequent generation of errors or, worse, a chain reaction of incorrect outputs
- The verification of a task can become irrelevant if we are used to having a SUCCESS as an outcome. Just when habit has taken over, a FAILURE or a significant error could be completely ignored
Automation can avoid running into the problems described above thanks to the following strengths:
- Once an automation script has been created and tested well, there will no longer be any doubts about the correct execution of the steps required by the task
- By letting automation do most of the work, you can focus on the results or on resolving any errors
- As anticipated, if we have to run a task several times forever or for a very long period (e.g. more than 2 times in a day or more than 5 in a week) then it is definitely necessary to invest in automation
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Which tasks to automate?
All the storage available on the market today would not be enough to contain an article with an exhaustive answer to this question. This article, in fact, considers only some activities of a specific sector, with the main objective of providing application examples of the automation principle and, above all, of laying the foundations for adopting this approach.
The sector considered is the analytical one in which working with documents, e-mails and interactions with the browser can involve repetitive activities (think of the classic end-of-day or weekly report e-mails).
Sending emails
Imagine that you have completed your analysis of the day (or week) with all the work that it entailed… At this point, however, your (hard) work is not over… the email with the report that summarizes the outcome of the analysis must be prepared, reviewed, corrected and sent.
You could transform this last step into a simple click by automating the sending of the email with a script that retrieves the data of your analysis, sets them in the default layout and finally sends.
In this article Automation - How to Send Emails Programmatically with Python you can find out how to send emails programmatically in Windows using Python.
PowerPoint Presentations
If in addition to emails it is necessary to create documents such as a PowerPoint presentation, even in this case we could foresee a script that, having retrieved the raw data, builds the layout and populates the contents of our PowerPoint.
The article Automation - Creating PowerPoint Presentations with Python describes how, thanks to Python, it is possible to automate the creation of PowerPoint presentations.
Working with Excel
Excel has now become a tool used by most professionals (almost more than Word). Although Excel allows you to do so many operations and manipulations on data, it would be wrong to exclude automation a priori.
Automation does not only concern data manipulation but an entire work process. In this regard, you can find an example of interaction with Excel in Python (from which to take inspiration) in the article Automation - Using Python to Interact with Excel.
Browser operations
The SaaS offer today covers almost 100% of needs. Nowadays, you can find online tools (or software) to be able to work in any area without having to install them on our PC.
For this reason, we often find ourselves using the browser as a fundamental tool to perform operations with our favorite tool. Even in this case we could consider automation through the creation of an extension. In this guide How to create an extension for Chrome are described which elements make up an extension and what are the steps to create a customized one.
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