Process Automation: Improve your productivity

Jorge Dias

  • http://mrdias.com

  • Twitter: @dias_jorge

What is Process Automation?

Automation: A wikipedia definition

Industrial Automation
  • Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly decreases the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience.

What is Process Automation?

Process Automation

Say no to manual labor
  • Replacing a manual process with an automatically controlled one, the goal being decreasing costs and increasing consistency and reliability.

What to automate?

Our candidates

  • Repetitive tasks
  • Workflows
  • Point and click
  • Communication

The shell is your friend

Advantages

  • Control over the system
  • Scripting
  • Speed
  • Remote Access

Disadvantages

  • Steep learning curve
  • Multitasking difficult
  • Need to memorize syntax and options

Thor Introduction

Where to get it?

  • http://github.com/wycats/thor

What is it?

  • Thor is a simple and efficient tool for building self-documenting command line utilities. It removes the pain of parsing command line options, writing "USAGE:" banners, and can also be used as an alternative to the Rake build tool. The syntax is Rake-like, so it should be familiar to most Rake users.

Who's using it?

  • Bundler
  • Rails 3 generators
  • Engine Yard gem
  • Homesick
  • Me and soon you too!

An easy example

  • Twitter from the shell
Fail Whale

Building an interface for redmine

  • A review of a real example
Redmine logo

Getting your hands dirty

It's time to do some real work.

  • Suggestions:
    • Extend the twitter client
    • Flickr API
    • Make your own thing
Fail Whale