In the previous video, you were introduced to the capstone projects for the RPA specialization. In this video, you will understand the requirement of the first capstone project called Invoice Entry. In this project, you are expected to; use Excel and email automation, use PDF extraction to extract data, and upload data in an application and generate reports. Let's get started. You are expected to build a project for automating the invoice entry process in an organization. An invoice is a document generated by the seller upon receipt of a purchase order from the buyer. It contains details about the product or service, the price, quantity, value, product status, parties names, billing address, and terms and conditions. The organization receives invoices on its email as attachments. It wants to automate the process of downloading and reading the invoices and uploading the invoice data into an ERP application. In the end, our reports should be generated in an Excel file containing invoice numbers, the number of processed items, and timestamps. There are several actions the project should take upon execution. We will understand all of these actions in detail so that you can create the project on your own. Before beginning with the project creation, you should ensure that you are ready with the project prerequisites. There are five prerequisites for the project. The first prerequisite is that your computer should have UiPath studio and Microsoft Office installed. You can find that hardware and software requirements for the installation of UiPath studio on the UiPath documentation portal. The second prerequisite is that studio should have all the necessary package. These packages are; UiPath UI automation activities, UiPath systems Activities, UiPath Excel activities, UiPath mail activities, and UiPath PDF activities. In studio, you can view the installed packages by clicking the manage packages option on the design ribbon. You can search and install new packages from the All Packages tab of the manage packages window. The third prerequisite is that you should have the ERP application on your computer to upload invoice data. You can find the software along with this course. Please download the invoice entry.exe file and save it on your computer. It does not require installation or elevated system privileges. You can double-click it to run. Let us understand the interface of the application. As you can see on the application interface, there are four sections where the data needs to be filled, in the company section, the details of the seller should be filled. It contains seven fields; name, address, city, state, pin code, contact number, and tn. In the customer section, the details of the buyer should be filled. It contains seven fields; customer name, address, city, state, pin code, contact number, and tn. In the invoice details section, the invoice number and invoice data should be filled. In the item section, the details about the product or service, quantity, and price should be filled. Finally, the subtotal, GST, and total fields should be filled. Once data are inserted in all the fields, the submit button should be clicked to confirm and upload the data entry. The fourth prerequisite is that you should have Outlook configured on your machine with an email address. The fifth prerequisite is that you should have a few invoices as email attachments. The data that you will enter in the ERP application should be taken from these invoices. You can find a few sample invoices along with this course. Download the files and save them on your computer. Send these files as separate email attachments to your configured Outlook email address. You should ensure that the emails are unread before initiating project execution. Let us look at one of the invoices. As you can see, the invoice contains all the items that you need to fill in the ERP application. It contains details about the seller and the buyer. It also has a table containing the details of the purchased items and the subtotal, GST, and total. Now, let's understand the actions that the project should take upon execution. The first action that the project should take is to read the Outlook emails. When reading emails, the project should identify whether there is an unread email. If there is an unread email, the project should change the status of the email to read and check whether it contains the PDF attachment of the invoice file. If the email does not contain the PDF attachment of the invoice file, the project should again read the Outlook emails to look for the next unread email. If the email contains the invoice file attachment, the project should download it, store it in the project folder, and reread the Outlook emails to look for the next email. If there is no unread email the project should check existing invoice files in the project folder for processing. If there are no invoice files in the project folder, the project should stop executing. If there are invoiced files in the project folder, the project should open the ERP application. After that, the project should extract data from an invoice file and upload the data to the application. After uploading data of an invoice file, the project should check whether an Excel report file exists. If the Excel report file does not exist, the project should create an Excel report. The report should contain the invoice number, the number of processed items, and the timestamp. If the Excel report file exists, the project should update the invoice number, the number of processed items, and the timestamp in a new row. After creating or updating the report, the project should delete the processed invoice file and again, look for the next invoice file in the folder. If the folder contains any invoice file, the project should proceed to extract its data. If the folder does not contain any invoice file, the project should close the ERP application and stop executing. In the next video, the requirement to the second capstone project called Stock Price Trend Comparison is explained. You are expected to understand the requirements carefully and build the project on your own. That's it for this video. Thanks for watching.
