In the previous video, you understood the requirement of the first capstone project called Invoice Entry. In this video, you will understand the requirement of the second capstone project called Stock Price Trend Comparison. In this project, you're expected to use Excel and email automation, extract data from a webpage, and generate Excel reports and send emails. Let's get started. You are expected to build a project to automate the stock price trend comparison for an organization. Every day, the organization wants to record the rise and fall in the stock prices of two companies called Exxon RPA Corp and WEX Academy Inc. Compare the prices of both the companies using a graph. It wants to send a report containing the stock prices and the comparison graph to a customer after the trading time is over. A trading time is when actual trading is in progress. For example, in the USA, the trading time is between 09:30 AM-04:00 PM. There are several actions of the project should take upon execution. We will understand all 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 several prerequisites of the project. The first prerequisite is that your computer should have UiPath Studio and Microsoft Office installed. You can find the 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 System Activities, Uipath Excel Activities, and UiPath Mail 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 having a working internet and a browser that can be used for automation. The webpage that will be used to extract stock prices is RPA Stock Market on rpachallenge.com. Let us get an overview of the web page from where the stock prices will be extracted. On the left of the screen, you can see a drop-down box. In its drop-down menu, you will find the names of a few companies whose stock prices can be extracted. When you select a company and click the Search icon. This section below displays its stock price and the associated chart. The fourth prerequisite is that you should have Outlook configured on your machine with an email address. The fifth prerequisite is to create an Excel file called Data.xlsx. It should be present in the project folder with column headers as System Date in cell A1, Timestamp in cell B1, Exxon RPA Corp in cell C1, and WEX Academy Inc in cell D1 in a sheet. Double line graph should also be created in the same sheet, which would show the changes in the share prices over time. Initially, the chart should be empty, which would be built as the data is uploaded in the file during the process. Ensure that this Excel file is empty and only has headers before running the process. It would be best if you also disable AutoSave option of Excel. A sample Data.xlsx file has been provided along with this course. The sixth prerequisite is to create an Excel file called Config.xlsx. It should be present in the project folder. In column A of the sheet, enter receivers email address, body message, and mail subject. In the adjacent cells of column B, enter the customers email address. A message that you want in the mail body and stock price report. A sample Config.xlsx file has been provided along with this course. The seventh prerequisite is that you should ensure that your computer stays on while the project is running. The project is expected to run every 30 minutes until 04:00 PM. You can adjust its execution frequency as desired. Now, let us understand the actions that the project should take. The first action that the project should take is to check whether the current time is valid trading time, that is, it is less than 04.00 PM. If the trading time is not valid, the project should stop executing. If the trading time is valid, the project should calculate its total execution frequency or the number of times it can run until 04:00 PM. If you want to run the project every 30 minutes and begin its execution at 02.00 PM, the project will execute four times. After calculating the execution frequency, the project should extract the system date and timestamp. After extracting the system date and timestamp, the project should open the stock market webpage on rpachallenge.com. After opening the webpage, the project should extract the share prices of Exxon RPA Corp and WEX Academy Inc, and close the webpage. After closing the webpage, the project should store the extracted date, timestamp, and share prices in the Data.xlsx file. After storing the data in the Excel file, the projects should count the current execution frequency or the number of times it has run. After calculating the current execution frequency, the project should check whether it is less than the total execution frequency. If the current execution frequency is less than the total execution frequency, the project should wait for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the project should repeat extracting the date, timestamp, and stock prices of the companies and storing them in the Data.xlsx file. If the current execution frequency is not less than the total execution frequency, the project should create a graphical representation of the collected data in the Excel file and email the customer. The email address, subject, and body message should be taken from the Config.xlsx file. After sending the email, the project should stop executing. That's it for this video. Thanks for watching.
