The UiPath FORWARD customer conference opened in Las Vegas today with the company detailing new AI agent software that enables users of its own and third-party enterprise systems to kick off and complete actions on an automated basis.
Agents have arguably become the hottest thing in the industry as vendors rush to deliver software that’s more sophisticated, and delivers greater levels of automation, than robots or copilots. UiPath’s announcements further the agent momentum.
“Our view is that humans will work with the agents and agents will work with robots. Robots are the tools that will go harvest information; they will use their UI and API and computer vision automation capabilities to interface with data sets, databases, vector databases, and so on,” explains Bobby Patrick, CMO of UiPath. “The orchestration of that complexity, particularly at scale in complex workflows, will be our differentiation.”
The company explained the positioning of agents and its market-leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA), or robots, as follows:
- Agents are based on (and support multiple) AI models. They’re best for complex tasks that require high adaptability. Think of them as high-skill digital workers that are goal-oriented.
- Robots are best for routine tasks that require high reliability. Think of them as lower-skilled digital workers that are rule-based, carrying out precise, clearly defined tasks.
To make its vision a reality, UiPath is delivering Enterprise Agents, Agentic Orchestration functionality to manage and execute workflows, and Agent Builder technology to develop agents.
Enterprise Agents and Agentic Orchestration
Company officials described enterprise agents in an automation context as non-deterministic tools to which users can give a business objective, which is more complex than the types of rules that would be given to a robot.
To fulfill their objectives, agents will invoke a series of robots and even other agents. They will be able to give recommendations to humans in some cases while, in other cases, they will be empowered to take actions without having to ask humans, though humans will retain oversight.
There are three primary ways that UiPath customers will be able to acquire and utilize agents:
- UiPath will deliver pre-built agents for defined workflows
- Customers can build custom agents using a new Agent Builder function in UiPath Studio (more on that below)
- Customers can “bring their own” agents and have those agents — such as those developed for other enterprise systems — interact with UiPath software
There will be agents for specific types of tasks as well as role-based agents.
UiPath executives detailed one example of an agent the company will deliver: a Self Healing Agent that can ensure robots continue to operate even amid software or system changes that could otherwise impede their work.
For instance, if there’s an automation running against a form in an ERP system, a change within the form could slow or halt the automated work that the robot handles. The Self Healing Agent will tap GenAI to help the robot respond automatically and adjust the way it manages the task based on the system change. The agent can continue working with minimal to no downtime.
UiPath will be providing an agent catalog later this year.
In addition to agents that will be provided by UiPath, the company will encourage customers to continue utilizing agents tied to other systems and integrate those into workflows via UiPath’s orchestration functionality.
Officials cited agents from Salesforce as one logical connection point with the UiPath technology. In that scenario, while conducting analytics within Salesforce CRM, a customer could use UiPath orchestration APIs, along with process orchestration functionality, to integrate with a Salesforce agent and execute a unified workflow that operates across multiple systems.
Agent Builder
In order to facilitate development of agents, UiPath is adding Agent Builder technology to the company’s Studio development platform.
UiPath has received one indicator of customers’ need for, and willingness to build, agents: some customers have already built their own agents. “They want us to give them the tools to do it within our own environment,” Patrick says. “This is going to make it a lot better for them.” UiPath will encourage customers to share their agents, such as through the UiPath Marketplace, if they’re so inclined.
“A good portion of tasks, particularly the ones that require higher intelligence — requiring creativity, message curation, image classification — are not automated yet,” Patrick says. “Our customers can go back to these workflows and now automate those tasks with agents.”
Agent Builder provides a guided experience for developers and users to build, evaluate, and publish agents, as well as a catalog of predefined templates to help users build and deploy agents more efficiently. Agentic Workflow Templates invoke a prebuilt agent to complete a process.
SAP Partnership
In addition to the new agentic automation products, UiPath is detailing an alliance with enterprise software giant SAP whereby the two companies are offering enterprise automation tailored to SAP software. SAP users can invoke UiPath-driven automations from their SAP system.
The companies have worked together on a new SAP Solution Extension (SOLEX) that provides native integration of the UiPath Platform with SAP Build Process Automation (BPA). For customers, the partnership enables them to build, deploy, and monitor UiPath automations within SAP’s BPA framework.
One clear example where this could come into play: use of UiPath to expedite customers’ migration to the SAP S/4HANA cloud-based ERP system, which can be a fraught undertaking due to costs, complexity, and time required to transition. The companies will jointly offer the Solex extension, which opens up UiPath tech to the entire SAP customer base.
Other Major Product Developments
In other significant developments from day one of Forward, UiPath announced:
- UiPath Autopilot for everyone is now generally available, and the company is making it available for free with the goal of democratizing this AI technology
- Process diagramming and optimization, which will enable customers to automate, orchestrate, and monitor processes in support of agentic orchestration
- Context grounding, which ensures customer data is not being exposed or used for training in a large language model (LLM). It operates in all UiPath GenAI activities and ensures the most valid data is provided in response to a prompt
- DocPath LLM, a specialized LLM developed by UiPath for document processing and now available for custom training. It helps customers train on top of their LLM for their custom document types
- Unstructured document processing with GenAI, which is available in private preview. It’s useful for extracting data from complex unstructured documents like loan applications and brokerage statements
Closing Thoughts
With a workflow automation-focused approach to agents, UiPath has developed a cogent strategy that enables it to capitalize on its massive installed base of RPA technology (with a community of three million users) while it brings those customers into the next generation of automation that involves orchestrating processes across robots, agents, and people for more complex undertakings. Such use cases have compelling potential to raise the value, and ROI, of automation projects.
Agents and orchestration represent a logical progression in UiPath’s product strategy: practical functionality that extends the value of UiPath robots and its larger automation platform while helping customers reimagine how their business processes can function when they apply the latest AI innovations.
The fact that customers began building agents on their own indicates the technology from UiPath can’t come soon enough.
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