1. Using Robots in Oracle Integration 3
  2. Learn About Robots
  3. About Robots
  4. When to Create Robots Versus Integrations

Pre-General Availability: 2024-09-02

When to Create Robots Versus Integrations

You have several options for automating your business, including integrations and robots. Integrations use API-based automation, and robots use UI-based automation. Learn when to use each type of automation so that your organization develops the right automation for each use case.

When to Create an Integration

When automating a business process, if an application supports an integration, you should design an integration. Integrations offer the most scalable and robust automation solutions.

When all of the following statements are true, design an integration:

  • The applications that you're automating have APIs.
  • The APIs can access and update the fields that the business process uses.
  • You have access to all of the APIs.
  • Your organization has the staffing resources to design an integration.

When to Create a Robot

You typically build a robot when one or more blockers prevent you from designing an integration. For example, you build a robot under the following circumstances:

  • The applications that you're automating have no APIs; or their APIs can't access and update the fields that the business process uses.

  • The applications that you need to automate have APIs, but operational or logistical challenges prevent you from accessing them. For example:

    • The APIs are currently inaccessible.

      For example, consider an application for which the APIs must be enabled. The team that manages the application is willing to enable the APIs, but only when they perform routine maintenance on the application. The next maintenance period is nine months away.

    • Integration developers are currently unavailable.

      Developing integrations and robots is intuitive and straightforward, and often times, integration developers and robot developers can do the same work. However, sometimes no one is available for the integration work.

    In both cases, you could postpone the automation work until your organization can support the design of an integration. Or, you can eliminate these bottlenecks and automate your business now by rapidly prototyping a robot.

    In the future, when the APIs are accessible and the integration developers have availability, you have the option of replacing the robot with an integration and incorporating more robustness and scalability into the automation. Or, you might find the robot suits your business needs.

Reminder: Even when you build a robot, you still need to design an integration that calls the robot.

Tip:

Your decision about creating an integration or a robot is important and worthy of careful consideration, but you can always change your mind. With Oracle Integration, you can easily switch a robot with an integration, or an integration with a robot, without impacting your business process in any way.