General Question of Scope

[ProsRF]

I need some general guidance from experienced AutoIt users. In my business I perform some fairly routine tasks involving information from a variety of sources and using several pieces of software. I would like to automate this process as much as possible. From what I have read, AutoIt sounded like the perfect solution for me... however, after downloading and reading through the available help files, as well as reading through much of the material I could find, I'm not so certain that what I envision is possible with AutoIt.

Please bear with me as I try to explain the fairly complex process that I would like to automate:

Utilizing contents from specific fields from within a specific project in our browser-based project management program...

1) Log into a secure website and after navigating to the appropriate area (which requires selecting hyperlinks through three different pages), fill in the needed information (based again on the information from the project management program), submit a request and download the resulting Excel spreadsheets.

2) Open and merge the spreadsheets in Excel, and run the first macro to initially sort the data and identify questionable data.

3) Open another website where the questionable data from the Excel spreadsheet, one at a time, will be used for a search... the results of which will be used to determine whether the data is kept or not. (This is a simple Pass=Keep, Fail=Delete.)

4) Once all the questionable data has been reviewed, a second macro is run in Excel to narrow down and prepare the data to be copied into another program.

5) Open a virtual box to start an engineering program and set up a new project. (Essentially opening a template project (based on type identified in the project management program) and then saving it under a new name based on the project name in the project management program.)

6) Copy the data from Excel and import into the engineering program. Process the data, then copy and paste back into Excel.

7) Run a third and final macro in Excel to locate target information.

8) Place target information into appropriate field in the project management program.

I would like to be able to trigger this automation process from within our project management program.

Can anyone tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree with AutoIt? I am a novice at programming, though I have managed to write the first and second macros in Excel above (the third is a mathematical nightmare that I will eventually muddle my way through.) Unfortunately, in spending the last couple of days looking through AutoIt and documentation, as well as looking through the forums, I'm not really finding any information to indicate I might even be able to do this.

Edited March 25, 2011 by ProsRF

[MrMitchell]

Hello, and welcome!

There are a ton of Excel and IE functions you could probably make use of to help you out with at least some of your project. Check the help file for User Defined Functions, or this page for details on dealing with Excel and IE.

Since you're using the Virtual Machine you might want to use a network share to exchange the Excel files that the VM would be using. Then you could use a different AutoIt script inside the VM, maybe use psexec to kick off a script inside the VM from your desktop.

As for your web-based project management program, it depends on how that site is built to determine how easy or difficult it would be to control it. Apps such as debug bar can help determine identify browser controls.

[ProsRF]

Hello, and welcome!

There are a ton of Excel and IE functions you could probably make use of to help you out with at least some of your project. Check the help file for User Defined Functions, or this page for details on dealing with Excel and IE.

Since you're using the Virtual Machine you might want to use a network share to exchange the Excel files that the VM would be using. Then you could use a different AutoIt script inside the VM, maybe use psexec to kick off a script inside the VM from your desktop.

As for your web-based project management program, it depends on how that site is built to determine how easy or difficult it would be to control it. Apps such as debug bar can help determine identify browser controls.

So... I gather I'm not asking for the impossible?

[MrMitchell]

Oops, forgot to answer your question. In my opinion it should all be do-able...though not saying it will be easy Also forgot to mention the Engineering Program inside your VM might or might not be easy to work with, depends which program it is... you'll get tons of help once you start posting specific questions along with your code.