Hello Steemians,
I wanted to share a project I have been working on.
The project was to automate redundant work that must be done in SAP.
In our line of business we have many one off projects and all the materials must be represented by a material master. Any project can have as many as a couple thousand material master numbers. Some numbers can be used for multiple projects, such as hardware, but many materials are unique.
Setting up a material master in SAP requires about 40 clicks and lots of data entry. A pro can set 2 up every minutes. A beginner might set one up every 5 to 10 minutes. Some material masters are more complicated than others, such as chemicals which have hazardous material requirements.
For the last 2 years, I've been working to automate this process. I would have liked to automate this through SAP, however, our SAP developers don't want to put in the time to do this. Now after 2 years, I've implemented a virtual assistant, we've named HAL, that does all the work and has freed up 2 full-time positions (no one was layoff in this transition.)
To make this work I am using 3 different scripting languages, Excel VBA, VBScript and AutoHotKey. AutoHotKey functions as the key to start the program then watches to make sure it is running. If anything goes wrong, the AutoHotKey will attempt to shutdown all programs, and restart HAL. The VBScript is the primary looping engine that checks for work and engages Excel if there is any. Excel interacts with SAP to set up the material masters and then Emails the user that submitted the work.
HAL serves about 30 to 40 people and for the most part runs pretty smoothly. It has its issues, as any program does. I am grateful that I had the privilege to build it.
Thank you for reading,
DansonOnLife