On January 28th, Asko Soukka from University of Jyväskylä and Markus Stahl from Arvato Systems streamed their first session about open source automation on Twitch. They both are active open source developers and share a passion for software automation. Coincidentally Asko and Markus had around the same time the same idea for combining Camunda workflow engine with Robot Framework. The combination creates a powerful and extendable tool stack for open source based software automation.

Asko and Markus had different approaches integrating Camunda and Robot Framework. Therefore they do exchange all their idea on Slack for robotframework, but they do work on different integration projects. Both approaches have their individual benefits and challenges. Markus developed the Camunda Library, which aims for Robot Framework developers who want to integrate Camunda. Asko focuses on Camunda developers, where a middle component (called the "External task worker") takes care of the Camunda interface and the Robot tasks are not even aware they are dealing with a workflow engine. The latter approach is a bit more difficult and yet experimental. But Markus supposes a lot potential in the approach and asked for an introduction which resulted in a public stream.

null

For the nature of twitch, the recording of that stream will only be available for a limited amount of time: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1278667345

For then nerds: The demo includes a vagrant image including everything you need to play software automation. The external task worker is named carrot-rcc that uses the RCC toolchain from Robocorp to manage work items.

While the content itself was highly technical and specific, it was a fun experiment how to conduct exchange and create reusable content from it. There were even a few viewers and more have announced to join next time. The insights from these sessions will influence community work at the BCP in general and in particular content for the communities for BPM, RPA, open source and test automation.

About Asko:

Asko is software architect at the University of Jyväskylä and responsible for automating internal bureaucracy and processes. He is recognized member of communities from Plone, Robot Framework and Camunda. 

About Markus:

Markus is tech evangelist at Arvato Systems and connecting colleagues from all Bertelsmann companies at the internal collaboration platform (BCP). His focus lies especially on the open source and (process and test) automation communities. He created the CamundaLibrary which got recognized at several conferences and meetups in 2021, especially at RoboCon and Camunda Community Summit. For him, the potential the Camunda + Robot Framework approach lies (1) in sustainable tool stack instead of locked-in license fees and the (2) enabling the test automation community tackling the shortage on RPA developers.

Resources: