Brian DeWyer, the CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software, explains six of the most significant components of modern intelligent automation management and observability and how they go beyond basic monitoring use cases. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

Remote work has become the norm, and despite back-to-the-office mandates and some pushback, increases in some levels of remote work are expected. Nearly 70 percent of the work in the tech industry is now done remotely. The omnichannel nature of applications is a productivity boon. Still, the output from all this progress needs to be observed and managed for availability and efficiency—this is where intelligent automation solutions built upon separate Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), RPA (robotic process automation), and Content Services Platform (CSP) components come in.

Intelligent automation solutions allow workers to access content remotely, but these systems can’t function without oversight. The best way to provide secure and efficient access is to adopt observability solutions rather than having a round-the-clock IT team perform this function. Intelligent Automation management and monitoring tools are the best solution for overcoming any challenges concerning remote work and meeting availability requirements.

This article will examine why intelligent automation requires observability and monitoring and which components need attention most. Monitoring is a reactive, static process that involves collecting data on intelligent automation components to determine if they are in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ state. Observability is a proactive lens that looks at the intelligent automated solution as a whole. A lens perspective considers inputs, outputs, and actions—not just the technology stack. This then allows AI machine learning to identify new questions and fresh insights.

Intelligent Automation Observability and  Monitoring

How the intelligent automation system performs, its security aspects, and the availability of information (data) requires observing, analyzing, and managing the intelligent automation software. This process involves observing system uptime, resource utilization, user activity, data integrity, and compliance adherence.

The goal is to ensure seamless business operations and user experiences. To achieve this, potential issues compromising optimal performance must be identified. It is crucial to get ahead of anomalies or failures. Response times, throughput, error rates, storage usage, and security events are all aspects of application monitoring that will maintain the system’s reliability, security, and efficiency.

Intelligent automation observability tools provide multiple benefits, including:

• Notification of issues at their earliest point
• Complete Intelligent Automation visibility and infrastructure monitoring
• 24/7 monitoring without any agents
• Saving time by automating tasks such as system restart
• Preventing downtime and significant issues like data theft
• Reducing the number of workers required

A Data Goldmine

The data collected via application monitoring can be critical. An observability solution may provide insight into capacity planning, optimal resource allocation, license management, and maintaining content security. Without this insight, moving any organization forward would be difficult.

Core Components

The core components which can be observed to identify and proactively resolve issues are the following:

1. Performance

The intelligent automation system’s time to respond to user requests can be monitored. The rate at which the system processes content-related tasks (throughput) is crucial. Insight into system resources such as CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network bandwidth is key to keeping the documents flowing. Scalability can also be determined by understanding how the system handles growing content volumes and user loads, and errors and failures can be tracked. In addition, the speed and accuracy of content indexing and search operations can also be assessed.

2. Application Availability

Continuous access to intelligent automation software’s cloud environment or on-premise solution must be maintained. This includes observing system uptime, availability, and responsiveness. Observability allows organizations to track server availability, network connectivity, database responsiveness, and application health. It can also check the intelligent automation application’s availability and performance, which provides the data necessary to alert administrators to anomalies or failures. The intelligent automation management dashboard gives a holistic view of issues that need attention. The result is that high application availability in intelligent automation can be ensured, resulting in reduced downtime, maximized productivity, and a desired seamless user experience.

3. Content Access and Usage 

Tracking how users interact with content includes monitoring who accesses which content, when they access it, and how they use it. Insights from this enable organizations to understand where issues arise by correlating user data, intelligent automation data, and infrastructure, identifying popular or critical content, and ensuring compliance with security and regulatory policies. Unusual or unauthorized access patterns can be detected, and these tools can automatically deny access when a certain threshold is hit. As a bonus, they generate an audit report for compliance.

4. Security and Compliance

The content stored and managed within the intelligent automation system must adhere to security protocols and regulatory requirements. To ensure this, you must monitor access controls, implement encryption measures, and keep audit trails. Monitoring can aid with HIPAA, GDPR, SOX compliance, and other industry standards. For example, access to sensitive financial documents can be monitored to ensure that only authorized personnel can view or modify them. Automated tools can detect unauthorized access attempts and policy violations.

5. Resource Utilization

It is essential to track the allocation and consumption of computing resources. CPU usage, memory usage, disk capacity, and network bandwidth can all be tracked. These areas help identify how servers handle processed and stored content volume. With this information, administrators can determine when there are spikes during peak usage times, allowing them to optimize workflows. Observability can also help organizations understand user levels, session counts, and transaction performance levels so they can use their resources effectively.

6. Integration and API

Seamless communication and interoperability between the intelligent automation system and other applications and services through APIs are needed. Observability can ensure that data exchange and workflows remain uninterrupted. For example, intelligent automation integration with case management software in a legal firm gives lawyers access to relevant documents directly from their case files. Tracking data transmission, response times and error rates are all part of the monitoring process. Updates or changes to APIs can be assessed so that they do not disrupt intelligent automation functions or compromise data integrity. Intelligent automation monitoring can avoid system changes and ensure connections with different tools and platforms.

Conclusion

Assessing the usability, accessibility, and satisfaction of users interacting with the intelligent automation system can be highly valuable. This process involves tracking various metrics, including response times, page load times, search efficiency, and ease of navigation. It could also include analyzing how quickly employees can locate and retrieve documents.

When accessing information, the goal is minimal friction. Monitoring tools help assess user activity so that pain points and areas for improvement in the intelligent automation interface can be identified. The result is that organizations can optimize user experience, enhance employee productivity, streamline workflows, and increase user satisfaction.

Intelligent automation application monitoring is a competitive advantage in today’s world. It helps maintain security standards while managing intelligent automation performance, delivering speed and ease, optimization, and regulatory compliance. Businesses can proactively identify and address potential issues by leveraging advanced intelligent automation monitoring capabilities, ensuring seamless content management operations.

No one wants a customer to leave because they get frustrated interacting with an application, nor does anyone want to compromise the sensitivity of the data contained in the intelligent automation system. Monitoring will help ensure that all interactions are satisfactory and secure, that scalability is doable, and any issues that jeopardize the functionality and integrity of the system will be identified promptly and dealt with swiftly.

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