Automate This

The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What hap­pens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.

Learn how to code while you write programs that effortlessly perform useful feats of automation! The second edition of this international fan favorite includes a brand-new chapter on input validation, Gmail and Google Sheets automations, tips for updating CSV files, and more. If you've ever spent hours renaming files or updating spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition teaches even the technically uninclined how to write programs that do in minutes what would take hours to do by hand—no prior coding experience required! This new, fully revised edition of Al Sweigart’s bestselling Pythonic classic, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, covers all the basics of Python 3 while exploring its rich library of modules for performing specific tasks, like scraping data off the Web, filling out forms, renaming files, organizing folders, sending email responses, and merging, splitting, or encrypting PDFs. There’s also a brand-new chapter on input validation, tutorials on automating Gmail and Google Sheets, tips on automatically updating CSV files, and other recent feats of automations that improve your efficiency. Detailed, step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, allowing you to create useful tools as you build out your programming skills, and updated practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks. Boring tasks no longer have to take to get through—and neither does learning Python!

Find our new updated edition to get the latest industry knowledge at your disposal Key Features Learn the latest in Power Automate with updated user interface visuals and new technology included Apply practical knowledge like managing user inputs, documents, approvals, and database storage Create flows that integrate with services both inside and outside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem Book DescriptionMicrosoft Power Automate is a workflow automation solution included in Microsoft 365. This book explores the core concepts of workflow automation, such as working with connectors, triggers, and actions, along with their practical implementation in automating business tasks and simplifying digital processes to boost enterprise productivity.What you will learn Learn the basic building blocks of Power Automate capabilities Explore connectors in Power Automate to automate email workflows Discover how to make a flow for copying files between cloud services Configure Power Automate Desktop flows for your business needs Build on examples to create complex database and approval flows Connect common business applications like Outlook, Forms, and Teams Learn the introductory concepts for robotic process automation Discover how to use AI sentiment analysis Who this book is for The book is for technologists, system administrators, and Power users with little or no Microsoft Power Automate experience. Familiarity with basic Microsoft 365 services is expected.

Build easy and accessible solutions for automating mundane processes in marketing, sales, operations, and finance to enable teams to focus on core tasks Key FeaturesLearn Zapier and find solutions to specific problems with this comprehensive yet concise guideExplore various scenarios describing specific business problems and how they can be solved with ZapierDiscover expert tips and practical examples to harness the full potential of ZapierBook Description Zapier is an emerging no-code workflow automation technology that enables organizations to connect their cloud-based and web applications and automate data transfer between them. Zapier's built-in features and flexibility allow users to integrate thousands of business applications and create simple to complex automation to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, thereby increasing productivity. This book is a must-have for business owners, their employees, and independent freelancers and contractors looking to use Zapier for business process automation. The book takes a hands-on approach to implementation and associated problem-solving methodologies that will have you up-and-running and productive in no time while leveling up your automation skills. You'll discover how to plan your automation building for optimal results, what are the native features available in Zapier, and the applications that connect with it, as well as how to optimally configure your workflows to automate your processes in as few steps as possible. Finally, you'll find out how to create advanced workflow automation from scratch and learn how to troubleshoot issues. By the end of this Zapier book, you'll be able to build your own advanced workflow automation using Zapier, addressing the key pain points encountered in businesses with manual and repetitive tasks. What you will learnThink creatively to plan your business workflows to overcome specific business problemsGet to grips with the native features and built-in applications available in ZapierExplore different types of third-party business applications that integrate with ZapierConfigure your workflows optimally to automate business processes and minimize task usageUse Zapier's library of pre-built workflows and create advanced workflows from scratchDiscover the extensive functionality and practical uses of Zapier's built-in appsWho this book is for This book is for solutions architects, process consultants, business analysts, virtual assistants, digital marketers, CRM consultants, online business managers, technical consultants, bookkeepers, and accountants who want to deploy effective automation techniques in Zapier. This book will help micro, small, or medium-sized businesses to increase their productivity using workflow automation with Zapier, as well as freelancers and contractors providing digital process improvement, systemizing, and automation services. No prior experience with business process automation or Zapier is required.

If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? In Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand—no prior programming experience required. Once you’ve mastered the basics of programming, you’ll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to: Search for text in a file or across multiple filesCreate, update, move, and rename files and foldersSearch the Web and download online contentUpdate and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any sizeSplit, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFsSend reminder emails and text notificationsFill out online forms Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks. Don’t spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you’ve never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. Note: The programs in this book are written to run on Python 3.

Processing information efficiently is critical to the successful operation of modern organizations. One particularly helpful tool is Microsoft Power Automate, a low-code/no-code development platform designed to help tech-savvy users create and implement workflows. This practical book explains how small-business and enterprise users can replace manual work that takes days with an automated process you can set up in a few hours using Power Automate. Paul Papanek Stork, principal architect at Don't Pa..Panic Consulting, provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of the foundational skills required to understand and work with Power Automate. You'll learn how to use these workflows, or flows, to automate repetitive tasks or complete business processes without manual intervention. Whether you're transferring form responses to a list, managing document approvals, sending automatic reminders for overdue tasks, or archiving emails and attachments, these skills will help you: Design and build flows with templates or from scratch Select triggers and actions to automate a process Add actions to a flow to retrieve and process information Use functions to transform information Control the logic of a process using conditional actions, loops, or parallel branches Implement error checking to avoid potential problems

The world is moving towards a jobless society (maybe not incomeless), ruled by intelligent machines, this can be a painful scenario for most of us or it can be an opportunity for all to thrive, getting rid of repetitive tasks and freeing our time to grow. Learn the tricks of automation before it is too late and let’s rebuild together the partially de-globalized world during and in the aftermath of the Covid-19 Outbreak.

Make your organization more productive and simplify your workflow by using Microsoft Power Automate for business process automation Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in PDF format. Key Features Learn the latest in Power Automate with updated user interface visuals and new technology included Apply practical knowledge like managing user inputs, documents, approvals, and database storage Create flows that integrate with services both inside and outside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem Book Description MS Power Automate is a workflow automation tool built into MS 365 to help businesses automate repetitive tasks or trigger business processes without user intervention. It is a low-code tool that is part of the Microsoft applications framework, the Power Platform. If you are new to Power Automate, this book will give you a comprehensive introduction and a smooth transition from beginner to advanced topics to help you get up to speed with business process automation. Complete with hands-on tutorials and projects, this easy-to-follow guide will show you how to configure automation workflows for business processes between hundreds of applications, using examples within Microsoft and including third-party apps like Dropbox and Twitter. Once you understand how to use connectors, triggers, and actions to automate business processes, you'll learn how to manage user input, documents, and approvals, as well as interact with databases. This edition also introduces new Power Automate features such as using robotic process automation (RPA) to automate legacy applications, interacting with the Microsoft Graph API, and working with artificial intelligence models to do sentiment analysis. By the end of this digital transformation book, you'll have mastered the basics of using Power Automate to replace repetitive tasks with automation technology. What you will learn Learn the basic building blocks of Power Automate capabilities Explore connectors in Power Automate to automate email workflows Discover how to make a flow for copying files between cloud services Configure Power Automate Desktop flows for your business needs Build on examples to create complex database and approval flows Connect common business applications like Outlook, Forms, and Teams Learn the introductory concepts for robotic process automation Discover how to use AI sentiment analysis Who this book is for This book is excellent for information workers and Power users who are looking to automate repetitive tasks for their organizations or for projects they are undertaking. To make the most of this book you should have some basic exposure to the MS 365 platform.