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How to automate Windows tasks using WinAutomation

 

If you landed on this page then you're probably looking for a program that is able to automate Windows tasks. I am going to recommend you a nice piece of software called WinAutomation. We all know that the real advantage when you use a software like this is that it helps you to easily perform complex and repeating operations with less effort and the most important, without requiring customer computer scripting. I will show you how to install WinAutomation and finally I will give you a small example, very simple and straightforward to make an ideea about the real power of this program. That being said let's get started. The first thing to do is to download WinAutomation and then to open the setup file called WinAutomationSetup.exe that can be seen in the following picture :

 

 

Now you should see a small window that says "The InstallAware Wizard is verifying this setup package. This may take a moment."

 

 

If you don't have the Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 installed on your computer you will see a similar window like this one and it means that you need to download Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 if you want to be able to run this application. Choose "Next" and the program will install the required files.

 

 

In the meantime, Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 will be installed on your computer so you will need to wait.

 

 

If the Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 was successfully installed on your computer you will see a similar window with this one. To continue with the installation choose "Next".

 

 

Again, wait for the program to install some files, this should take only a couple of minutes or more depending on your computer resources.

 

 

When everything will be installed you should see the following window that says : "You have successfully completed the InstallAware Wizard for WinAutomation. To apply the changes, the wizard has to restart Windows. To restart Windows automatically click Finish. If you want to restart later, deselect the Restart now check box, and then click Finish."

 

 

After restarting your computer you will see the WinAutomation window that asks you to "Purchase Licence", "Enter Licence" or to "Continue Evaluation". Supposing that you are running this program in trial mode you need to choose "Continue Evaluation".

 

 

Here it is, the WinAutomation console running for the first time. I know it may look empty or confusing for the first time but wait to see how simple, intuitive and powerful it can be. If you want to see some examples all you have to do is to click on the "Examples" folder and you will notice that it contains three folders called :

 

1 - Beginner
2 - Intermediate
3 - Advanced

 

You can launch any job located in those folders if you want to see an example for an automated task. You can test this as much as you want and also the program comes with an excellent help file and support so all you need to is to choose "Help" and then press "Contents" or simple press the F1 key when you're in WinAutomation Console.

 

 

Congratulations, you have successfully installed WinAutomation on your computer. Now all you need to do is to learn how to use it so I am going to give you an example just to make an ideea so that you can easily automate other tasks. Let's say that I need to access my email each day and check my Inbox for new messages. Supposing that I am loosing 30 seconds from my life just to check my email address and I am doing this at least once a day. That means 30 seconds x 365 days / year which results in 10950 seconds that I could spend them doing something else. Finally it means that I could loose approximately 182 minutes which will result in 3 hours and 2 minutes on each year. Let's see how this program is going to help me. First of all we need to open WinAutomation console and then press the File tab and choose "New Job" just take a look at the following picture :

 

 

A new window, called "Create new job" should appear and as you may notice it's actually asking you to enter a name for the new job and then to choose an option. Remember, we are beginners so we are going to choose the second option, the one with an keyboard icon ( Open Macro Recorder to build the job by recording mouse clicks and keystrokes ) and then we will press the "OK" button.

 

 

Another window will appear but don't worry all you need to do is to ignore all that options which you can use them at a later time when you will become more familiar with this software, right now all you need to do is to remember one thing. When you finish all you need to do is to press the keyboard combination "CTRL+Alt+S" ( this is the default combination that will stop the recording but it can be customized ). When you're ready to automate the task, press the "Start Recording" button and the program is going to remember your actions and then it will repeat them automatically.

 

 

There is a small message that will appear on the right side of the computer desktop that informs us about the status of our program and remind us how to stop the program, by pressing the "CTRL+Alt+S".

 

 

Now I am going to open Internet Explorer and then type an Yahoo mail address, enter the username, password and then hit the "Sign In" button.

 

 

I was able to log in to my email address and I also want to hit the Inbox button in order to see if there is any new message.

 

 

As I finished my little test, I want to press the "CTRL+Alt+S" keyboard combination so that I can stop the recording. Now it's time to move on and convert the recorded action in a program that can be executed at a later time on our computer. It should also work on other computers that uses the same OS. If you pressed the "CTRL+Alt+S" you should see a similar window that says "Recording Complete!". Now you need to press the "Convert Recording to Actions" button.

 

 

There is another window that opens and asks about the speed of the execution. Just leave it as it is for now and you can test this at a later time. Press the "OK" button.

 

 

Now I am going to close this window by simply closing it and it's going to ask me if I want to save the changes. I need to select "Yes".

 

 

Finally, here it is, the job named "yahoo-mail-example" has been added in our program so if we need to run the job at a later time all we have to do is to select the job name and then to press the green button ( play - and the job will run ). Everything happened on our PC so I guess we could say that this is how you can automate Windows tasks using this software.

 

 

If you will purchase WinAutomation you will receive a licence that will allow you to register the program in your name and the most important it will allow you to generate EXE files. That means that you don't need to install WinAutomation on another computer if you want to run the automated job. Now you may copy the generated program and then run it like any other program on another computer. Obviously you need to make some tests, since there are several differences between XP, Vista or Windows 7. If you will try to automate Windows tasks when running a XP copy, that copy should work on a similar PC that runs the same OS, in this case XP. I am not sure about a computer running Windows 7 or Vista but that's simple. Just install WinAutomation and create the job from that OS and there you have a copy of your automated job for each different Windows version and the incompatibility issues should be fixed.

 

 

This is one of the best methods to use when you need to automate windows tasks. The installation is fast and as you may noticed, you don't have to be an expert in computers. A lot of well-known companies are using the same software on their computers. I also tested other similar programs and I decided that there is another program that offers the same features of this one but there is a difference between them. WinAutomation is more intuitive and simple to use not to mention that is cheaper than others. Regarding the technical support, if you need some help than I'm pretty sure that you will get an answer in maximum 24 hours in case that you won't find an answer on the Knowledge Base. Just do a simple research on Google for this search: "automate windows" and you will be amazed. There are tons of articles, tutorials that will teach you a lot about windows automation tools and methods. If you have the time to learn all the methods and tricks then good luck. Fortunately, you don't have to read and learn all of these, all you need is WinAutomation and you're ready to automate your tasks in a couple of minutes.