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What is Agentic Process Automation?

Agentic Process Automation (APA) is the next generation of business process automation. Where traditional Robotic Process Automation (RPA) scripts a bot to click through the exact same steps every time, APA gives an AI agent a goal, a set of tools, and the judgment to decide what to do next — reading each case, choosing an action, calling the systems it needs, and recovering from exceptions instead of stopping and waiting for a human.

APA is a concept, not a single product. Every major automation vendor is building its own implementation of it — with its own terminology, its own building blocks, and its own way of connecting agents to your existing systems. This site walks through three of the leading implementations side by side:

Automation Anywhere

AI Agent Studio, the Process Reasoning Engine, and goal-driven agents built on top of the Automation Anywhere platform.

UiPath

Agent Builder, Maestro orchestration, context grounding, and human-in-the-loop escalations.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Topics, knowledge, tools, and generative orchestration for building agents across Microsoft 365.

How this site is organized​

Each platform section follows the same three-part structure, so you can compare platforms directly:

  1. Intro — what agentic automation means on this platform, and where it fits in the vendor's broader product line.
  2. Core concepts — the vocabulary and building blocks you need before you build anything (agents, skills, tools, context, escalations, orchestration).
  3. Build your first agent — a beginner walkthrough that takes you from an empty workspace to a working agent.

If you're new to the space entirely, start with APA vs. RPA and the glossary before diving into a specific platform.

Who this is for​

These tutorials assume no prior automation experience. If you've used spreadsheets or basic no-code tools before, you have enough background to follow along. Deeper platform-specific tutorials (multi-agent orchestration, production deployment, governance) will be added over time.