Introduction to Xceptor | A data automation tool | BPA | RPA/IPA

Hi, I've had plenty of people ask me about Xceptor tool. So, I thought I would write a few articles on LinkedIn. Here's the first instalment of the series.

What is Xceptor tool?

Xceptor is a web-based business process automation?(On-Premise/Cloud) platform which delivers no code data automation software across the enterprise. It is primarily built for the financial services industry. It empowers business users to automate processes and deliver trusted data.

Xceptor captures data from Structured and unstructured sources, the data can be structured using the numerous inbuilt functions and several frequently applied MS Excel functions and their equivalent can be found to Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) data.

Does Joins, reconciliations, create an incremental database, send notification mails upon user defined triggers, read from mail body/attachment, process, transform and save in target folders/mail address/ftp to name a few.

Xceptor is a web-based data management and process automation software for the financial services sector, available for on-premise or cloud deployment. It is designed to empower operations teams to take control of their business-as-usual processes.

What does a web-based application mean?

A web-based application (web app) is any program that is accessed over a network connection using HTTP, rather than existing within a device's memory.

What is Xceptor used for?

Xceptor makes data ingestion, data transformation and process digitization easy. It uses different rules based upon the type of data fed.

Xceptor can be configured to watch specified input channel (which must be added in Xceptor.config file).

It imports the relevant files (based on the conditions set) when they arrive in any of those channels. It can then apply enrichments (manipulate data by performing calculations, removing extraneous data, cross referencing etc.) to normalize the captured data.

As a final step, it delivers the processed data to the specified locations.

Applications of Xceptor Across Different Industries

1. Financial Services:

Xceptor is widely used in the financial industry for applications such as data integration, trade processing, regulatory compliance, client onboarding, and risk management.

E.g.: Xceptor can be used to build automated, data agnostic solutions for post trade services that includes confirmations, affirmations and allocations.

This results in saving operational costs, reduced operational risk and improvements in the data quality as a result of built in validations.

2. Insurance:

Insurance companies leverage Xceptor for automating claims processing, underwriting, policy administration, and data extraction from insurance documents.

3. Healthcare:

In healthcare, Xceptor can be used for claims processing, medical billing, and data extraction from medical records and invoices.

4. Supply Chain and Logistics:

Organizations in this sector use Xceptor for automating various aspects of supply chain management, including order processing, invoice verification, and inventory management.

5. Legal and Compliance:

Law firms and compliance departments use Xceptor for document processing, contract analysis, and regulatory compliance tasks.

6. Utilities and Energy:

Xceptor is applied in utility companies for tasks such as invoice validation, meter data management, and energy consumption analysis.

7. Manufacturing:

In manufacturing, Xceptor can be used for streamlining production data, quality control, and supply chain management.

8. Pharmaceuticals:

Pharmaceutical companies use Xceptor for data validation, regulatory reporting, and quality control processes.

9. Telecommunications:

Telecom providers can employ Xceptor for automating customer billing, contract management, and network data processing.

10. Government and Public Sector:

Xceptor can assist government agencies in automating various administrative tasks, data processing, and compliance efforts.

Majorly used components of Xceptor

Input Format

Input Format?refers to the process of defining the structure of data passed into Xceptor. It is the first step in transforming the data. It captures, enriches and maps information from specified sources to create the data to be used for other Xceptor components.

Data Capture allows us to instruct on the fields to extract data from. Enrichments are applied to captured data and allow calculations to be performed when conditions are met.

Mapping combines information from multiple Input Formats into a single data source containing all the relevant data.

The file types that can be fed to Xceptor: Excel, Delimited (csv), Fixed width, Document, Swift and XML.

Internal Format

Internal Format?is a type of Input Format where an input file is not specified, and data is not captured.

Instead, the Input Formats capture data from input files, which can then be sent to Internal Formats utilizing mappings.

Output Format

Output Format?takes the information captured in an Input Format to generate a file containing the relevant information.

The Output Format in Xceptor is used to generate outputs in different formats.

The file types that can be generated from an Output Format:

Delimited,

Excel,

PDF Form,

XML,

SWIFT and

JSON

Translation Table

Translation Table?contains data which can be referenced by the other Xceptor components called Data Formats (Input/Internal Formats). Use the?Reference Data Lookup?Enrichment on a Data Format to utilize Translation Table data.

We use Translation Tables over data sets when data does not need to be stored as part of the process or when the data is small.

We can import (pull in) the data from "Data Set" only when the specific line of code w.r.t data set has already been added in the config file.

<source name="DSTable" sql="select * from DSTable"/>

Data Sets

Data Sets?are used to load multiple data sources into a single area that can be manually manipulated, published, exported, or used as reference data. They store data in a table with a fixed structure.

This data can then be added, edited, deleted, exported and imported. Datasets are to be prefixed with "DS". Use Linked Data Sets to link data from different Data Sets by one common field (like an SQL JOIN operation).

User Actions can be used to configure buttons which appear on the Data Set's Data pages and which trigger one of the predefined behaviors when clicked by a user.

Message Processors

Message Processors?are able to watch a variety of data sources and execute actions based on rules. Data is extracted from input channels.

There are 4 input channels available:

Email - watches an inbox,

Web - watches a preconfigured download site,

FTP - watches a folder on an FTP server and

File - watches a folder on a local server.

One or more Actions can be chosen per Message Processor. There are five Action types available:

Deliver Input File,

Generate Output,

Load to Data Set,

Load to Translation Table and

Load to Reconciliation

Reconciliation Rules

Reconciliation Rules?can be used for generating output reports for reconciliation by comparing 2 different data inputs.

We can choose to have an Input Format/Internal Format or a Data Set as an input source.

Match Rules section can be used to set up rules to create groups of matched data. Select the mutual fields and add the comparison type.

Data Comparison Rules can be used to set up rules to run on the matched data from your data sources.?We can create new fields in Calculated Fields section.

The type of delivery channels available are?File,?Email?and?Ftp.

I hope you find this article helpful in learning about the fundamentals of Xceptor tool.

Happy learning!

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