DiLogics: Creating Web Automation Programs With Diverse Logics
This addresses a bottleneck for knowledge workers in repetitive web data entry by providing an incremental improvement over existing automation tools.
The paper tackles the problem of automating web tasks with diverse input conditions, which existing tools cannot handle, and presents DiLogics, a system that enables non-experts to create automation programs that effectively fulfill varied specifications.
Knowledge workers frequently encounter repetitive web data entry tasks, like updating records or placing orders. Web automation increases productivity, but translating tasks to web actions accurately and extending to new specifications is challenging. Existing tools can automate tasks that perform the same logical trace of UI actions (e.g., input text in each field in order), but do not support tasks requiring different executions based on varied input conditions. We present DiLogics, a programming-by-demonstration system that utilizes NLP to assist users in creating web automation programs that handle diverse specifications. DiLogics first semantically segments input data to structured task steps. By recording user demonstrations for each step, DiLogics generalizes the web macros to novel but semantically similar task requirements. Our evaluation showed that non-experts can effectively use DiLogics to create automation programs that fulfill diverse input instructions. DiLogics provides an efficient, intuitive, and expressive method for developing web automation programs satisfying diverse specifications.