Continuing its evolution from a robotic process automation provider to an agentic artificial intelligence platform, UiPath Inc. today unveiled a series of new capabilities designed to simplify the process of building and managing autonomous software agents for enterprises.

The enhancements span development, deployment, governance and security. A centerpiece of the release is enhancements to UiPath Maestro, the company’s development and orchestration suite introduced in April.

Maestro Case Management offers prebuilt orchestration templates for high-volume, high-priority cross-industry processes, including claims, loans, disputes and investigations. UiPath said the goal is to help enterprises model, manage and optimize complex case lifecycles across multiple systems and departments.

The company is also launching Maestro Process Apps, designed to give business users real-time visibility into workflows. The apps are meant to enable users to analyze processes and improve operational performance.

“With these ready-to-use apps, users can act directly on escalations, approvals, and exceptions,” said Yiannis Broustas, UiPath’s vice president of product marketing. “Everything comes together in a unified workspace where agents, robots, and people collaborate in real time, powered by Maestro. Users can act directly on escalations, approvals, and exceptions.”

Vertical market focus

To accelerate deployment in specific industries, UiPath is also introducing a range of purpose-built agents tailored to financial services, healthcare, customer service and retail. Examples include end-to-end processes for financial crime compliance and know-your-customer campaigns. They’re intended to reduce the time required to achieve a return on investment by offering preconfigured workflows for frequently automated processes.

“In financial services, for example, we help banks accelerate consumer loans, enforce compliance in commercial lending, and reduce manual effort in fraud management,” Broustas said. “In manufacturing and retail, we streamline merchandising, commercial pricing, inventory and order management to eliminate bottlenecks in planning, approvals and fulfillment.”

UiPath’s expanded development environment includes UiPath Agents and an Agent Builder with a visual interface for low-code, conversational and professional coding use. The tool provides reusable templates, optimized debugging and integration with Microsoft Corp.’s Teams, Salesforce Inc.’s Slack and voice-based interactions using generative AI. It supports the LangGraph, LlamaIndex, CrewAI and Model Context Protocol frameworks.

The release also features Coded Agents, which are Python- or Node.js-based agents that developers can build in their preferred development environment, supporting the emerging Model Context Protocol to connect external services. A new Labs Sandbox is included for experimentation, while Studio Web integration brings development and runtime environments closer together.

UiPath also unveiled Screenplay and API Workflows, which combine application programming interface automation with large language models to simplify the creation of workflows using natural language commands. “You can now build by simply describing the task in natural language to slash development time,” Broustas said. “Gnarly, complex scenarios that used to demand custom development are now possible.”

Document data access

New capabilities for agentic document processing include advanced data extraction, validation and looping features. UiPath said these capabilities integrate with its Agents framework to automate the process of converting free-form text into structured fields to fuel document workflows such as contract comparisons and system-of-record validations.

A new autopilot for schema creation and Validation Agents are designed to reduce manual work while maintaining data accuracy. A proprietary large language model is available for customizing document processing pipelines.

The announcement package also includes updates to UiPath Test Cloud for performance testing at scale in simulated real-world conditions. A browser-based Studio Web platform now supports autonomous and self-healing test automation, as well as integration with UiPath’s AI-driven Autopilot in Test Manager.

For governance and compliance, UiPath is introducing Unified Audit 2.0, a centralized platform for ingesting automation, agent and governance logs into enterprise compliance systems. New security features include extended agent guardrails, sensitive data protection and real-time content moderation that meet international standards for data handling and privacy, including  the European Union’s AI Act and General Data Protection Regulation, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, the International Standards Organization/International Electrotechnical Commission’s 42001:2023 frameworks and the U.S. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

David Vellante, co-founder and chief analyst at theCUBE Research, a SiliconANGLE sister company, said the announcements demonstrate UiPath’s evolution beyond its roots in RPA.

“UiPath set the RPA market on fire by simplifying the entire approach,” he said, “but it quickly realized customers needed much more, and it went on an acquisitions spree, combined with organic investment, to dramatically expand the product portfolio. This better positioned the firm to compete more deeply in enterprise automation.”

Vellante said the rise of AI agents presents UiPath with a new growth opportunity “to extend both on top of its existing automation infrastructure and beyond into agentic orchestration across domains. The company’s Switzerland strategy is to be the horizontal platform to manage agents whether from UiPath or other vendors.”

Photo: UiPath