I'm looking for information [I hesitate to infer "Best Practices"] for Automating Applications. I'm specifically referring to replacing that which is predictably repeatable through traditional manual means [humans manipulating the GUI] with something that is scheduled by the User and performed "Automatically".
We use AutoIT internally for performing Automated Testing and have considered the same approach for providing Unattended Processing of our applications, but we're reluctant due to the possibility of the user "accidentally" interacting with the Application in parallel with the execution of a scheduled "automation" and therefore "breaking" the automation.
Shy of building in our own scheduler with known events and fixed arguments for controlling a predefined set of actions, what approaches should I evaluate/consider and which tools would be required?
Additional Information: Some would refer to this capability as "Batch Processing" within the application context.
In general it is a hazardous practice to automate UIs. It can be a useful hack for a short term problem: I find myself using AutoHotKey to run some tedious tasks in some situations... but only if the task is not worthy of writing code to implement the change (i.e., a one time, 15 minute task).
Otherwise, you will likely suffer from inconsistent runs due to laggy response of some screens, inconsistent UIs, etc. Most applications have an API available, and not using it is going to be far more painful than acquiring and using it in 99% of cases.
In the unfortunate but possible situation that there is no UI and you are reduced to screen scraping/manipulating, a tool that performs automated testing is probably as good as you will get. It allows you to verify the state of the app (to some degree) and thus can build some safety nets in. Additionally, I would dedicate a workstation to this task... with the keyboard and mouse locked away from curious users. (A remote desktop or VNC style connection works well for this: you can kick off the process and disconnect, making it resistant to tampering.)
However, I would consider that approach only as a desperate last resort. Manipulating an API is far, far, far, far (did I get enough "fars" in there?) more sustainable.