Side by side
Two sources, two kinds of result
The left column describes the task-mining category as such, not any single product; where products differ, the cell says so. The right column states what patchley does.
| Task mining (category) | Interview-based capture (patchley) | |
|---|---|---|
| How the process gets in | By observing what people do on their screens and with their clicks, or by reading system logs, and reconstructing steps from the recordings. | From the people who run it: live audio in a workshop, typed text, a PDF or DOCX up to 50 MB, audio files (MP3, WAV), a BPMN file, or patchley joins a Teams, Zoom, Webex or Google Meet call as a visible participant. |
| What you get | Depends on the product; see the vendor's site. | A BPMN 2.0 diagram with pools and lanes for the roles, systems, documents and control steps marked, plus a process landscape from several diagrams. |
| Editing and changing | Depends on the product; see the vendor's site. | The analyst proposes, you decide. Every change is shown before it lands, your own edits are never overwritten, every version stays. |
| Beyond the diagram | Depends on the product; see the vendor's site. | Analyses per step (SOP, pain points, compliance, quantitative figures, your own template) and PowerPoint decks. |
| Exchange formats | Depends on the product; see the vendor's site. | BPMN 2.0 XML (opens in Camunda Modeler, Signavio, ADONIS), SVG and PNG for the diagram, XLSX for the analyses, PowerPoint for the deck. |
| Hosting | Depends on the product; see the vendor's site. | App hosted in Germany, AI models from a European provider, hosted in the EU. |
When to use which
The source decides
Ask where the knowledge about the process lives. If it lives in the sequence of screens, observation can record it. If it lives in people's judgement, in phone calls and in the reasons behind a step, you have to ask.
Repetitive work inside applications
High volumes of the same screens and clicks, where the question is which applications are used in which order and how long the steps take. That is the category task mining was built for.
Processes fully logged by systems
When every step leaves a record in an IT system, system logs can show the paths cases actually took. This is also the ground of process mining.
Processes that live in people
Decisions, exceptions, hand-overs between roles, conversations and reasons. The claims handler knows why a case goes to the underwriter; that reason is said in a conversation, not clicked on a screen.
A diagram people have to sign off
The As-Is for a project, an audit or an automation decision needs the people in the room to agree to it. Capturing it with them, in their words, is the shortest way to that agreement.
Observation records what happens on the screen; an interview captures what people know. Many organisations need both, and the one you start with should be the one where the open questions are.
The category
Task mining, and who offers it
Capture by observing screens, clicks or system logs
Mimica (mimica.ai), Within (within.ai), Skan AI (skan.ai), UiPath, Automation Anywhere. Named here only as examples of tools that capture processes by observing screens and clicks or by reading system logs.
As of 30 Oct 2026. Sources: mimica.ai, within.ai, skan.ai, uipath.com, automationanywhere.com.
Task mining is the category of software that captures processes by observing screens and clicks on employees' computers, or by reading system logs, and reconstructs steps from what it observes. The vendors named on the right are examples of that category and are listed only for that reason; this page says nothing about what their products do beyond the category description, and nothing about their quality. For the specifics of any product, the vendor's own site is the source.
patchley belongs to a different category. It does not observe screens and does not read system logs; it listens to the people in the workshop, the interview or the meeting and drafts the diagram from the conversation. The privacy side of that difference, including what it means for works councils, is on process capture without screen recording.