Automation of user analysis workflow in CMS

CMS has a distributed computing model, based on a hierarchy of tiered regional computing centres. However, the end physicist is not interested in the details of the computing model nor the complexity of the underlying infrastructure, but only to access and use efficiently and easily the remote services. The CMS Remote Analysis Builder (CRAB) is the official CMS tool that allows the access to the distributed data in a transparent way. We present the current development direction, which is focused on improving the interface presented to the user and adding intelligence to CRAB such that it can be used to automate more and more the work done on behalf of user. We also present the status of deployment of the CRAB system and the lessons learnt in deploying this tool to the CMS collaboration.