2018.3 Early access - Beta release

You asked and we listened! We proudly present the best version of our UiPath Studio IDE yet. In this release we mainly focused on agility, reusability and runtime reliability.

How to get your hands on it? Easy peasy:

  • Switch to Beta channel available only in Community Edition and accessible from Help section - “Update channel” option. Or download from here: https://cloud.uipath.com/

  • Restart UiPath Studio

  • Buckle up

  • Start exploring

If you still wanna hang around before launching your beta version, here are the highlights of this release:

  • Library (Reusable Components)

  • Dependencies per Project & Dependency Rules

  • UI Automation Activities Decoupling

  • Enhanced Package Manager

  • Enhanced Publishing options and Release Notes

  • Studio Agility Pack improvements

    • Localization (JP)

    • Source Control

    • Selector Editor & UI Explorer

    • Project Panel

    • Debugging

    • Studio Settings

  • Resizable and searchable Robot Tray

  • Switch between multiple Orchestrators from Tray

  • Attended Automation activities / Custom input forms

  • Office Suite interaction activities (Excel and Word)

  • Invoke Java

  • Cryptography package

Library - "reusability is key in reducing bugs and coding quickly”

On opening Studio you will notice that in the Start section you can now choose to create a new type of project, namely Library.

A Library is a collection of reusable components. A reusable component is a workflow, defined within a library project, that can be compiled and packaged as an activity and reused in multiple processes. So go ahead and define all that common code once and reuse it multiple times. You can now create these workflows and publish them as activities.

Dependencies per Project

See, define and customize project dependencies from within Studio at design time. It’s easier than ever to have control on the runtime behavior by choosing runtime rules for each package dependency. The ability to choose which version of a certain package of activities to use during runtime is a huge troubleshooting and change management improvement.

You can see dependencies directly in the Project Panel.

For each new project there are 4 default dependencies: UIAutomation, System, Excel and Mail. UIAutomation and System packages are formerly known together as CoreActivities package. We decided to split and decouple.

Libraries can be added to any Studio Project as a dependency.

In terms of Runtime Rules, you can choose between Strict and Lowest Applicable Version.

The new and amazing Package Manager

Meet the new package manager which means a complete revamp of the UI and new contextual and inline actions. Manage Packages is a huge step forward in terms of agility, usability, performance, UI & UX. You can now access it from Design Ribbon.

When opened, you can see all the dependencies linked to the current project. On the Settings tab you will find the Default package sources and the User defined package sources.

Enhanced publishing options

Publish to Orchestrator? To custom feeds? Secured feeds? Locally? Add release notes? Choose a custom version? You now have it all.

Studio Agility Pack

2018.3 brings agility improvements in all areas. Source Control, Selector Editor & UI Explorer, Project Panel, Debugging, Studio Settings - just to name a few.

Robot Tray

The Robot tray is now resizable and searchable. In terms of usability we’ve made it easier to navigate to Robot Settings by right clicking the tray icon.

You can also switch between multiple Orchestrator instances directly from Robot Tray (Orchestrator URL in Settings has a dropdown from which you can select the Orchestrator instance you want to connect to).

Attended Automation activities

Block User Input activity disables the Mouse/Keyboard for Attended Automation according to the block options selected.

Custom Input Forms activity enables you to gather data through a custom HTML input form and then use it inside that same workflow.

Office Suite interaction activities

“Excel” is the most searched term in our Forum so we know this activity pack is highly used. The first thing we did is to include it to the default Dependencies. But this is not all, this release brings 14 new activities in UiPath.Excel.Activities pack.

Word Activities Pack is not left behind and it’s improved with two new activities: Replace Picture and Insert DataTable.

Invoke Java

After VB.NET and Python, Java found its way into our platform. This pack brings 7 new activities and a new UiPath datatype that can host Java objects: JavaObject.

Cryptography package

That’s for real, activities that allow text and file encryption, decryption and hashing.

Remember to add the beta feed in Manage Packages in order to get all the goodies: https://www.myget.org/F/uipath.

Oh and while we did all of this we also localized the entire product. Japanese is now available and other language packs will come soon.

Feel free to dive and explore these new capabilities and give us feedback.

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@Honoka you may want to spread the word in the Japan category. :slight_smile:

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Hi Nicholas,

Did you restart Studio?

Yes it worked now, just too eager i guess :smiley:

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:smiley: enjoy! Let us know your thoughts about the changes.

I have added the “Restart Studio” step anyways. So it would be clear for everyone.

I can’t seem to find this activity even after searching through all the new packages :frowning:

This activity was initially planned for another activity pack. And it was decided to include it in UiPath.System.Activities. But in the next beta build it will be visible.

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Oh and while we did all of this we also localized the entire product . Japanese is now available and other language packs will come soon.

Yes, this news is very exiting for me.

However, I feel it takes for a time to get used to Japanese Style Activity pane, because names and display orders are changed.
Anyway, it’s good for new Japanese users! :slight_smile:

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We are expecting to get exactly this kind of feedback. :slight_smile:

It seems like some of the French translations aren’t quite working correctly.

The activities aren’t translated, and some of them aren’t even appearing and/or are broken:
0Library

0Library

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That’s true, @AndrewB. Only Japanese is fully localized, the rest of the languages are work in progress. This is a beta release and that’s why the dropdown is there containing every language we are currently working on.

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Hi @ovi,
New version is excellent. I like very much at first look.This version really had been taken the user voices and ideas. Really the UiPath is great .Because it considered the each and every user’s valid points. Great :smile:

Regards
Balamurugan.S

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Hi @ovi
I appreciate the release of the beta version.

I downloaded it according to the procedure.
After that I couldn’t access Google, so I installed a new extension.
Should I do something else?
For example, to install something…

Thank you.

Please provide the option to write coding in C# instead only in VB. Many members are early waiting for that option because most of the people like the C# coding and VB is bit old as well.

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Hi @mths

Yes, in this beta build it’s a known issue that the extension should be installed again. The fix is in progress.

Thank you for pointing it out and confirming. Enjoy!

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Hey @VasuNaidu

Yes, this is a long requested feature. Please check Badita’s answer in this post, it will be out in the 2019 version:

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The new features are amazing.
For project dependencies, it seems that we will need to re-install the required packages if we start with a new project. Is there a way to add more packeages into the default dependancies?

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Me, too. Cannot find the custom input forms. Also cannot find the insert datatable from the Word package.

Amazing, there are lot of features i want to use already!

Any idea when this version is expected to be stable?

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Hey @Tim, which did you have in mind or you feel are missing from defaults and why?