Another Studio feedback thread ;) (15 ideas to improve)

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

Hello,
I am teaching people how to use UiPath. I often get feedback as some things in UiPath are not “user-friendly”, although the whole Studio definitely aims to be.
From the feedbacks, some things that I already got used to it in UiPath are indeed worth to think about. Four main ideas for this post:

1. We need some kind of cursor

When you write a code, you have a cursor. It feels like we don’t need any in UiPath untill you try to do CTRL+C/CTRL+X and then CTRL+V . In that moment when you use Copy or Cut to activity (or more activities) and they are in your clipboard, and next step is to indicate where you want to past it is truly not ui-friendly. You have to click somewhere in a white space between activities (with no visual response) and then, when you Paste, there you go, here it goes.

As I said, myself, working with UiPath several years, I got used to it, but I believe there should be more keyboard-friendliness.

2. Insert workbook and excel activities UPDATE Dec 2022 they are finally distinted by a name - having “Workbook” after their previous name. So like: Append Range Workbook Hooray!

When you add new activities using the sign in the workflow and typing name in the bar on top, at first you can easily differentiate between Excel and Workbook activities as:

But once you eventually use both of these activities… What happens is:

They both are now in “Recent” and nobody knows which is which.
TBH, I believe they should have at least different Icons, or some short prefix (WB: Read Range) a loong lloooooong time ago. It is super confusing since the day they were made.

There were dozens of moments when I said: “you know, this works like this in UiPath, don’t ask me why, there is no logic behind it, it just work like this”, but deep in my thoughts I am like: "those guys from UiPath, they don’t see this? Why they did not solve this?

That brings me to the obvious…

3. Switch and String as TypeArgument

This is the only activity that when you set TypeArgument to String, you have to type in the cases without brackets. (In comparison to For Each … and all other activities, where text-string always must be in brackets).

4. Clickable buttons/links that do not look like clickable

Super confusing thing. Very UX problem of UiPath Studio. Look, these are buttons:

Clearly. They have “look” of buttons.

But look at these:

(PS: here the whole line where is “Create Variable” acts as a button-that-does-not-look-as-a-button and if I count how many times I accidentaly add new variable… and then - go ahead and struggling to delete that variable… uuug…h)

And I can continue… Switch, Retry Scope…

Try Catch is icing on the cake since some of the “text that does not have the feeling to be clickable” is actually not doing anything in certain moments.

I really like working with UiPath Studio and I see you are doing a great progress with all the AI and Chatbots and stuff, but you should definitely work on these fundamentals. What do you think? If you want more feedback and tips, let me know. I can design it for you, if you want

[alexandru (Alexandru Roman)]

@Roman_hruska thanks for the very detailed feedback. I added this to our tracking tool and these suggestions will be considered.

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

Thank you @alexandru for taking them into consideration!

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

@alexandru any updates on this?
I have few more ideas to add (not all are mine):

5. Possibility to sort variables UPDATE 13/10/2022 it works!

It would be cool if Variables in the Variables panel could be sorted by their name (or Scope and other columns)
It would be cool to improve the UI interaction (as I wrote in the initial post), maybe also add a little “X” to delete the variable
Also to have some option to “show” variables that are “hidden” in other scopes and are only displayed when you “click” on that scope. Any way.

6. Switch between tenants in Studio

When you connect Studio to Ui Cloud, it will give you to choose what tenant to connect to. In case you want to switch it later, you need to Sign Out and Sign In again which is … not nice

7. Add these variable types to the default dropdown when creting new variable:

List
Dictionary
Double

Roman

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

8. Get rid of the bug with help tips hovering…

When you hover over some activity or anything in Studio and hold the mouse for a while, a little hint will appear. If you then switch to different window (alt+Tab), the thing stays above all the windows.
So annoying, is it only me or it also happens to you ?

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

Modern Design Experience

Is not something I have so far fully positive experience…
So in general I like a lot of the features of Modern Design - Object Repository, Advanced Recorder, the Fuzzy and Image selectors fallback - all superb. BUT I believe the concept of creating new pack of activities for that was fortunately not a good one. At least till the time we still need to use both packs to achieve necessary actions (I will show you why).

9. Useless error messages

It seems like the Modern activites when they fail they are giving a very ““useful”” errors, about Selector Node fail but not saying what failed? Even the classic can do it.

10. Activities need a scope??

The concept is lovely - you build everything in a scope so you can do some bulk setup (input method), but then if you automate something that is going through a lot of new windows and popups of different selectors (window selectors) you are forced to either

• add new Use Application/Browser scope for that single activity or
• put it somehow in… and then adjust the Window Selector and Selector (super unconvenient)
  and when I would as part of mentoring showing it to someone as the only possible solutions I feel so bad so I want to say: Better switch back to classic.

So - would it be possible to allow these activities to work without the need to be in scope?
EDIT Oct 2022: I kinda got used to it, and I understand now all the benefits, even though sometimes all the possible options bring a bit of confusion.

11. Use Browser/App is not having “Edit Selector” in hamburger menu

I think it could have it. Why not?

12. What about the Excel activities?

So it seems like if you use Modern the Excel activities are now different. They are those from Studio X. I mean - it is cool, they offer much more functionality. But what is the lookout for future? Will you still support and update the classic ones (all in general?). One can get pretty confused from all that.

13. Outlook activities

I also see that Outlook activities from StudioX are now possible to use with Studio and the old activities are still there

Here again I would be thinking: What should I use then?

In general you told me it is about opt-in opt-out and how anyone likes to work can choose between Modern and Classic. I would say it was not a good idea. It would be better to improve one pack of activities and not do this splitting.

As part of my work I teach people how to use UiPath, how to develop robots. In specially that moment it is so confusing for them. I don’t even know how to explain (I know there is a video on academy on that, but still) when which use. I would love to go with: You are fresh learning, stick with Modern , they are advanced - but then eventually there are moments where I had to replace the Use App/Browser by good old “Attach browser” because the first one was simply not working

It is by my opinion very unfortunate. This classic-modern division… Really curious about your opinions.

PS: Another Orchestator ideas feedback (16 ideas & bug reports)

,

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

@alexandru any progress on this please? (specially 1-9)
I still have to explain to our clients that I am helping them with development… yeah you know, UiPath Studio is a great tool but has these bugs, hopefully one day will not have them


Roman

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

Hi !
It is great to see we have now colorful activities in Studio (a bit of a pity the color cannot be customized, but…). But we still have things that need more attention to fix.
If I can wish one thing to be fixed from this long list at the highest priority then it is number

4. Clickable buttons/links that do not look like clickable

just… please! please!

[Roman_hruska (Roman Hruška)]

14. CTRL+X makes the workflow bounce

If you CTRL+X an Activity, the whole workflow will scroll to a random place far from the place where the activity has been cut. BIG !!!

15. The new colors in 2022.10 are too saturated

Once you have dozens of sequences and scopes nested, it kinda makes it rather confusing than clear. Solution is to make those color lines less saturated.

[Chris_L]

Absoluetly agree your point 15! Current design it is getting a mess when having many sequences. My eyes are no barcode scanners. PLEASE: Change it bck to the 1px lines and light colors!!!

[Raluca_Laic]

Hi @Roman_hruska ,

I can follow up on item no. 12 Excel classic versus modern. For now, we’re investing more into Modern Excel capabilities while we’re still supporting the classic ones. We’d like to get to a point where we don’t need the two but we’re looking at getting both feature and performance parity before that.

Thank you for your continuous feedback (and updates) here.

Thanks,
Raluca