Are there any ways to restrict changes on xaml file?

I want to give my XAML files to my team but I don’t want others to edit it.
Are there any ways to prevent others from updating XAML files but allow them to run it?

Put them in a read-only folder? That would at least prevent accidental changes.

For purposeful changes - can’t think of anything really feasible. These are just text files in essence, if someone can access them for running, they can just as well copy them somewhere else and edit there. Sure, they won’t change the originals, but they can run modified versions.

Out of curiosity - why do you need to lock out your own team from them?

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Thanks for your reply, yep, I’d like to prevent purposeful changes by users…

I wrote “my team” just for simplicity; in actual case, I’m working at IT department and crafting UiPath flow for users from sales department. I know there’re some staff who maybe modify XAML file so that it meets their personal usage.

Yes, that’s not a big problem, but it’ll be difficult to diagnose the issue when there are any problems with the robot if they modify my XAML.

Thank you anyway, I just tell them not to modify the XAML!

Since they need to only RUN the code.
Ask them to install only UiPath Robot. Hence they wont be able to make any customization to your code.

Since when is installing Robot only even an option? :confused:

And still, even without Studio, if someone really wants to, you can write a complete xaml in Notepad. Editing an existing one is even easier.

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It always was, they have different licenses for Studio and Robot.

What generally we do is, have 1-2 Development licenses to create scripts and we have many machines which has robots installed just to run the scripts on production.

I see, it seems great for my case.

Of course there’s still possibility that members edit XAML file with any text editors as andrzej.kniola mentioned, but I think it’ll be fine at least they cannot edit XAML via Studio.

Thank you both!!

Ok, I’ll need to recheck this…
Licenses - sure, they’re different. But it’s still possible to start Studio on BOS license. Not sure about FOS, maybe that’s different.

But can you confirm, that you have an installation file that installs Robot only, without Studio at all? Because for the past 2 years all answers I can remember was that kind of installation file doesn’t exist.

Installable exe will be same, but the license which you enter to activate it determines whether its a Robot or Dev Studio.

As far as look and feel is concerned yes, they look same. just the difference that when you have activated Robot license you can see the scripts but you wont be able to change the activities and workflows. Something like opening a excel in Read only mode where you can see the file but cant change.

Hi AjinkyaCK, thank you for the info!
Just one more question, the users can run the flow by clicking on the “Run (F5)” on the Studio-like screen even if they only activated Robot license, right?

I’d better create another thread for this question but I don’t want to since it’s too trivial :slight_smile:

Either we’re using different versions, or this is not functioning - I’m easily able to work in Studio on a server that has BOS license activated.
In fact in certain circumstances this is absolutely required (think of situations where test env behaves differently than prod - and since these are usually customer applications/env’s, this is not something we can control, or a customer provides a single server only).

Yes…

Thanks,
Ajinkya Kadne

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Thanks!

I think I might encounter issues like andrzej.kniola wrote above, but I should try Robot license anyway.

I’ll post here or create another thread if Robot license doesn’t meet my requirement.

I suggest check with UiPath guys whether the license you have used is Studio License or Robot License.
I feel its Studio license. Let us know the reply :slight_smile:

I know which ones we’re using there - it’s a BOS license.
And I can say 100% that you can edit the workflows under a BOS license wth 2016.2.6232 Studio installed. I’m seriously surprised you can’t, because that eliminates a lot of debugging potential. We can say that “it should be enough” to develop under same configurations on a separate dev machine, then put it to test env etc., but when customer environments are involved with complex applications, until you run on prod you still can’t bet that it will behave the same (different load, different DB’s it connects to etc.).

This is getting nowhere :slight_smile: @badita?

Just to give more info, this is how my Robot looks :slight_smile:

You can See & Run the scripts but cant Edit (Observe the tools like Record, Screen Scraping etc are disabled) and File is opened in Read only mode.

Cheers.!
Ajinkya

FO Robot doesn’t have edit rights.
BO Robot has though according to the licensing terms you are allowed to use them only for test/prod/debugging and not for the actual development.

However, this will change in 2017.1 and you will be able to choose at install time if you want to install Robot, Studio or both.

The solution to protect the XAML from unauthorized editing is, like @andrzej.kniola said, to deploy them in read only folders. This happens by default with projects deployed via Orchestrators to robot users that doesn’t have Admin rights.

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