Deploying Custom (Activities) Packages to backoffice

Help
,
#1

I’ll keep this very simple:

  • We have a number of custom activities which we use in our bots.
  • We have a growing number of VDIs which run those bots.
  • We currently use UiPath Studio to install and update the custom activities package.

Problems:

  • “Automatic updates” does not work unless you open UiPath Studio.
  • This is not a maintainable solution.

Question:

  • How do we install a custom package to a bot-only (back office) VDI, and keep it updated?
    — Is there a command line?
    — Can we add a nuget feed?
    — Can we use the Orchestrator’s nuget feed?

Please advise.

#2

Hi Scott,

The location where the “installed” packages are stored in 2017.1 is %localappdata%UiPath\Activities. This is an user folder.

In case you still be in 2016.x, i believe the location is %ProgramData%UiPath\Actvities, which is a machine folder (this can be relevant if your VDI start on template and aren’t persistent)

You can have a script executed on login or on your VDI’s synchronizing this location with a repository.
You can also simply when you want to deploy your package, copy the activity package you want to deploy to the locations mentioned previously.

Note that the repository would need to have folder for each activity (and their packages dependencies) as they would be installed so : Folder named with the activity package ID + version, lib folder inside + .nupkg. You can take example of the already installed ones.

Cheers

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#3

maybe this will help:

#4

As indicated above, we are not installing UiPath Studio, so this Ui is not available. We need to know how to deploy packages to a backoffice robot-only machine.

#5

Thank you, Florent, we’ll see if that’s something that’s workable in our infrastructure.

#6

Did you get an answer to this question yet?

#7

@Scott did you find a solution to this? I have also had some problems with installing custom packages on a robot server (without Studio)

#8

We’ve manually managed this while waiting for the optimal time to update Orchestrator. We’re hopeful that the centrally managed functions will work for us.

#9

Hi

Having the same issue. Can you elaborate how did you solve this problem. I developed a process on one studio licence and transfering it to the robot only machine which does not have some activites installed.

How can i resolve this. Just copy paste the file somewhere in robot only folder ?

Thank you