Milestone 4 - How to Handle Errors

Learning & Development Programs Reboot Your Skills 2021
1

Errors are an important part of the life of anyone building robots and it might seem intimidating at first. How do you approach problem-solving when something doesn’t work on your machine?

Now it’s the time to make full use of the forum. Share your errors, post solutions, help your colleagues who go through the Reboot Your Skills program, and reflect back to all you learned so far.

For any technical question or to provide ‌feedback, please create a new topic in our Reboot Your Skill category here.

2

As this project was not created by me, I leveraged the Run till This Activity to run the project in smaller modules to identify the errors and fix them. It took me several iterations but was able to successfully run the automation after debugging the following errors:

  1. Under Use Excel File Activity, I redirected the Excel File name and Folder Path from Desktop\November_Events to Current Event List. I also unchecked the options Save changes and Create if not exists options in this activity.
  2. Under Excel for Each Row, I reset the range to [Event_Lists] Events.
  3. Under Folder Exists, I reset the folder Path the the location of the Events folder on my system.
  4. Under Create Folder for Event, I fixed the error in Folder name by removing the duplicate Location Name and replacing it with Date.
  5. Under For Each File In Folder, I reset the Templates Folder to its current location.
  6. Under Copy Templates Files and Rename Them, I fixed the error in Folder name and File Name by removing the duplicate Location Name and replacing it with Date.
  7. Under Use Outlook Account, I changed the default account to the email account I wanted to use.
  8. Under Send Outlook Email, I replaced Location with Location [Current Row]Location Name and added commas
  9. Under Send Outlook Email, in Attachments section, I fixed the file path to the files with the dynamic path generated above for both files.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
3

The solution given created a dummy folder “-” and also sent 22 emails.

I believe we can make it a bit more reasonable by

  1. adding a condition to skip the rows which only have the Training Coordinator, then the dummy folder won’t be created.
  2. making the “Sending email” separate from “For each file in the folder” and only send 9 emails
4

Good catch on the dummy folder creation. I did use the skip condition but that did not fix the issue since the rows in question were not technically empty (each row contained the destination email address). If you delete the email address in each row that is mostly empty the skip condition should achieve the desired result.

5

Hi Eric,

I did create the if condition for rows with empty month, then it only create the folder for the customer service and did not continue to create for leadership development and public speaking.

Any advice where do you place the if condition and what condition did you have?

6

Unfortunately property from solution will not work:

image

Because row is not empty - there is a value for “Training coordinator” filled in.

Thats why I placed additional condition. If month is empty, then you should do nothing (no folders creations, no events, no email sending, etc.)

Condition can look like this:

image
image534×541 11.5 KB

2 Likes
7

I did sth else than showed in solution:

First I placed assign with value: <[CurrentRow.ByField("Event Name")]>_<[CurrentRow.ByField("Location")]>_<[CurrentRow.ByField("Date")]>

It’s used in folder name and it is used when renaming the file:

image

So when I creating event folders I can use it:

image

And when I moving templates files:

image
image597×621 22.6 KB

As I read soultion robot it sends each file in one email. So for each event there is two emails. I assume more efficient way is to use one email for one event, so in my solution I just did this:

image
image597×813 26.6 KB

8

Thanks! I found my mistake. I put the create folder for month in the if folder exists is false loop which only create the April, May and June for customer service.

9

On this part, I did select attachments based on Folder but somehow the email still send out individual file for name tag and Diploma of completion. So wonder why email never send out based on folder?

10

It’s because you probably used “Use outlook Account” inside for each file in folder activity. You should place it as the last activity in for each row loop :wink:

11

I manage to save the value for the folder link and use it for the sending out the email since is out of the rows loop. Happy! Now able to move to the next stage. Thanks for advice!

12

Hello,

I think that the main conclusion, after the tour of this week, is that automation processes are iterative and will not always come out the first time, you must be patient, use resources and ask for help when the solution is not found.

2 Likes
13

This one I was a bit challenging, I created and set all my info and it showed no errors, but it always came up with an error. Finally, I realized it had Location twice in all the fields (London_London) so when it went to email, it couldn’t find a singular Location. Still Analyze found no error. After the fix, I ended up with all the emails in my email account, Yay! Corrected the path, and all is good. Except that I’m a week behind… now to start week 3…

14

:+1: