The design of a UiPath automation workflow bases on fundamentals that I will describe in this post. I will illustrate this with some comparisons. The look of the UiPath workflow is oriented to the Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams. This is a type of diagram for the representation of program designs of structured programming. It was developed in 1972/73 by Isaac Nassi and Ben Shneiderman and it is standardized in DIN 66261 (DIN = Deutsches Institut für Normung, German Institute for Standardization).
Process Block
Each instruction is written in a rectangular process block. The process blocks are traversed one after the other from top to bottom, in top-down design. Empty structure blocks are only allowed in branches.Decision or Branching Block
If the condition is true, left statement block is executed, if the condition is false, right statement block is executed (if then else). A statement block can consist of one or more statements. Exit at the bottom after processing the respective statement block.
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Iteration or Testing Block
Repeating structure with preceding (While) or ...
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… subsequent (Do While) condition check for termination.
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Parallel Processing Block
Symbol for concurrent execution of several blocks.
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Conclusion
The logic presented in this kind of structure diagram is easy to understand. It does not contain any programming language specific command syntax, it is independently. As a coding it can be implemented in any programming language. This is a level of abstraction.
This interesting comparison shows us that this RPA design fundamentals go back 50 years. Originally these structure diagrams were developed for procedural programming languages.
As we can also see, designing an automation workflow is very comparable and similar to programming.
You can find an advanced post about automation duality here.