Output field in Set Transaction Status as Dictionary

[VRish]

Please enable adding Output values as Dictionary or in any other format that supports bulk change. This will allow not to create separate arguments but use only one variable of type Dictionary.

For now I can only create separate arguments.

[alexandru (Alexandru Roman)]

Can you please detail your usecase? Where would you benefit from outputting the dictionary directly to a variable?

[VRish]

thanks for reaching out @alexandru
Use case: I would like to update Output of Transactions using Set Transaction Status activity.
I plan to have different type of transactions and I would like to have different fields in the Output for different kind of Transactions.

For example, for Transaction Type 1 I would like to have Field 1 and Field 2, and for Type 2 - Field 3, Field 4 and Field 5. And with current setup i would need to create two separate Set Transaction Status activities listing relevant fields as on screenshot

Suggested solution: implement something similar that already exist for activity Invoke Workflow. ArgumentsVariable field accepts Dictionary of String, Object and enchants activity reusability

[alexandru (Alexandru Roman)]

Thanks for the detailed usecase. Sent the feedback to our tracking tool to be considered for future development.

[mateuszmacheta]

Workaround for now would be to save all values to a single Dictionary, then serialize it to JSON string and save into single Output value.
Serialization can be done with Newtonsoft library (not sure how to add separately to UiPath, it gets added with UiPath.WebAPI.Activities)

Serializing Collections

[postwick (Paul)]

@loginerror

Any update on this?

Other activities where you’re provided a manually built collection like this…

…also have a property where you can just pass a dictionary. For example, the Send SMTP Mail Message activity has both for attachments:

Here is my use case. While running, my automations routinely add values to SpecificContent that were not part of the original queue item. Then I use SpecificContent for logging and sending emails.

It would be very useful to be able to just pass myQueueItem.SpecificContent to the Set Transaction Status activity to populate the output of the queue item.

It seems like serializing to JSON and adding that JSON to just one Output value is currently the best way to handle this, but that’s ugly when a person tries to look at it. And I don’t see any obvious way to do it with the Orchestrator API.

[Jon_Smith]

For anyone at UiPath. This has been an extremely simple fix (like 30 minutes coding at most) and a really annoying limitation forever. It stops you using this activity in any modified version of the ReFramework as it then requires a ton of customization.

Please add it and bring it in line with the add queue items one.