Picture in Picture (Experimental)

[radutzp (Radu Tapus)]

Hi everyone,

We have released our UiPath Community 20.4 Stable Release
Among other things, it contains some cool new experimental features!

I’m excited to announce one of the most transforming features for Attended Automation since, well… Attended Automation itself : Picture in Picture . This enables you to execute an Attended Process without giving up control over your mouse , keyboard or screen . You are now able to continue your work while your Robot is running automation in an isolated session.

How can I use it?

Note: the first time you use Picture in Picture you’ll be asked to activate it. Also, before you log in to Windows again, you’ll be asked to enter your credentials every time you start a PiP process. After the next login, you’ll not be asked about your credentials anymore.

UiPath Assistant

1. Go to a process’ contextual menu
2. Press the "Multitask with PiP (Experimental) button
3. Now, your process runs in PiP

Studio

1. In a project, go to the Debug ribbon
2. Activate the Picture in Picture (Experimental) toggle
3. Debug or Run your project

StudioX

1. In a project, go to Ribbon
2. Expand the Run dropdown
3. Press Run in PiP button

How does it work?

Picture in Picture works by creating a new session for the same user on the same machine. It behaves like you would log in to Windows again and start the UiPath process from there.

Why Experimental? (Limitations)

Although we just figured out how to do it, we didn’t want to keep it for ourselves but wanted to share it with you and get feedback. However, sharing it so early means we didn’t have the time to fix all the issues we encountered. Here is a list of known issues and we would like you to share with us other issues that you may find:

1. Chrome and Edge Chromium cannot be opened at the same time in both sessions (main Windows session and PiP session). We suggest using one of them for personal use and the other for automations, if possible.
2. There isn’t any notification for the user when the process needs their input.
3. You may encounter strange behaviors if you try to work with a file in the same time as the Robot
4. UiPath Assistant crashes in the PiP session on Windows 8
5. Mouse cursor is moved while hovering on PiP preview window
6. If you are using a PIN in order to log in into the main Windows Session, whenever you start a Picture in Picture session, you’ll be asked to enter your credentials. This does not happen when you log in to Windows with your password.

Let us know what you think, how you would improve it, and if you found any other issues. Thanks a lot!

[balupad14 (Balamurugan)]

Hi @radutzp,

You have pictured the Picture in Picture very well. It is a nice feature. I am so curious about the new version of studio. So when we will get the LTS version of 2010… ?

Thank you
Balamurugan.S

[Maneesha_de_silva]

@radutzp
wow awesome
UIPATH rapidly shooting us with so many new thing
Thank you for the update

[alexologica (Alexander)]

What OS & Edition supported in this PiP?

[Sidney_Vogel]

This feature is very cool, and this changes a lot how users will co-work with robots without interfering each others work. Awesome.

[Paakay (Kwessi Annor)]

Dizzying new features… PiP, hehe . This sounds really cool. Will take it for a spin and see how it feels.

We’re living on the edge of innovation in UiPath world. Only if we have more than 24 hours in a day

[afe.araromi]

Time and time again, UiPath continues to raise the bar and set new heights.
I shall be trying this PiP feature out.
Kudos!!!

[ranger (Alex)]

All I want is C# support, no fancy stuff.

[sehz4d (Sehzad)]

I really liked the PiP feature. I believe you will handle those issues.

[Zoe_1020 (TDev)]

Can we mark a bot as PIP and publish to orchestrator to schedule to run daily? Looks like this only work when you manually run it from studio.

[Praveensuhail (Praveen M)]

Awesome so intereste…

[nougain (Ramesh Nougain)]

@ radutzp ChildSession fails to login post entering the windows user password. I am using Windows 10 Pro. Getting error…

Open Application ‘ApplicationFrameHost.ex…’: Exception from HRESULT: 0x87B20C15

[nougain (Ramesh Nougain)]

Resolved: Had to wait for login to complete. Apparently, Open Application “Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App” (Calculator) is getting executed before the user session gets active (is it?). A delay before the Open Application allowed the execution to happen post the session becomes active.

[AWoz (Adam Wozniak)]

@radutzp awesome feature, tried it the other day it would be awesome if there was an option to keep the session open between debug runs. My issue was that when the PiP session starts it opens all my usual programs from the startup folder. This takes time and is unnecessary for me to test my automation. Being able to either keep the session open after the automation has finished or being able to disable startup apps would be good. Other than that, fantastic idea!

[Bhavik_Solanki]

This is super cool feature

[KarthikByggari]

@radutzp

That’s really a cool feature and helps in improving the productivity.

Regards,
Karthik Byggari

[Vajrang (Vajrang Billlakurthi)]

Unable to login

RemoteException wrapping System.InvalidOperationException: An error occurred while we tried to start the process in Picture in Picture.
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ValidateEnd(Task task)
at UiPath.ChildSession.Client.UI.SessionForm.d__12.MoveNext()
— End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown —
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at UiPath.ChildSession.Client.ChildSessionClient.<>c__DisplayClass3_0.<b__0>d.MoveNext()
— End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown —
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at UiPath.CoreIpc.Server.d__22.MoveNext()
— End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown —
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at UiPath.CoreIpc.Server.d__21.MoveNext()
— End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown —
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at UiPath.CoreIpc.Server.<>c__DisplayClass4_2.<<-ctor>b__6>d.MoveNext()
— End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown —
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at UiPath.CoreIpc.IOHelpers.d__10.MoveNext()
— End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown —
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at UiPath.CoreIpc.IOHelpers.d__16`1.MoveNext()

[Abhishek_aithal]

Can image automation performed in pip even when its not active /opened ?