UiPath Community 2021.10 Stable Release - StudioX
This topic goes in-depth about the improvements in StudioX. To read about other products, please navigate to the main topic here.
The Activity Panel in StudioX now has a new look
We’ve switched to a tree view where you’ll be able to see a more activities at the same time. You can also use filters, letting you to opt into or out of activities. One such filter is Show Developer which displays activities available in Studio that are not explicitly designed for StudioX. You can also view categories and subcategories, providing a better search experience. For example, when you search for a mail activity, you can distinguish the results based on the categories:
Source Control through GIT
We are pleased to introduce source control management using Git for StudioX. The capability should make source control management easy to use by taking away requirements to understand Git concepts or commands. Instead, you can view a repository just like a folder in Explorer - you can create projects, each within its own folder and save them there.
Once this feature is enabled, you should be able to configure the repositories you have access to:
When you create a new project, you will have the option to save it to your choice of Git repository:
You can also continue work from an existing project using Open from Source Repository:
When closing or publishing your project, you will be able to save your changes to the repository and in the background it will commit them to the source repository:
StudioX now supports Arguments
It now allows you to integrate a task with other products such as Apps. You can start adding new arguments using the Data Manager as below:
In the Process Arguments popup you can view existing arguments, add new ones or configure them:
Once the arguments are configured, you can use them, in an activity, similar to how you would use Save for Later Use:
Object Repository StudioX enablement
We are now pleased to introduce the Object Repository to StudioX. This should make it easier to work with UIAutomations by providing a platform to consume existing UI Libraries. We recommend starting with an existing UI Library with shareable UI Elements containing the required descriptors.
Listed below are some steps indicating how to best kick off this process:
In order to use the Object repository, you’ll need to update your UIAutomation package to the latest version
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Load the UI Library in the task. This will add the UI Library to your project, with its descriptors visible in the Object Repository panel.
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Select the element you’d like to add to the task and drag & drop it into the designer. This will trigger the command palette indicating possible activities to use for this element. Select the activity best suited and this will add it to the designer:
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You can also add the element from the Object Repository to an activity in the UI Automation package:
UIAutomation within Excel and PowerPoint Scopes
The Use Excel File and the Use PowerPoint Presentation application cards now allow UI Automations related to their referenced file within them, without the addition of a Use Application/Browser card. The UI Automation for an Excel file or for a PowerPoint file can be simply done within the initial application card. This should help simplify the design and make it easier to automate Excel/PowerPoint-related activities with UI Automation.
To learn more about UI Automations, see Tutorial: Working with UI Automation.
Context aware activity recommendations
When adding an activity through the plus sign on the design panel, you will now get recommendations for what activity to add in the command palette based on other activities near its location.
Package manager now has the StudioX filter
When adding or updating packages, you can now filter to the ones that are optimized for StudioX users:
Preventing Production Runs from StudioX
To avoid production runs of projects from StudioX, we’ve introduced a new governance setting that will monitor automations ran for production purposes. When enabled, you will be notified that you must publish your project to Orchestrator and run your automation from Assistant.
You will be able to configure this setting in the Automation Ops policy by configuring the number of runs allowed as well customizing the user message. For more details on Governance, please check our guide here.
Save Project As
This feature enables you to save a copy of your project as a new project, allowing you to create a completely new Task leveraging existing code.
Additionally, the Save as functionality will allow you to convert a task into a template.
Improvements to existing activities
In order to use these, you’ll need to update your System package to the latest version
Text to Left/Right: Allows you to use special characters (new line, tab, comma etc) as separators within the activities
New Activities
In order to use these, you’ll need to update your System package to the latest version
- For each folder in folder: This will allow you to repeat a contained activity for each child folder in the specified folder.
- Select folder: You can now have a dialog box open at runtime to select a folder to use later.
- Select file: You can now have a dialog box open at runtime to select a file to use later.
- Rename file: This will allow you to rename a file within a task using an activity.
- Rename folder: This will allow you to rename a folder within a task using an activity.
- Add data row: Add a row to a data table using a row or list input.
- Remove data row: Remove a row from a data table using a row or its index from the data table.
Excel Activities
In order to use these, you’ll need to update your Excel package to the latest version
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Excel Process Scope: A scope activity that behaves similar to SequenceX, loading the project settings and applying them to the associated Excel process. Additional settings:
- Process mode: control whether it creates a new process, reuses an existing process if available, or behaves like StudioX for attended users.
- File Conflict Resolution: determines the behavior in a way that supports both unattended and attended automation
- Existing Excel Processes: Offer capability to manage existing processes on the machine (Same as project, Force kill, No action)
- Remove duplicates: You can now delete duplicate rows in a given range in an Excel file. You can specify a number of columns to compare A row is considered a “duplicate” when the values in ALL of the indicated columns match. You have to specify at least one column.
- Protect sheet: You can now protect a specific sheet in Excel.
- Unprotect sheet: You can now unprotect a protected sheet in Excel so it can be worked with.
- Read range: This will allow you to read the value of an Excel range as a DataTable.
List (Array) Support
In order to use these, you’ll need to update your System package to the latest version
- Append list item: Allows you to add new items to an existing list.
- Create list: You can create a list as a saved value and add items to it using Append list item.
- For each: You can repeat a contained activity through the items of the list.
- Read list item: Allows you to access a specific index in the list.
- Update list item: Allows you to easily update a specific index in the list.
Mail activities
For Each Email activity has been enhanced with “Include subfolders” option which allows the user to specify whether to expand the search to include all subfolders of the selected mail folder.
Outlook Desktop in Picture-in-picture (PiP): now a workflow containing Outlook Desktop activities can run in a PiP session even if Outlook application is opened in the Main session.
Mail activities: Runtime Governance - Email Blocklist (RT-OUT-001) rule
With the help of Automation Ops policies, we are launching runtime governance for mail activities. The RT-OUT-001 runtime rule allows specifying the forbidden/allowed email addresses. The verification is done at runtime in all activities from UiPath.Mail.Activities, UiPath.GSuite.Activities and UiPath.MicrosoftOffice365.Activities packages that are sending an email. The execution is permitted or stopped, based on the rule’s configuration.
Examples of values for the Email Blocklist rule:
.*@(?!uipath\.com$) → allows sending emails only to email addresses within uipath.com domain
.*@example.com → it blocks sending emails to example.com email addresses.
A typical error message: “The process is trying to send an email to an address that is forbidden by the rule ‘Email Blocklist RT-OUT-001’. The email address ‘john.smith@example.com’ to which the process tries to send an email is forbidden by the following pattern ‘[a-zA-Z0-9_.±]+@example.com’.”
OneDrive and SharePoint activities
When installing UiPath.MicrosoftOffice365.Activities 1.10.0-preview in StudioX, a new set of activities for OneDrive and SharePoint files and folders is available for citizen developers. These activities should be used within Use OneDrive & SharePoint card activity, where you select the account to use for OneDrive and SharePoint automation.
The list of activities:
- Get File/Folder
- Create Folder
- Copy File/Folder
- Move File/Folder
- Delete File/Folder
- Upload File
- Download File
- Export File as PDF
- Share File/Folder
In Get File/Folder activity you can select a file of folder to use in other activities. We’ve implemented a “Select remote file or folder” browser to pick an item from the cloud locations accessible to the user account specified in Use OneDrive & SharePoint card. There are three possible cloud locations:
- OneDrive: My Files and Shared with me
- SharePoint: All SharePoint sites followed by the user
- Groups: All SharePoint document libraries associated with the Microsoft 365 groups the user belongs to.
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