UiPath Community 2021.4 Stable Release

UiPath Community 2021.4 Stable Release

If you are still running our 2021.2 Community Preview, our request is to manually update to the latest 2021.4 installer as we have fixed an issue with our auto-updater functionality that prevented this to happen automatically. The 2021.4 installer can be downloaded from your Automation Cloud resources page or directly from here:

Doing the update will ensure that you are running the newest and most stable version of Studio and will always get access to the latest features. And to make it worth your manual update, we are bringing a significant number of perfomance improvements and quality of life improvements in 2021.4.


Studio

UiPath Studio 2021.4 brings many new improvements under the hood with a new architecture based on .NET Core.

Please keep in mind that Studio 2021.4 is no longer compatible with Windows 7.

  • Backward compatibility: all projects created with older versions of Studio are still supported at design and runtime with no additional needed changes
  • Studio 64-bit: Community installer is now a 64-bit installer. 32bit processes will continue to run in 64bit deployments. Autoupdates will rollout only to 64bit based machines as announced here:
    UiPath Studio 64-bit Community Installer

Continuous Improvements

  • Assign icons to processes and libraries: during publish you can assign icons to your processes or libraries. Libraries icons will be visible in Manage Packages, processes icons are due to appear in Assistant with future iterations.
  • Enhance the error display: if you click the error icon from the activity designer, the Properties Panel will be brought in focus and immediately display the error.
  • Support Test Activity and Run from Here for Scoped Activities: if you need to validate activities on the go you don’t need to include the parent scope anymore.
  • Pre-populate Capture Elements when started from Object Repository: if you want to continue capturing the elements from a specific Screen or Application you can pre-populate the descriptors list in Capture Elements by starting from any Object Repository tree.
  • Refresh GIT remote branches: we added the git fetch functionality for refreshing remote branches from Studio.
  • GIT in mass update tool: GIT is now a possible source for Project Dependencies Mass Update tool and you can select any remote repository.
  • Undo/Redo buttons available.
  • Remove Unused Resources: we added a dedicated section in Design Toolbar with dedicated buttons for removal of unused resources like workflows, variables, arguments, dependencies, imports and screenshots.
  • Notifications when a new version of Studio is installed.

StudioX

StudioX 2021.4 bring many new improvements, especially to the capabilities available through our default activity set optimized for business users. Because StudioX is a profile of Studio, please review the win7, backward compatibility and 64-bit information from the Studio section.

Highlights include:

  • Create charts in Excel and add to Word and PowerPoint files.
  • Open Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files from SharePoint.
  • HTML Editor for creating rich emails for Gmail and Outlook 365.
  • Adds Google Sheets, Drive, and Docs support, including UiPath provided app (no need to use your own Client Id and Client Secret).
  • Shared Mailbox support for Outlook Desktop and Outlook 365.

…and more! See details below

Excel

A lot of exciting improvements to StudioX’s Excel Business activities. To access the new functionality covered below, upgrade the UiPath.Excel.Activities package to the latest prerelease.

Creating and Copying Charts

This release introduces the following new activities for working with Charts in Excel.

  • Insert Excel Chart: We now have the ability to create charts in your automations. You can choose the chart type, Data range, and where it is inserted.
  • Update Excel Chart: New activity that gives the ability to update properties of an Excel chart including the data range, show/hide the title, labels, etc.
  • Get Excel Chart: Once you’re created a chart, a common scenario is to move this into another document such as a Word or PowerPoint file. The way to do this is to use the “Copy Chart to Clipboard” activity and then use a corresponding paste activity for Word or PowerPoint (see below for details on those). You also have the option to save the chart as a picture file.

See the PowerPoint and Word sections for the activities to add charts copied to the clipboard to those file types.

Project Settings for Excel

Under Project Settings, you’ll now see an “Excel Business” category. This brings some options for how Excel will behave.

  • Launch Excel: Normally when Excel starts for automation, it does not load all Add-ins. In most cases this is not a problem and helps Excel start more quickly. However, in some cases an Add-in may be required for the automation to run correctly. Changing the “Run value” for the “Launch method” to “Application” will cause Excel to start such that all Add-ins load.

  • Excel Visibility: Adds two settings that control what you see (or don’t see):

    • Show Excel window: A common request has been “how can I run automations using Excel but keep Excel hidden”. This is now possible by setting the “Show Excel Window” value to “False”.
    • Show Excel alerts: Controls whether Excel will show any alerts when being controlled by an automation. By default all alerts are now suppressed, but if you are expecting an alert dialog from Excel that you would like to see, changing this to “True” will allow Excel to show the alert.
  • Use Excel File: This region is where you’ll be able to set options for the “Use Excel File” activity. This release introduces a single option that controls the format data is returned from Excel to your automation. Because of different regional settings, Excel can return values to your automation that are not formatted the same as what you see when you open the file in Excel. The “Read formatting” option gives you the ability to Explicitly choose what format values should be returned to your automation:

    • Default: Keeps the current behavior

    • RawValue: Returns the raw value with no formatting applied

    • DisplayValue: Returns the value as it appears to you when you open Excel. The one important thing to note about DisplayValue is, if the value is truncated in Excel (e.g. for dates if the column isn’t wide enough to display the full value, it will appear as #####. In this case, DisplayValue will return the #####). To help with this, we added the “Auto Fit” activity covered below.

  • Excel preview: When you browse the contents of an Excel file, Range, or Row StudioX currently processes the .xlsx file itself. This brings some limitations including the restriction only being able to preview the contents of .xlsx files, and the inability to preview contents of files on SharePoint or DRM’d using an Excel add-in. To improve this, we are now offering the option to use Excel directly to preview file contents. There are three options currently available:

    • Default: Tries to choose the best method between UseXmlFile and UseExcelInstance automatically.

    • UseXmlFile: This is the current behavior with the limitations mentioned above

    • UseExcelInstance: This is the new functionality to use Excel. It should enable previewing all file types, and the contents of files opened using URLs from sources such as SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. If the preview is too slow to load, opening the file in Excel will greatly speed it up, as StudioX will find the already opened file.

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Additional Excel Activity Improvements

  • Use Excel File:
    • Now offers a “Read formatting” option. You can choose to inherit the project level setting (the default) or explicitly set it for values read from the file indicated in “Use Excel File”.
    • Supports URLs for files stored on SharePoint/OneDrive/Teams. You can now open, read from, and modify files stored on remote locations. If Excel can open it, it will now work in your automation. There are a couple of things to note with this preview:
  • Find/Replace Value: New activity that enables you to find a value in a range or find and replace a value or all occurrences of a value in an Excel range.
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  • Refresh Excel Data Connections: New activity that refreshes all of the data connections in the Excel file and will not continue running the process until they have finished refressing.
  • Auto Fit: This activity automatically adjusts the width of the columns in the specified range to fit the widest content. This is especially useful when using the new “Display value” Read formatting option (as discussed in the Project Settings section).
  • Format Cells: Now offers the ability to format Alignment, Font, and Fill color as well as the cell’s data category.

See the Excel Updates in Action

A Note to Studio Users

You can now use the default Excel activities available in Studio (available from App Integration → Excel) that would normally need to be inside an “Excel Application Scope” directly inside the “Use Excel File” activity enabling easier “mix and match” to access the functionality avaible in the Excel Business activities.

You can access the Excel activities used in StudioX (a discussed above) by turning on the “Show StudioX” filter in the “Activities” panel
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You will then see the StudioX activities under the “StudioX → Business → Excel” category

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Word

To access the new functionality covered below, upgrade the UiPath.Word.Activities package to the latest prerelease.

This release brings the following improvements to the Word activities

  • Use Word File: You can now open and modify files from remote locations (e.g. SharePoint/Teams) using a URL for the “Word file” value.
    Note: Currently this only supports opening existing files, you can’t create new files on a remote location using a URL path.
  • Paste Chart into Document: A new activity that pairs with the “Copy Chart to Clipboard” activity in Excel to add the chart placed on the clipboard to your Word file including the format in which it will be pasted (Embed workbook, Link workbook, or as a Picture).
  • Add Hyperlink to Document: A new activity that gives you the ability to insert a hyperlink into a Word document including specifying the URL and displayed text.

PowerPoint

  • Use PowerPoint File: You can now open and modify files from remote locations (e.g. SharePoint/Teams) using a URL for the “PowerPoint file” value.
    Note: Currently this only supports opening existing files, you can’t create new files on a remote location using a URL path.

  • Paste Item into Slide: A new activity that allows you to paste a chart copied to the clipboard into a PowerPoint slide. Due to limitations in the PowerPoint automation capabilities, it does not offer the ability to choose the format at this time, but if you look in the Properties panel you will see the ability to set additional properties include it’s top and left offsets as well as the chart’s height and width.
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  • Format Slide Content: New activity that enables updating the font size on a shape in PowerPoint and bringing it to the front or sending it to the back.

  • Add Data Table to Slide: Adds the ability to overwrite the contents of an existing table or append data to an existing table beyond creating new tables. This enables you to preformat tables and have the inserted data inherit the existing style/formatting.
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Mail

New activities

  • Set Outlook Mail Categories : Associates categories with a mail message.
  • Mark Outlook Mail As Read/Unread : Marks the specified mail message as read or unread.
  • Delete Outlook Mail Message : Deletes a mail message.

Improvements

  • Send Outlook Mail Message :

    • The user can specify the importance and sensitivity of a mail message.
    • The user can set specific mail addresses to have replies sent to.
  • Get Outlook Mail Messages:

    • The possibility to order mail messages by date, newest first or oldest first.
    • Filter by message ids.
    • The documentation of this activity has been extended with many examples of filter expressions. See it here
  • Get Exchange Mail Messages:

    • The possibility to order mail messages by date, newest first or oldest first.
    • Filtering capabilities, by filter expression and by messages ids. The filter expression can be used starting with Exchange Server 2010 version. Filtering by message ids is supported starting with Exchange Server 2013.
    • To learn about how to specify a filter expression, please read this doc.
    • Examples of filter expressions:
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  • Get IMAP Mail Messages:

  • Send SMTP Mail Message:

    • The user can set specific mail addresses to have replies sent to.
  • Save Attachments:

    • The user can specify whether to overwrite an existing file having the same name as the attached file.
  • Get Outlook Mail Messages , Get Exchange Mail Messages , and Get IMAP Mail Messages activities return calendar invites and non-delivery reports (NDR) items too.

  • All mail activities accept SecureString as input for the password, i.e., they got a new field called SecurePassword in addition to the existing Password field.

HTML Editor

We know you want to create rich emails with tables, pictures, different fonts, etc. This is possible with Outlook by using a Word document, but unfortunately could not be done for Gmail or Outlook 365 using Word.

To solve this, we have introduced an HTML Editor that allows you to create rich HTML emails (and other content) directly.

  • To use directly with the StudioX Mail activities that create mails (Forward, Reply, and Send) you will see a new body option called “HTML” with a button titled “Open Editor”
  • To create HTML content for other purposes or if you want to bring your own template file, there is also a standalone “Create HTML Content” activity which outputs the results as a string which can be saved for later and used as input.
    Note, this is the default way you’ll use the HTML editor in Studio/StudioPro. The Create HTML Content activity will appear in the App Integration → Mail category.

To use values at runtime (variable values) we need to make these available to the HTML editor via mapping. To do this:

  • Click the “Add data values” button in the top right of the HTML editor

  • Choose “Map data value…”

  • In the “Map data values” dialog that appears you can choose what values you will want to use in your HTML content. Currently the two options are

    • Single value: For things like values saved for later from “Get Text” or a specific cell in Excel.

      Table: for inserting tables into your email from sources such as Excel.
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  • Once the mapping is created, click the “Add data values” button again, and you’ll the mappings available to insert. Click the value you want to insert a placeholder into the editor. The value will be added when the automation runs.

Gmail and Outlook 365 StudioX Activities

For both Gmail and Outlook 365 you can specify information required to add a new account in Orchestrator such that users don’t see any prompt

  • Use Gmail: You are not required to provide your own ClientId and Client Secret any longer when adding a Gmail account. When you choose “Add account” you will now see an “Authentication Type” option. If you choose “Default” this will use the UiPath application registered with Google, you don’t need to do anything else, just click “OK”. However, if you prefer, you may still provide your own values by choosing “My ID/Secret”
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  • Use Outlook 365 activity : When you choose “Add new account” you will see a dialog that lets you choose if you want to use the UiPath default application or provide your own Application and (optionally) TenantId. What you need is determined by how your Azure AD administrator has configured your service. If your Azure AD administrator has installed the UiPath Studio O365 app for your organization, simply choose “Default” and click “OK”.
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  • Send Email activity allows to specify the importance of an email, the sensitivity of an email and the email addresses to have replies sent to. These new fields are available in the properties panel, Options category.

  • For Each Email comes with the following enhancements:

    • It returns Non-Delivery Reports (NDR) emails too.
    • It offers the possibility to filter by Categories and by a specific Date.

Note to Studio users: As noted above for Excel, you can access these activities in Studio/StudioPro by enabling the StudioX activity filter.

Shared Mailbox Support for Outlook

  • Use Desktop Outlook App: You will now see shared mailboxes as options for the “Account” selection when working with the “Use Desktop Outlook App” activity.
  • Use Outlook 365: * Supports shared mailboxes now! Just specify a shared mailbox in “Shared mailbox to use” field. The account selected in “Account” field must have access to the shared mailbox. The email address of the shared mailbox will be used in all mail activities added inside the scope activity (e.g., For Each Mail activity will retrieve the emails from the specified mail folder belonging to the shared mailbox).
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Secure Password (SecureString) parameter in Mail activities

Mail activities dealing with sensitive data like passwords, have been enhanced to accept SecureString as input. Now you can pass the secure password of an Orchestrator’s asset credential directly to these activities.

The list of activities that got a SecurePassword parameter: Exchange Scope, Delete Exchange Mail Message, Get Exchange Mail Messages, Move Exchange Mail Message, Move Exchange Mail Message, Get IMAP Mail Messages, Move IMAP Mail Message, Get POP3 Mail Messages, Send SMTP Mail Message, Delete IBM Notes Mail Message, Get IBM Notes Mail Message, Move IBM Notes Mail Message, and Send IBM Notes Mail Message.

For example, this is where the SecurePassword parameter appears in Send SMTP Mail Message activity:
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Google Workspaces (G Suite) Support

We are very pleased to announce our first Preview of Google Sheets and Google Drive support designed specifically for StudioX. To try this new support, using Package Manager add a reference to the latest -preview version of the UiPath.GSuite.Activities package.

Google Sheets

  • Use Google Spreadsheet: This activity lets you connect to and work directly with a Google Spreadsheet. It offers the ability to:
    • Use existing: Click the folder icon to open the browser and browse the contents of the Google Drive associated with your account
    • Create new: Allows you to browse for the folder in which you would like to create the new spreadsheet and then indicate the display name you would like to use.
    • Create if not exists: Works similar to “Create new” except that if a sheet with the display name already exists in that folder it will be opened, where if none exist it will create a new one. If multiple spreadsheets with the indicated name are found (e.g. “Untitled spreadsheet”) you will receive an error.
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  • Updated activities: The package includes updates to the following existing G Suite activities which are now optimized to work inside the new “Use Google Spreadsheet” activity. Add New Sheet, Clear Range, Copy Sheet, Delete Range, Delete Sheet, Read Cell, Read Range, Rename Sheet, Write Cell, and Write Range.
  • Download Spreadsheet: Is a new activity that enables you to download a spreadsheet as an Excel file or PDF. This for example enables you to download as an Excel file, work with it locally, and then either upload the file or move the contents back to a Google Spreadsheet.

Google Drive

  • Use Google Drive: This activity lets you connect to all Google drive resources associated with your chosen account.
  • Updated activities: The package includes updates to the following existing G Suite activities which are now optimized to work inside the “Use Google Drive” activity. Copy File, Create File Permission (enables sharing files), Create Folder, Create New Spreadsheet, Delete File, Download File, Move File, and Upload File.

Other Activity Improvements

  • Modify Date: Gives you the ability to modify dates to find other relative dates. Examples include “Find the next Monday”, “Find one month from today”, or “Find the first day of the month”. If you are using StudioX 21.2 you will also have an option for “Today” that will get the current day whenever the automation is run.
  • Get Username/Password: You can now retrieve credential assets from Orchestrator using the “Get Username/Password” activity in StudioX by setting the “Credentials source” property to “Orchestrator”
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  • Generate DataTable from Text: Enables you to build a DataTable from text. This is useful when you need to convert structured text data (e.g. tab separated, fixed width fields, etc.) into a table to either work with directly or write to another source such as Excel or Google Sheets.
  • Work with Data Tables directly in StudioX: This has been a common request and is important functionality for working with Google Sheets. This release adds the following activities to StudioX:
    • For Each Row in DataTable: Enables you to process each row in a DataTable.
    • Read Row Item: Enables you to read the value from a cell in a DataTable row.
    • Update Row Item: Enables you to update the value of a cell in a DataTable row.

Activity Icons

As the number of activities available in StudioX has continued to grow, it has become harder to quickly identify which activity integrates with a specific application. To help with this, you’ll now see that Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Google Sheets, and Google Drive activities use the integration’s category icon making it easier to quickly identify which activity you want.
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Assistant

Send to desktop

From now on, you can bring your processes everywhere in Windows. You go into the process’ contextual menu and you press “Send to desktop”. This creates a shortcut on your desktop that you can use in order to start the process.

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Drag & drop processes into Launchpad

We added something that we should have had since we first released the Launchpad: pin processes by drag and drop.

drag&drop

Set up shortcuts from the process details

We brought the keyboard shortcuts right where you need it.
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Widget Governance via Automation Ops

Starting with this release you can manage what widgets each UiPath Assistant user will get. You will be able to do this in Automation Ops from the Automation Cloud. We will add a new policy type for Assistant that will allow you to:

  • Choose if you allow users to install their own custom widgets. Basically, if you allow them to drag and drop widgets into their Assistant
  • Choose if you want to use the UiPath Official widget feeds. If you choose yes, the widgets will be downloaded from either the official feed or your Orchestrator libraries feed. If you choose no, then only the Orchestrator library feeds will be enabled
  • List the widgets that you want your users to have access to by simply adding the name and the version of the NuGet package

You can read more here about how custom widgets are built.

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Starting Apps from the UiPath Assistant

The first official widget that we’ll going to release will be the Apps integration widget. With this widget, you can easily start Apps right from the Assistant. You’ll see all the Apps you have access to at the bottom of the Process list and you’ll be able to run them from there.

Note: To enable the Apps widget you have to create a new Automation Ops policy and deploy it to the users. You can do this by going to cloud.uipath.com, go to the Automation Ops product in the Admin section and there create a new Assistant policy and deploy it to the users. More details here

UIAutomation

SAP Multiple labeled table (ALV LIST) support

Now we can steer the SAP Multiple labeled table (ALV LIST) via UI automation.

Shadow DOM support

We have enhanced the UI automation driver to generate proper selectors for elements rendered under ShadowDOM. Note the new attribute autogenerated inside the selector when targeting such elements:

Example:

<html app='chrome.exe' title='VirusTotal' />
<webctrl tag='HOME-VIEW' />
<webctrl shadowhostid='home-view' tag='VT-UI-MAIN-UPLOAD-FORM' />
<webctrl id='infoIcon' **shadowhostid='uploadForm'** tag='VT-UI-BUTTON' />

Classic experience

StartProcess activity enhancements

Very often, you need to launch not only executables but also open files via native applications like .doc via MS Word. Thus, we have improved the StartProcess activity for you to be able to do that.

Smooth mouse motion

Executing mouse events is one of the most used actions in UI automation. We have improved the way the mouse pointer is moved from source position to its destination by introducing a new property for classic and modern Click/Hover activities, named CursorMotionType. This property can be used to set the type of motion executed by the mouse pointer: either ‘Instant’ – the pointer jumps directly to the destination or, ‘Smooth’ - the pointer moves in increments. This option is specifically useful for cases where the target application or UI elements do not respond to the mouse pointer ‘teleportation’ events but expect a linear mouse pointer movement.

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UIExplorer delayed restore

The UIExplorer comes with a new option that can be used to grab selectors for UI elements valid only when they are in focus: menus, menu items, application options visible under focus, like Notepad’s File menu.
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Using this option for grabbing a selector, conducts the UIExplorer window delayed restored such that the indicated element keeps the focus and stays on the screen enough time for the selector be generated properly.

Custom browser support

We’ve added a new BrowserType option for the OpenBrowser activity, that enables the automation of custom applications developed over Chromium based frameworks like JXBrowser or CEFSharp, through Webdriver protocol.
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Modern experience

New table extraction experience

Check out the new Table Extraction experience! Besides a new UI, it comes with a lot of improvements requested by you, over time:

  • In-place column settings with sorting and formatting capabilities
  • ExtractDataTable with DateTime & Number columns support
  • Extraction limits and data preview at hand

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Verify execution

This long-requested feature has been in our mental backlog for a while, and we believe we finally found a solution for it. So from now on, when you need an easy way to verify that a specific action (like a click or type) was actually executed successfully – that it had the intended outcome, you got it!

Just add a verification from the context menu of any UI activity, and the verification will be done either automatically (for Type actions), or by indicating an element on the screen that is expected to appear, disappear, or change. If the verification fails – maybe because the webpage wasn’t yet fully loaded, or any other reason – the action is retried until successful.
More options are available under Properties > Input > Verify execution .
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Support for hover-only elements

We added support for indicating elements visible only on hover, such as menus, site navigation, etc, which disappear when they lose focus.
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Improved offline editing mode

Editing targets in Modern experience is now improved with an offline mode, where the target’s configuration can be edited even if the target application is not running. Also, the user gets a chance to start the application manually and retry the editing operation.
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Working with visible elements (check element visibility)

Some apps & websites use hidden elements for various parts of their UI, and sometimes this can confuse our targeting system, because robots can see everything :blush: Well, now you can enforce the Visibility flag, which will ensure that any hidden elements are completely ignored, both at design-time and runtime.
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Dynamic text targets

This feature addresses the need of targeting elements regardless of their specific content, such as trying to click on the first element in a search list, or just trying to click on a dynamic element (e.g. a link that can have different texts). Technically it was always possible, but it required some advanced knowledge and some fiddling. Now, it’s a single click from the hover-menu that appears over any targets that contain text. Under the hood, it does multiple things, like changing the attributes to make them dynamic, removing text references, disabling incompatible targeting methods, and so on.
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Restore/maximize window

In some situations, especially on responsive websites, it’s useful to have the window a very specific size, so it looks & behaves exactly as expected. The previously existing methods of setting a window to a specific size involved a bit of trial & error, and this feature aims to correct that through a simple setting: Resize window to design-time size . When enabled, the applications will always be resized to the width/height they had when they were indicated in Studio(X). It’s available as an option for all Use App/Browser containers.

Record any app without switching

Now you can record multiple apps on the fly, without the need to click on “Change application” button, for a more fluid, task-oriented experience.

Check text

Check:text was a “hidden gem” of the Fuzzy selector, that could allow much easier targeting of elements that contained text. In a way, it’s similar to the older UIA Click Text activity, but now part of the Modern experience, under Fuzzy selector, in the selection screen. With support for wildcards, variables, the whole shabang.
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Open new incognito/private tab

We added the option to open new incognito/private tabs in browsers.

Wait for page to load

The UIA Classic Wait for ready option has been added to Modern too (as Wait to load), in order to facilitate working with webpages and apps that require a full page load before they become interactive, or to optimize performance on pages that function just fine without a fully loaded DOM.

Check app state - allow outside card

Check app state can be used to verify the state of an application, but previously it was limited to the current application. Now, it can be used stand-alone, outside of a Use App/Browser container, in order to check if another application is open, for example.

Visibility

Some apps & websites use hidden elements for various parts of their UI, and sometimes this can confuse our targeting system, because robots can see everything :blush:. Well, now you can enforce the Visibility flag, which will ensure that any hidden elements are completely ignored, both at design-time and runtime.

Define image on drag

In the selection screen there always was the option to define image-only targets using the F3 shortcut key, but that functionality was lacking in the Recorder.
From now on, image targets can be indicated on the fly, by simply doing a box-selection around the element you want to target. Works both in the selection screen and the recorder.
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Enable Native-text targets

Some legacy apps are built in such a way that no selectors are available for certain elements of the UI, and in those situations Native text was the only available method of targeting such elements.

So in this version, we’ve enabled Native text as an additional way of identifying elements, via the selection screen. Whenever this option is used, the native-text elements can be indicated to be used as targets or anchors.
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Popups - do not show again

Nobody like recurring alerts, so now various popups shown in UIAutomation have the option to be hidden for the duration of the session. Simply reloading a project brings them back.

Persist user preferences

A few options like the Pause (F2) timer, auto-apply flag, and recorder Expert mode are persisted per machine, as they are more related to how a user works than a specific project.

Get URL

This new activity will simply output the URL of the current tab, so it can be used in automations.

Terminal Activities

  • The Terminal Session recorder can now be reopened at any point after dragging the activity to the Workflow Designer by using the Start Recorder button in the body of the activity.
  • Starting with this update, the Terminal Activities pack now supports automating in ANSI terminal emulation.
  • Resolution change support has been added for Direct Connection and HLLAPI providers. This feature is needed when the resolution change takes place during a terminal session, on the host side, outside of the terminal emulator configuration.

System Activities

Activities that include notifications are brought in the foreground and have focus set on them

Document Understanding Activities

A long list of improvements have been added to the Document Understanding activities, since the last Stable Release:

  • :earth_asia: New Geo-Localization of the Document Understanding Services
  • :1234: Data Manager – Relaxed Limits for Field Definitions
  • :white_check_mark: UiPath Document OCR – Checkbox Detection Capabilities
  • :ok_hand: :page_facing_up: Document Validation – Usability Enhancements
    • :abcd: Text Version Improvements
    • :eye: :eye: Extracted Value Display Improvements
  • :anchor: :compass: Field Level Anchors in Form Extraction
  • :brain: :white_check_mark: Machine Learning Extractor Now Knows Checkboxes
  • :books: :bookmark: New Docs Space for Document Understanding

Read about these new features in the Document Understanding 2021.4 announcement here:

Studio Pro (Test Suite)

RPA Testing

For this community release we introduced the following improvements:

So far if an RPA project was published to Orchestrator, we also included the RPA Test Cases into it. To reduce the package size, we have now removed them from the package. To get your RPA Test Cases onto Orchestrator, you simply use the ‘Publish Test Cases’ option, as before

Mocking has been a great leap forward for our RPA Testing capabilities, providing great flexibility and the possibility to remove dependencies. What is more, via the introduction of Mock files, customers can create non-invasive RPA Test Cases, without interfering with their production workflows. To further reduce friction and make it easier to use we implemented the following enhancements:

Sync Mock files on ‘open’

It is essential for Mock files to stay in sync with their corresponding workflow file. We have increased the sync interval and now update it also on events like ‘open workflow’

Avoid nested Mocks

So far it was possible to create mocks inside of mocks, which did not add any new capability but cluttered the Test Case. We have now fixed this problem.

  • Naming of Mock activity
    If you created a Mock around a sequence, the Mock had a very generic name. To increase readability, we have adapted the name to incorporate the name of your mocked sequence instead.
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  • Coverage Panel improvements
    Our coverage panel provides detailed coverage metrics for your RPA Test Cases and we would like to evolve it further into a general Testing Panel. The first step towards this goal was to also add a Test result indication. We now not only show you the % of covered activities but also the result of your Test Cases
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Data Driven Testing

Our Data Driven Testing capabilities provide a very easy way to incorporate your test data into your test case. For this release we added additional capabilities that have been highly requested by our community:

  • Update Data Source
    Instead of removing your outdated test data, and adding the updated file instead, you now offer you a task directly on your Test Case, to update your data file.
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  • Select Data
    While you hold your test data in an Excel file, you might not always import every column or row. Now you can select the rows and columns you would like to import into Studio Pro.
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  • New Test Case dialog
    We have added a new tab to the ‘Create Test Case’ dialog, which lets you add test data during Test Case creation. The new UI should make it easier for users to configure Test Cases.
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Workflow Analyzer for Testing

We enhanced the available Workflow Analyzer Rules with testing specific rules that can check if general best practices around Test Methodology are adhered too.

Beside the possibility, that you can create your own, we deliver a set of rules directly with the Testing Activity Pack.

The rules can check e.g. if Test case names do adhere a convention, if Test cases are not too long or have too many branches (a common mistake) and if Verifications are used within a Test cases, to make sure something is verified. And many more.

We also included RPA Testing specific Rules, for example to make sure each workflow does have at least one Test cases and more.

Test Manager Integration

We enriched Studio with a set of convenience functions to further speed up managing automated test cases with UiPath Test Manager.

  • When linking automation to Test Manager test cases, Test Manager can now be instructed to create those test cases. No need to manually create them upfront in Test Manager anymore.
  • When linking automation to new Test Cases in Test Manager, optionally a requirement can be selected to assign the newly created test cases to.
  • We streamlined some labels in the ribbon toolbar and re-phrased some error messages based on feedback we received. We hope they are clearer now.
  • A set of smaller UX improvements will make life easier.

Testing Activity Pack

We listened to the feedback from the Community and our customers and implemented the most wanted features for the Testing Activity Pack, all around reporting and the messaging format.

  • Verify Activities

    • Custom Output/Log Messages
      Customize the Output Message of a Verification within the Verify Activity. This, in addition, can even be done on a global level for the project.
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    • Buffer the Outcome
      To react on a failed/passed result with e.g. special reporting (like a Mail or a File-Upload), the use can buffer the outcome of the Verify Activity as a Boolean and react on it.
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    • Adaptive Orchestrator Title
      The title shown in Orchestrator is not only Verification Passed/Failed anymore but carries the title of the Verification Activity. If dynamic values are needed, this can even be customized further.
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  • Attachments
    This activity lets you define artefacts like documents, that you would like to store as part of your Test Case result on Orchestrator. This might be especially useful in cases where your company policies require you to store files or documents generated during your test run to prove your test execution.

Orchestrator

Checkout the 2021.4 Orchestrator Preview post for details on the goodies we’ve been working in the last months.

Orchestrator Testing

Test Configuration Parameters
UiPath Studio provides the possibility to define input arguments for Workflows and Test Cases, which allow a parametrization of automation during runtime.

This is especially useful for Testing, to avoid duplicating your Test Cases, but parametrize them accordingly during runtime. A typical case for this is e.g., testing the behavior of your application in different Browsers. While it is enough for RPA to run in your default browser, you want to test your web app in different browsers, to make sure it renders correct at your customer.

Instead of now creating several Test Cases that do the same, but run in different browsers, arguments can be applied to configure the browser context.

Challenge: Workflows allow the definition of arguments, and when starting a job, it is possible to override the default values of those arguments. When starting a Test Set with e.g. several hundreds of Test Cases, it would not be very convenient, to set the according argument values for each of them separately.

This is why we now allow you to override the default values of your Test Case arguments on Test Set level. If you define a certain argument on Test Set level, it will override the argument in each Test Case part of this Test Set.
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  • Audit Support
    Governance and Audit capabilities are mandatory for RPA, as it typically operates in a production environment and therefore has to comply with certain security standards. While Testing typically is done in a separate testing environment, it very often has to meet similar standards, which only few of the testing solutions available on the market fullfill. Fortunately, UiPath Test Suite leverages our production-grade Orchestrator and for this community release we added an additional audit section, specifically for testing.
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  • Run Test Cases on specific Robot
    Besides running your Test Cases frequently and unattended, you will have to invest some time in analyzing its results. Did you reaally spot a bug, or was it just an environment issue on the machine it has run? To make it more easy for you to answer this question, without having to open up and RDP connection to a specific robot to re-test, we now allow you to re-run Test CAses via Orchestrator on a specific machine.
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Automation Ops Public Preview

Please provide feedback

We want to hear which feature excited you the most! Please use the image button below.

8 Likes

So many new stuff :star: I will love it to test it for my use cases … amazing UiPath :heart:

2 Likes

@loginerror
A challenge here. Previously we are able to use the logged in user’s credential to connect via the proxy server by configuring the below in the proxy.config file.

<defaultProxy enabled="true"  useDefaultCredentials="true"> </defaultProxy>

But since this proxy.config file is removed in this latest community 2021.4, we have no way to use the community studio behind a proxy (i.e. can’t connect to download latest packages, it makes really difficult for some of the beginners to use) Can advise what are the possible work-around(s)? Could we have proxy.config back in the future version?

1 Like

Why uipath automated update on my PC ?
I’ve got very much error after update to 2021.4 version, the errors like:

  • Can’t show history commit from github.
  • Can’t use activity “Read cell, read range, etc” from Excel <System.File.Workbook>

Sorry, my english is not good at all.

Hi @Lim_Leng,

Sorry to hear this. Could you please share with us more details about your proxy setup?

Hi @radutzp

Glad that you can chip in and help us: I believe quite number of us are facing this missing “proxy.config” issue, let us continue in the more relevant thread below?

Hello! When I was downloading UiPath Studio, it never gave me the option to download Studio X but just Studio. Now with the course I’m doing, there is a mismatch and what is being taught is on Studio X and there are differences. Thank you!

Hi @aalema.saiyed

You can change your Studio profile to StudioX from your Studio Settings.

2 posts were split to a new topic: Executing “Remove dependencies” in case of UI Library removes ALL dependencies including UI Automation package wich makes the project unusable

A post was merged into an existing topic: Executing “Remove dependencies” in case of UI Library removes ALL dependencies including UI Automation package wich makes the project unusable

I have the same problem. I’m very frustrated that I tried to find the config file everywhere and now i see this. There are some activities like FTP activity that it depends on some other activities and without the proxy setup I couldn’t download those activates. Is there any way that I can configure manually as before.

The proxy configuration was updated in 21.4.4 patch and has an updated page here:

Please let us know if it helps :slight_smile:

Thank you for the update! It works and makes the package update alive.

1 Like

3 posts were split to a new topic: IF Show Else button throws an error while in Action of State Machine