Undecypherable Studio version, release notes and so on

[pere]

Yesterday I got a notice about a new (beta) Studio version having been released. I installed it (anyway the maximum compulsory install date, according to the notice, was going to be today or tomorrow), hoping that some issues that have been affecting my work since the last days would maybe have been solved (even if I got no mention to this date via “private” support tickets I have open).

Well, first I wanted to check about the release notes, as no mention or link was provided in the update notice. I did a search on Google after copying the version number that’s displayed on my Studio. In both areas I see “Studio 2023.10.0”. But when you google for it, I see this version was released weeks ago, at least. Probably there’s a way to see the exact version number in some log files, but that’s not provided easily, and whatever other serious piece of software provide this in the “Help → About” section.

Furthermore, when I reach what it seems to be the Release Notes (uipath.com) page, it starts getting further confusing:

In “Platform” there’s a 2 August 2023 cumulative patch package, so I discard it.

In “Product release notes”:

“Release Notes for UiPath Products”

Scroll down to “Release Notes for On-Premises Products” and you’ll finally find out a “Studio” link. Click on it and it will take you to:

It says it’s release 2023.4, last update Oct 4, 2023. That doesn’t seem to be the one I installed yesterday.

It’s not after a while that you can click on the dropwdown and it will show ou a 2023.10 release - Last updated Oct 16, 2023.

Why don’t showing this one at first, if it really is the last verions?

That seems older than the one released yesterday. And also remember it was a beta. And in the new page that’s displayed there’s no “What’s new” or “Release notes”.

Then, further browsing like half blindly, I ended up in the “Activities” → “Release notes - Other latest” (to be honest, I cannot reproduce how I get to there):

[EDIT: I found out how to get to there:]

In Release Notes - Release Notes for UiPath Products you click on “Studio”; it takes you to the 2023.4.0 page. On the left menu, you click on the last 2023.4.X version, the 2023.4.5 one. Its date is 4 October 2023. On that page, you have a list of Activity Package Versions. Go one after another and you can see, if you click on the version number, what’s the last version and bug fixes of each ACTIVIY. But note you’ll have to scroll up, as by mere clicking it will anchoer to the August release version, and the one on top is from 23 October 2023. Yet if here

you click on the dropdown and select the 2023.10
you won’t see any activities list. Ain’t it crazy?
[/EDIT]

Activities - Release notes (uipath.com)

There it says v23.10.3 and a much more recent release date: 23 October 2023.

But all in: should I be ONE BY ONE checking all the activities packages and checking all the updates there?

Is not there any way to easily find what UiPath version it’s installed on my system and the release notes for this version, if not even provided as a text file that can be easily read in the installer itself? Thank you.

[Jon_Smith]

So I think there is quite some confusion here on some parts.
Firstly, I just tried to check via the release notes portal for Studio 23.10 and it indeed isnt loading, so UiPath have made a mistake there by releasing the code but not updating the release notes.

You mention about the release being out for weeks, you are mistaken and I think conflating Studio Enterprise with Studio Community.
Community gets the beta version with long release numbers and that happens weeks and months before the enterprise version, which you seem to be on.

Enterprise doesn’t get release notes in the same way as it recieves alot of ad hoc patches.

As for activities, updating your Studio version doesnt force you to update your dependencies. Just cause the robot / Studio is on 23.10 doesnt mean you can’t use UiPath.System.Activities 22.4.1 for example. Nuget packages are not dependent on Studio version outside of some niche use cases where the version difference is too extreme for them to be compatible or a package newer than the studio version relies on a feature not present.

[pere]

Ok; all in all, my main questions are not answered yet:

• What’s my Studio Community version?
• Where’s the changelog for the last update?

[Jon_Smith]

Are you sure you are on Studio Community? It sounds like you are on Studio Enterprise.
As I said in my first line, I agree UiPath fluffed up there and released the new version without release notes.

[pere]

Did you see my previous screenshots?

Next to the version number it displays a “Community License” message, so I’ve always assumed that I’m on the community version (and the one I downloaded back in the day was that one, also - which, by the way, was not straightforward for me to do):

Did you read my message? If I understood it properly, the ones who are getting the forced beta updates are the Community users.

And by the way, if I use the Community version is not because we don’t have a license - we have at least two in our organization. Is just that a) I didn’t bother looking for the license number and entering it on my installation b) we keep each license in its own Windows virtual server instance, in case some day some project needs to be run/orchestrated from there, or some other developer wants to work from there (it’s not the case for now); I prefer to avoid the hassle of having to work via remote desktop on a different machine, and for now I haven’t missed any functionality in the Community version for my daily work, not to say that in this case, due to the big amount of bugs and annoyances in this product, I prefer to be always up to the cutting-edge versions, no matter if they are betas…

[Jon_Smith]

@pere

Did you see my previous screenshots?

My bad, I missed that.

Well then yeah, you are on community. Its part of the terms and conditions that you get these updates and will sometimes / often be on Beta versions as they test out new features. Thats the trade off for getting access to the software for free I think.

Community doesnt get proper release notes, just forum posts but not for every minor release. The major release got a page a couple of weeks ago.

UiPath Community 2023.10 Release

UiPath Community 2023.10 Release Studio and StudioX Handle large Excel files If you’re working with larger Excel files, you can now use Workbook file resources to improve your performance. This will load the workbook details in memory and not require to reload them for each operation. To create a Workbook resource, navigate to the Data Manager. Configure it with the Excel file required and any additional details. You can configure to improve performance even further. Once you’re done, configu…

Regarding your licence sharing, it feels abit dubious to be honest.
Firstly you don’t connect a dev licence via a licence key and haven’t for a long time.
Its done on Organization level and you just assign those two licences to a developer group.

As long as your pool of developers are in that group they can grab a licence on any machine they wish. If the licences are being held by another user its not too hard to release them back into the pool but does require an admin.

The dubious part to me is you are effectively bypassing needing more developer licences by using community and I believe its against the terms and conditions to be developing code for your company on a community licence. The community licence is for personal projects and learning, not for commercial use if I remember correctly.

[pere]

Oh @Jon_Smith , really, was that needed? Do you belong to the UiPath staff? I mean, this is a bit at least offensive to me. I’ve already opened two or three support tickets using the license, the staff is aware of the situation because I commented it more than once in those tickets, and noone said to me that’s wrong. In case you are not working for them… why embracing in such situation, questioning the truth of what other users are saying or doing? We are TWO UiPath developers, the only ones in our organization that know how to manage with it, and there are two virtual machines each with their own license, and only one is being used for now. Moreover, in any other paid license I’ve been using until now, the licenses can be shared amongst a number of users, only that, when all the seats are being occupied, no new instances can be run, but it can be done by whatever other user when one seat gets freed (that is, closing the program). I haven’t checked the terms & conditions but I’m pretty sure it’s the same in this case. And I’m pretty sure UiPath team knows where the support requests are coming from and why they are somewhow replying to them - probably because they understand it’s pretty legit. In case I need to activate my local install, it’s perfectly possible. But what the heck? Why I’m giving you this explanations? Unless you are a staff member, this is not your bussiness and it’s deviating from topic.

Thanks for caring

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

Hey @pere

As far as our Studio releases are concerned, we have two release channels that occasionally converge together:

• the Community channel which supports our free offering, at the “cost” of having forced updates
• the Enterprise channel which receives a release twice a year, the .4 and .10 in April and October, respectively

As mentioned earlier - the Community channel release notes are facilitated by Forum topics in our Release Notes category.

The Enterprise channel release notes are released in our documentation.

Now, to address your questions:

• What’s my Studio Community version?

  Your current Studio build is exactly the Studio 2023.10 Enterprise build that was just released to the Enterprise customers. We are currently rolling out the Enterprise release, and as part of the process, everyone on the Community release channel has also received the final, non-beta 2023.10 Studio build.

• Where’s the changelog for the last update?

  I believe the release notes are being published as we speak. But I do have to mention this - even though the build is already available on the community release channel, the release process for the yearly 2023.10 enterprise release is a multi-step routine that is currently underway, and it takes a moment to complete across all components (this includes the release of the notes in the documentation).

But maybe the most important takeaway here - the information we get from the Community channel releases always “fuels” the bug fixes that are done before the final Enterprise builds are released. Thus, the delta between any Studio 2023.10-beta release and the final 2023.10 is just bug fixes, with no new net features.

There is one bit of feedback I think we can take here, and I get why this might be confusing. The thing is - the official documentation lives with the LTS release cadence. Thus, when the new release notes for Studio 2023.10 are released, the bug fixes that it mentions refer to the difference vs last LTS release, which in this case is 2023.4. They do not mention bug fixes that were introduced, but fixed, in one of the Community channel releases.

If I were to exemplify this - if one of the beta builds introduced a hypothetical bug with an IF content disappearing when you disable/enable the IF activity, and the bug would be reported on the Forum and promptly fixed before the Enterprise 2023.10 build is released, then the release notes in our documentation would not mention this fix because it wasn’t an issue in the previous 2023.4 LTS release.

Typically, our last Forum announcement is released the moment we release an Enterprise release candidate version on the Community release channel and it contains a recap of all the new features/improvements between the last LTS and the upcoming one (like this one for 2023.10). We do not currently do any follow-ups on any bug fixes after that, and I can see how this might be a bit confusing.

I will have to say though - as I was typing my reply, the Studio release notes were published in our documentation:
https://docs.uipath.com/studio/standalone/2023.10/user-guide/release-notes-2023-10-0

[Jon_Smith]

Oof, that was a very confrontational response and I think you are overreacting to call it offensive.

I simply raised a concern that you may be violating a licence term and I also tried, constructively, to propose an easier way to share your licences to avoid needing such a workaround. You also posted on the community forums, as such I can share my views without being a UiPath staff member.

Its a shame you reacted this way so defensively and it appears you just want to vent about release notes and now this. As such I will bow out of this topic based on your reception to my comments.

[pere]

Sorry @Jon_Smith , for sure I took it the wrong way. I think I didn’t catch the proper meaning of “dubious” in your phrase; my I use English is not my mother tongue as an excuse? Really, please, don’t take it seriously; I apologize. Probably I was too frustreted, you are right, and I overreacted. I really appreciate your suggestions and comments, and, by the way, I’m now being more active asking my organization’s staff about the licensing and being more concerned being more formal/serious about it.

[Jon_Smith]

@pere

Really, please, don’t take it seriously; I apologize.

All good, apology accepted and totally understandable if the meaning of dubious got lost in translation.

I do think the way you use community is indeed against the terms, not an intentional violation etc as, like you say, you have developer licences but its just annoying to switch.

I hope some of the suggestions I gave can help you to adjust the way you allocate the licences and access the developer licences more easily.

https://www.uipath.com/assets/downloads/community-agreement

[pere]

Still confused about the documentation about the release notes. Since I “regularized” my Studio install with the proper license, I was missing some features, so I was curious about what my version was.

It says it is Studio 2023.10.4.

I went checking about the releases and about the fixes in each, and got this:

Can’t see the 2023.10.4 there.

I had to infer the URL for the release notes from the 2013.10.3 link, changing it to 2.4:

And it took me to this page, so it exists but it’s not linked from the previous page.

And then, by chance I tried dropping down the menu for “Realease” and what a surprise; a 2024.4 it’s there.

But you click on it and:

So yeah, I know it’s not yet time for the April release, but the documentation page is buggy.

And I’d like to be able to, at least, have a chance to install updates under my own responsability. I miss features like being able to copy error messages like this one:

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

I sent your feedback to our documentation team @pere so that they can have a look how to improve/fix things.

And for whoever will see it in the future and has the same struggle, this is I think the shortest way you can currently get to the required Studio release notes from the docs.uipath.com front page:

[pere]

When do you plan to release the April Enterprise License update? I’m so tired of suffering silly bugs that I already saw fixed on the Community Version prior to switching to this one. Moreover, I thought they should already been included in the 2023.10.6 release, but it seems not:

• Placing / toogling breakpoints (and other options from the right button menu) greyed out/unavailable (but available from the main ribbon → “Debug” tab, for instance).

• Unability to copy message errors when they appear on the “Properties” box of an activity, so we have to MANUALLY type them on Google/ChatGPT/forum/wherever we look for help. Not only it’s a hassle and we lose a lot of time, but we can potentially add errors when transcribing.

• A number of other similar stuff I don’t remember right now.

We are already almost in June.