Wrong (or hard to decypher) "Delete" activity documentation for Legacy projects

[pere]

In my Windows - Legacy project (which I have no chance to update to non-legacy because of broken Powershell activity) I had to use the Delete activity, and I had to check the docs because I found confusing that there where both a “File” and a “Path” properties:

Then on the documentation Activities - Delete (uipath.com)) they unproperly state that there’s only a “Path” property in the “File” section, but there’s a “File” and a “Path” property in the “File” (to even further confuse things) and there’s no mention about the “Path” one.

This forces me to do further testing to figure out how to properly use the activity.

Documentation is no on par, to my understanding, with the minimum quality standards, lack of any examples, and so on.

[Rooty (Mohamed El Ouehabi)]

Hello @pere,

What Studio version are you using?

Because apparently in the latest Community version which is v. 2023.12.0 the properties for the “Delete file” activity only requires filling the “Path” value, as you can in the screenshot below :

I hope this answers your question.
Cordially,

[postwick (Paul Ostwick)]

The version of Studio doesn’t matter. It’s the version of the UiPath.System.Activities dependency that controls how the activities look and function.

[postwick (Paul Ostwick)]

You’re on an old version of UiPath.System.Activities that’s why what you see doesn’t match what you see in the documentation.

Also, you say Invoke Powershell is broken in Windows compatibility. What do you mean? I’ve used it in Windows compatibility and it works just fine. Of course you don’t need Powershell to simply delete a file.

I’m on UiPath.System.Activities 23.4.4 and the Delete File activity looks as shown in the documentation.

[Jon_Smith]

@pere

because of broken Powershell activity)

I think you should circle back to this issue, as I feel you may have given up and declared a bug when its actually something solvable.
I’d even argue that if you are using Powershell in every project you make then perhaps you are using that as a crutch rather that doing it fully in UiPath.

I am happy to be corrected but since both Powershell and UiPath are based in .NET I feel that any powershell functionality should be able to be duplicated in UiPath.

Perhaps remove that dependency and you can upgrade and stop facing these issues.

[pere]

Regarding the “Delete” activity:

You are right in that it dependes on the package.

You are not that right in that I’m using an “old” version.

The one I’m using is v23.10.5 as this is the last stable one that shows up on my system. The last one I see is 23.12.0-preview, which is a beta.

In case you don’t know, the non-community versions don’t allow using preview versions. We are publishing our packages on a virtual machine with a licensed version. If we try to do so, or open a project in Studio on the machine with the license, it will throw an error.

On 23.10.5 the activity is still showing the File and Path input boxes.

If there’s a newer, stable version that only has the “Path” box, then it doesn’t appear as available on my Studio.

If there isn’t, and the documentation is referring to the beta version, without even mentioning that it worked differently in previous versions and even the current STABLE version, then I think that’s UiPath’s fault.

Regarding the observations about my comment abouth Powershell: it really belongs here; I just wanted to note it for everyone who is reading, but assumptions like “Of course you don’t need Powershell to simply delete a file” are not needed, as nobody insinuated so.
Being declared a bug it’s what it’s been, as there’s been some tickets open with UiPath regarding this matter, not only messages in the forum, and it’s acknowledged by them that 1) from non-legacy to legacy it was broken and didn’t allow certain actions and 2) after “fixing” it, the functionality changed and backwards compatibility is broken, as session state is lost amongs different Powershell calls. It doesn’t belongs to this thread but, why do you insist on it? Those decisions are not only based on my solely will; I have bosses that supervise my work and the organization I work in decided that I cannot spend other 3 months trying to solve this UiPath bug or trying to find workarounds. In fact, using Powershell was already a workaround, as Studio/activities don’t provide the functionality we need with Microsoft Teams. Then we relied in a functionality that we were told worked in a way, then they are phasing out Legacy problems and then they break backwards compatibility in the new version of the activity for non-Legacy. I doubt about the fairness of that, plus I’ve been toold to be given support and alternatives a miriad times, but as of February 2024 that didn’t happen. Only nice words from the support system. My organization has changed the company that provides support after the previous contract expired and we are waiting for the next meeting to just bring out this matter with them, as the other one failed to provide the slightest near-to-working solution. And believe me, they are getting big money from this.

This is rather off-topic and I don’t feel like having to provide such explanations, and really, I don’t understand how you can be so sure of something without probably knowing the use-case, the context, the situation, the background and so. Of course, with infinite time and resources you can solve everything, but that’s not the case. We are using a paid, expensive tool because it’s supposed to easy work. If your point is that “as UiPath is based in .NET any functionality should be able to be duplicated in UiPath” I should be able to write my own library of activities, like my own version of “Execute Powershell” and my own “Microsoft Teams”, man, that’s overkill. Of course I feel like I can do it it that was to were my job, but not realistic for the scope of the project I’m working in.

[Jon_Smith]

@pere

In case you don’t know, the non-community versions don’t allow using preview versions.

This is not true, I do it all the time and never touch community.

Regarding my Powershell comment. Fine we can drop it in this thread, I raised it because I find you frequently ‘cry wolf’ as it were and declare things as broken and buggy when infact there are other explanations. The point above is an example, declaring you cannot use preview versions on Enterprise installs. So I have to take what you say with a pinch of salt. I fear you will react badly to this comment, please remember, we are just community members here, I am offering advice freely and trying to be constructive, take a moment before lashing out back.

[pere]

This is not true, I do it all the time and never touch community.

It is probably that I’m referring to publishing a package in Orchestrator. I don’t remember, neither my workmate does, where we got this explicit message. So, in the end, that’s what prevents us from using preview versions of the activities packages. It’s not merely a vague remembrance; in that specific case I had to adapt the project to convert it to use an older, non-alpha versions of that activity so it could be published in our production machine.

In the end, I think my reasoning is still valid.

[Jon_Smith]

@pere

It is probably that I’m referring to publishing a package in Orchestrator. I don’t remember, neither my workmate does, where we got this explicit message. So, in the end, that’s what prevents us from using preview versions of the activities packages. It’s not merely a vague remembrance;

Its not a vague remembrance, nor a valid reason. Its a false assumption.
Look, here is a package that has a preview version in it.

Here it is running successfully, as it always has, in production.

You are wrong and have proved my point from above that you stubbornly declare things don’t work, when infact they do, and claim they are bugs we all must experience, but we don’t.
The issue is clearly on your end a significant amount of the time.
Start trying to think constructively here and you will find alot more solutions than problems.

[pere]

OMG. You’re accusing me (and my mate, who also experienced this behaviour and were on the same machines at the time that happened and we saw that message,) of lying. That’s rude. Please refrain to talk to me any further. I’ll check whatever tools are available to block you.

This software is full of bugs. In fact we are dealing with the licenses since yesterday and we found out that we need some attemps, logins, unlogins, relogins, restarts, reapplying permissions and a number of hassless to get it working, and even that sometimes the behaviour is inconsistent. What you found is that, IN YOUR CASE, you could run a project that is using a preview version of a package. Again, I have no problem with that. In our case, using UiPath Assistant to launch an automation, it raised a message box preventing us from doing so because the package used an activity belonging to a beta version of a package. That’s is. Probably UiPath knows what we are talking about as they are the ones who programmed that. That’s the only think you proved: your own experience. And the fact of lacking some education.

[Jon_Smith]

@pere

OMG. You’re accusing me (and my mate, who also experienced this behaviour and were on the same machines at the time that happened and we saw that message,) of lying. That’s rude. Please refrain to talk to me any further. I’ll check whatever tools are available to block you.

I clearly did not accuse you of lying. I clearly stated you are wrong as you are making assumptions. By your logic you accuse me of lying because you also insisted I was wrong and that you cannot run preview versions.

I have clearly demonstrated you CAN run preview versions with an Enterprise licence.
You do not want to listen, even when proved wrong you still insist you aren’t based on some recollection.

Come on man, you aren’t accepting any help here and I don’t know why you try to post here when it seems all you want to do it rage and not accept when you are clearly wrong and get constuctive help.

Perhaps stop arguing with people here and just open private support tickets.
If you do not want advice from the community correcting you, then I don’t know why you are even posting here. Perhaps tell me your goal if you flat out refuse to accept evidence showing what you assume is the case is incorrect.

I will bow out of this topic, and not try to help you on other topics further since despite my best efforts to make this into a constructive dialogue, you do not wish to reciprocate. Good luck solving your issues.

[pere]

It’s you who is making a snowball of this. I already told you that we COULDN’T accomplish this (with an enterprise license, which probably has nothing to do with it). You don’t need to stick to the tiny letters or whatever. Maybe it wasn’t in Orchestrator but with Assitant. That’s not relevant, but you are focusing on it. The problem is that we couldn’t do it, we got an EXPLICIT message from UiPath abouth that in the form of a pop-up, and that’s what it’s preventing us from using the alpha versions. Which, again, by the way, shouldn’t be used as the reference version for the documentation. And even if you didn’t encounter this problem, WE encountered it, so you don’t have to doubt about my statements - what would be the point?? I’m lying or something on purpose just to make everyone lose time?
In any case, if it WERE possible to use those pre-release versions in our situation, it should be UiPath staff the one who should clarify. If I require them to do so I bet they are gonna confirm my point. Is it possible that there’s whatever obscure, hidden setting somewhere to allow this? Yeah, it’s possible; I don’t deny it. For sure I haven’t set up it on purpose. In any case, again, this is a FEEDBACK forum, and I’m giving feedback. Which should be considered as VALUABLE. And the points on my post are still valid.

Your assumption about what I’m doing and I’m not doing don’t belong here. Again, that’s plenty subjectivity. You don’t know if I’m already opening private support tickets. What, by the way, that’s what I’m doing, also. And I’m already giving a lot of explanations here I don’t have to. But I do, and I already did. And in my explanations I said that OPENING PRIVATE TICKETS, having online meetings, and doing all the tests they wanted us to try DIDN’T WORK. That’s, in part, why I’m publicly posting every issue here. That way anybody can get a proper image of how reliable this software is and decide before paying big loads of money if it’s worth it. This sort of reactions also help future customers, for sure. Also, I would expect that making it public would pushe them to react a little bit more, but no luck. Maybe all I get is to get banned from here, eventually, if I become too much an annoyance for them.

What are you correcting here? I still don’t see any proper “correction”. The issue stills the same. Are you a member of UiPath staff? If you aren’t, I don’t see why that so much interest in “bleaching” their image. If you are a worker who uses UiPath as a tool for daily work and/or are paying for a license, you should probably be interested in getting your tool improved, no matter if you can live with it or you find alternative ways or workarounds. When I opened this thread I already found out how to use the Delete activity; you didn’t expect me to?? But as I detected this incoherency in the docs, I’m reporting it in the FEEDBACK forum. Again, this is not the quality I expect from a paid, expensive software tool.

[J0ska]

I agee with you that UiPath documentation is very poor. It often lacks detailed description activity functionality and propperties, list of package activities on left side is not sorted, seach doesn’t give very good result… So using it is a living hell

On the other side based on questions I observe in the forum hardly anybody is reading the documentation

So it is closed cyrcle.

Cheers