2023.10.0

Release date: 3 November 2023

Apps and VB expressions

"Develop et impera" with the latest update to UiPath^® Apps: VB expressions.

In UiPath^® Apps, you can now use VB expressions (lambdas) to bind control values to data and to transform data, as is also the case of the UiPath^® Studio family. You can create dynamic and responsive user interfaces that can react to user input in real time. If you've used our existing expression language, this approach should be familiar to you, with the added benefit of having the full power of VB.

To use the new capability, simply select the VB as the expression language when creating a new app. The existing expression language is called Legacy, and you can continue to use it until you gain full trust in the efficiency of VB expressions.

Although you can continue to use the Legacy expression language to design your app, we recommend transitioning to VB, and here are some top benefits of doing so:

• Unparalleled customization: With VB's robust and versatile set of tools, you can tailor calculations, functions, and operations to fit your business requirements.

• Enhanced data processing: Deep dive into your datasets and integrate VB expressions into your data processing methods to transform, filter, and validate data with ease.

• Accelerated app development: Leverage the efficiency of VB expressions to speed up your app development, as you can write code more rapidly.

• Superior user experience: Enhance your applications with responsive elements that engage your users by using dynamic and interactive features powered by VB expressions.

Quick start with VB expressions

Want to get a glimpse of what VB expressions can do?

Try this quick example:

1. On the Apps home page, create a new app, and select VB as the expression language.
   
2. Add a Textbox and a Label control to your app.
3. Select the Label control.
4. In the General properties panel, for the Text property, click the "tune" icon . This opens the Expression editor, the editor that makes VB magic happen.
5. Write MainPage.Text.Value. This command instructs the app to take the value your users input in the Textbox control and display it in the Label control at runtime.
6. Preview your app and type something in the Textbox control, then select Enter. Notice how the Label control automatically updates with the same text you typed.
7. Congrats, you have just written your first VB expression in UiPath^® Apps!

Documentation

In terms of documentation, we moved the guide with the legacy expression language to a new Apps publication. The publication is called Legacy - Apps User Guide for Automation Cloud.

This publication contains all updates made to Apps until this day, and it will not be updated anymore. To identify the legacy documentation, look for the "legacy" term in the URL. For example:https://docs.uipath.com/apps/automation-cloud/latest/legacy-user-guide/.

All product updates - new features, improvements, and bug fixes - will be documented in the new publication, which you can access at the existing URL. Therefore, any bookmarks or hyperlinks you were using to access the documentation now point to the guide with the VB expression language.

The How to chapter is work in progress, so thank you for your patience as we revise the examples to use the VB expression language.

Apps in folders

Apps in Folders

We are excited to announce that the Apps in Folders feature is now available. With the release of this feature, apps are always published to an Orchestrator tenant, similar to processes. After they are published to a tenant, apps can be deployed in folders.

The Apps page enables you to deploy a published app, manage previously deployed apps, keep all your apps up to date with the most recent versions, run a deployed app, and go directly to an app project.

For more information on how to use apps in folders, check the Apps section in the Orchestrator guide.

New Apps Home page

With the release of the Apps in Folders feature, the Apps home page is also improved. This now includes two separate tabs:

• Build: apps that you can edit or build.
• Run: apps that you can run.

For more information, check the Using App Studio page.

Real time communication between Apps and attended robots

You asked, we listened: now your app responds instantly to user input. To make this happen, build your workflow using two new UiPath^® Studio activities - App Request Trigger and Handle Apps Request - and the new UiPath^® Apps rule - Trigger Workflow.

App Request Trigger and Handle Apps Request activities are included in a dedicated Studio template called Apps-Workflow communication.

The Trigger Workflow rule instantly passes on data you input to the process, then instantly updates the app UI with the output received from the process.

Working with this combo (activities + rule) facilitates instant communication between UiPath^® Apps and an attended robot, eliminating the traditional delay in process start-up. Therefore, initiating a process from your app keeps the communication channel open for rapid back-and-forth until you close the Apps session.

Controlling the input of your users

Ensure consistent and accurate user input by implementing the Input Mask property for Textbox controls. You can even use REGEX for precise guidance.

Learn more about this functionality in our documentation.

Controls improvements

Accessing control options

Now you can access the options of your controls through the three dots icon ( … ). You can continue to access the same menu by right-clicking on the control.

Locked table headers

Column headers for tables are now freezed, allowing you to scroll to the bottom of the table while keeping the headers in focus.

Edit Grid supports Datatable data type manipulation

The enhanced Edit Grid control now supports creating, updating, and deleting data table arguments for processes. Manipulate Datatable data type within the Edit Grid control by using these methods:

VB method	Example
AddRow(row)	Processes.ALLDATATYPES.out_datatable.AddRow(MainPage.EditGrid.NewItem)
UpdateRowAt(index, row)	Processes.ALLDATATYPES.out_datatable.UpdateRowAt(MainPage.EditGrid.RowIndex, MainPage.EditGrid.SelectedItem)
DeleteRowAt(index)	Processes.ALLDATATYPES.out_datatable.DeleteRowAt(MainPage.EditGrid.RowIndex)

Enhanced app import

Now, when you import an application, the Name field gets populated with the name of the imported app.

Numeric keypad for mobile app users

Texbox (Number) controls convert to numeric keypads when users access your app on mobile devices.

Bug fixes

• While building If-Then-Else rules you could not delete a single If condition.

• Disabled rules could not be collapsed.

• When you renamed your organization, invitations sent to new users would still display the previous name. Now, such invitations include the new organization name.

• Occasionally, Table controls failed to display all columns at runtime. The issue is now fixed.

• You could not clear selections in Edit Grid controls using the Reset values rule. The issue no longer reproduces.

• Occasionally, publishing an app generated the following error “No trace ID for this error”. This was caused by a 400 Bad request response of an API endpoint, which is now fixed.

• In public apps, when you uploaded a file to Data Service using the File Uploader control, its name was hardcoded as upload. Now, the name of the upload matches that of the selected file.