December 2023

22 December 2023

Introducing RealVNC for live streaming and remote control

If you know and love our live streaming and remote control feature, then you will already be aware that it is supported by a VNC server. Up until now, this has been TightVNC, but, with the advent of the Robot 2023.12 release, we are moving to RealVNC.

RealVNC is included in your Studio installation package, and requires no configuration whatsoever. Nothing changes on your part - if anything, things should be smoother from now on. However, this means that we will no longer be offering support for TightVNC.

For details, see the Live streaming and remote control via RealVNC section in our user guide.

Note: This feature is available as preview.

15 December 2023

Announcing new rate limits

Rate limits are an industry best practice for maintaining optimal performance levels, highly secure usage, and constant service availability. This is how they benefit you:

• They ensure a predictable system: knowing the API call limit helps in better designing and maintaining your applications. It provides a predictable environment, minimizing surprises due to unexpected limit breaches.
• They improve performance: by controlling the traffic on our servers, we ensure optimal performance and quicker responses, significantly improving your product experience.
• They enhance security: the limits outlined below act as an additional layer of security, protecting your system from potential cyber threats.
• They ensure fair usage: our rate limits assure equitable resource allocation to all users, and smooth operation even during peak use periods.

To that end, starting with the week of February 12, 2024, we will be applying a series of changes that we are confident will greatly benefit you in the long term. This is the observed timeline for all regular tenants, that is, tenants that do not pertain to delayed update organizations.

Rate limits

The following enpoints will be limited to 100 API requests per minute for each tenant:

• GET/odata/Jobs/?<filters>

• GET/odata/QueueItems/?<filters>

Any request exceeding this limit will be returned an HTTP 429 response.

Removal of large data fields

The following fields will be removed from the Jobs and Queue Items GetAll endpoints:

• GET/odata/Jobs:

  • InputArguments

  • OutputArguments

• GET/odata/QueueItems

  • SpecificContent

  • OutputData

  • AnalyticsData

Please note that this is only phase 1 of a broader initiative meant to further refine our limits and contribute to service predictability.

Refer to the Rate limits section of our API documentation for details on these changes, as well as tips on adaptation strategies. This will be updated with any future limits we may enforce.

Should you run into issues, reach out to your account manager or our support team for help.

14 December 2023

Enabling the authentication of external feeds

In mid-November, we announced that external feeds used for libraries could also be secured through basic authentication credentials, as was already the case for packages. However, an issue prevented this feature from reaching everyone. We are happy to let you know that it is now fully available and ready to be put to good use.

11 December 2023

Enforcing deletion confirmation

We have recently introduced a new tenant setting, namely Strong confirmation on delete, which triggers the display of a confirmation window prompting you to type the exact name of an item if you want to delete it. This option is now selected by default on the General tab of your tenant settings, and can be cleared if you choose not to display the window.

Registering client certificates for Chromium-based automations on Serverless machines

For Chromium-based automations run on Serverless machines, an new script is now available to register client certificates on your behalf, promoting seamless authentication to the websites your automation tries to access.

Viewing process folders

You can now see the folders where the processes associated to a certain package are included. This is done at the tenant level, by clicking the See processes option in the contextual menu of the desired package or package version. The resulting window displays the folders where that particular process is used. However, please note that only folders that you have view and edit access to are listed.

For details, see Viewing package processes.

8 December 2023

Enabling the pending jobs troubleshooting option

In August of this year, we announced that the Job Details window has been enriched with a new section, solely dedicated to the reasons why a job stuck in a Pending status has not yet started.

However, a mishap on our part prevented it from being available at that time. We are happy to say that it is now fully enabled, and you can use it to successfully troubleshoot any pending jobs.

6 December 2023

Column views for jobs and logs pages

The Jobs and Logs pages now feature scrollable grids if the information takes up too much screen space of if your display has a small resolution, thus allowing for easier access to the information that interests you.

If you reduce the size of a column, the grid might no longer be scrollable. What is more, column size customization is preserved between sessions.

When can I see these changes?

The date when a change is first announced in the release notes is the date when it first becomes available.

If you don't see the change yet, you can expect to see it soon, after we roll out changes to all the regions.

More information

Deprecation timeline

We recommend that you regularly check the deprecation timeline for any updates regarding features that will be deprecated and removed.