2022.4.1

Release date: 9 May 2022

What’s New

Performance improvements

Processes created in Studio 2022.4 with Windows and cross-platform compatibility now start with up to 50% faster compared to the previous release.

To take advantage of this, remove all unused dependencies from your workflow.

Robot has migrated to .NET 6

Robot now uses the latest .NET release, .NET 6. Windows and cross-platform projects now also target .NET 6.

Assistant on macOS

We are happy to announce that with the 2022.4 release, UiPath Assistant becomes available on macOS, enabling you to access automations right from your desktop. The Auto-Update functionality now also supports Assistant and Robot on macOS.

Guided tour in UiPath Assistant

A guided tour is now available in Assistant to help new users quickly learn and discover its menus and functionalities. This tour is automatically launched when Assistant is opened for the first time and can be started at any later time from the Preferences menu.

Support for partial results in Apps

The new Workflow Events activities pack contains a new activity, Send Interim Result, enabling communication between UiPath Apps and processes for attended robots. These activities enable you to send interim process results (IPR), reducing the time to display process results.

This pack is meant to be used when the time to start a process is a bottleneck in your automation and you need to wait for an entire automation to complete to obtain the process results.

AzureAD authentication

Starting with 2022.4, UiPath Robot supports authenticating in a Windows session using Azure AD credentials (azuread/[e-mail]). This helps you run unattended automations in environments where you only have cloud Azure AD implementations.

Robot JavaScript SDK release notes

The Robot JavaScript SDK now has its own release notes page. Here you can see all the new features, improvements, and bug fixes for each version, starting with 1.2.7.

Improvements

Service URL change CMD

The Orchestrator URL used for Interactive Sign In can be changed from the command line interface.

OAuth 2.0-based framework for robot authentication

In this release, we ship a new robot authentication mechanism that uses the OAuth 2.0 framework as the basis for its authentication protocol, meaning unattended robots can connect to Orchestrator using a client ID - client secret pair generated via machine template objects. The client ID - client secret pair generates a token that authorizes the connection and provides the robot with access to Orchestrator resources.

Client credentials allow the UiPath Robot to access resources by using its own credentials, instead of impersonating a user. When the robot requests resources from Orchestrator, Orchestrator enforces that the robot itself has authorization to perform an action since there is no user involved in the authentication.

• More on robot authentication.

Execution history in UiPath Assistant

Starting with 2022.4, you can view the execution history of each process in UiPath Assistant. This provides a way to track processes, see the status and any errors if available.

Diagnostic tool improvements

The following collectors have been added to the Diagnostic Tool:

• Registry Key Path

• “File Path” with the following filtering options:

  • Time Range
  • Error Level
  • Source

Bug Fixes

• The robot could not change the resolution on the Windows 11 console session.
• In rare cases, an invalid token was used as a reference when the LoginToConsole parameter was set to NO.
• The Send SMTP Mail Message activity would sometimes hang or not complete when used multiple times in a short time span.
• Display Name was missing from Assistant when a job was started from Orchestrator.
• UiPath Assistant would stay in a suspended state after an Interactive Sign In session expired.
• The authentication flow would break when multiple background processes were run without RobotJS consent.
• RobotJS would not work when the machine name was in Chinese.

Breaking Changes

• Starting with 2022.4, the PiP session timeout is uses the UIPATH_PIP_SESSION_TIMEOUT environment variable instead of UIPATH_SESSION_TIMEOUT.

• Unattended background automations on service-mode robots run by default under the built-in "Local Service” Windows user. Prior to this, the username and password configured in Orchestrator were used.

  Note: To use credentials set in Orchestrator, you need to configure the UIPATH_HEADLESS_WITH_USER environment variable on the robot machine and set the value to True.
• The 2022.4 Robot is not compatible with the 2019.10 Orchestrator.

Observed Behavior

After converting a Robot from Service-Mode to User-Mode, the XML files in the NuGet Packages aren't accessible after the migration is complete and the following error message is displayed:

"Access to path C:\Users\john.doe\.nuget\packages\HelloWorld\1.0.0\lib\net45\Main.xaml is denied".

Cause

When the Robot is deployed in Service Mode, packages are downloaded and installed in a folder (e.g. .nuget\packages) by the Local System user that the robot is running service under.

When converted to User Mode, NuGet packages from that folder are no longer accessible as the current user that runs the Robot does not have permissions to view or edit those files.

Solutions

1. Deleting all packages from the original folder:

If you choose to delete packages from the original folder, the Robot reinstalls the processes in the configured folder under the user's permission. This way, the Robot has access to the files whenever it needs to run them.

2. Changing the packages folder:

When converting the Robot from Service-Mode to User-Mode, also change the folder name from .nuget\packages to .nuget\packages_new.

This causes the Robot to re-create the .nuget\packages folder and download the processes in it so they can later be used.

By default, activities packages are downloaded and installed in the %userprofile%\.nuget\packages folder. You can set a different folder in one of the following ways:

• During installation, by installing from the command line with the option PACKAGES_FOLDER.
• After installation, by manually editing the uipath.config file:
  1. Open the uipath.config file in a text editor. By default, the file is located in C:\Program Files\UiPath\Studio.
  2. In the packageSettings node, add the packagesInstallationFolder key with the path to the new folder as its value.

  3. Save the changes and restart the robot.

     For example, add the following to uipath.config to change the download location to C:\nuget.

     <packageSettings>
       <add key="packagesInstallationFolder" value="C:\)
     uget" />
     </packageSettings>

For more details around the differences between Service-Mode and User-Mode Robots, read the according to deployment document which provides a more detailed description of each type of Robot.