2020.10.2

Release date: 28 October 2020

What’s New

Object Repository

The Object Repository is here to cover all your needs in terms of the management, reusability, and reliability of UI elements by capturing them as objects in a DOM-like repository, sharable across projects.

Store the elements that you use in UI Automation and reuse them in your project, or publish them as libraries that you can install as dependencies to other projects. When underlying application interfaces change, all you need to do is update your libraries and dependencies. In addition, you can view all the UI Automation activities used in a project from the UI Activities tab inside the Object Repository.

Modern Design Experience

You can now enable a new experience of working with UI Automation that makes it easier to indicate and configure UI elements, and brings more accuracy in element detection by combining the selector and image targeting methods, along with anchors. The modern experience comes with new activities, an all-in-one recorder, a new data scraping wizard, and support for the Object Repository. Projects created in the StudioX profile use the modern experience by default.

Onboarding Experience

Getting started with UiPath Studio has just become a lot easier.:

• When the Robot is installed in User Mode, signing in to your UiPath account is all it takes to connect Studio and the Assistant to Orchestrator, no machine key required. You get instant access to Orchestrator resources, your product is activated, and you are all set for publishing to your organization.

  If you don't sign in when you first launch Studio, you can still activate by connecting to Orchestrator with a machine key or by using a license key, and then sign in later from Studio or Assistant. To find out more about how to connect all your UiPath products by signing in, see Setting Up Interactive Sign-In.

• The first time you open Studio, a quick interactive tutorial guides you through the process of creating, running, and publishing an automation. If you want to revisit the tutorial, you can access it at any time from the Help tab in Studio Backstage View.

Create and Share Templates

You can now create and publish your own templates in the same way as you do processes. Build templates with a particular set of dependencies and workflows with already defined variables and arguments, and save time by creating new projects based on your templates.

Sharing templates with others is as simple as publishing them to Orchestrator. You can access your templates and those shared by others from the new Templates tab in Studio.

Data Service Integration

Studio features integration with the Data Service that offers data modeling and storage capabilities. In the Data Service, you can create entities to store data that can later be used in automation projects. From within Studio, import entities and collect, update, and pass data to other processes.

By using entities created in the Data Service, you can manage and manipulate data aggregated in a single object. This means that you no longer need to pass large numbers of variables and arguments between processes and workflows, and you can use the same organization-specific data types across all UiPath services.

Find References to Activities, Variables, and Arguments

Finding all the places in your project where each activity, variable, and argument is referenced is now a lot easier. Right-click the element, select Find References, and view the results in the Find References panel.

Multiple Entry Points

You can now mark any workflow file as an entry point for a process by right-clicking it in the Project panel and selecting Enable Entry Point. A file marked as an entry point can be selected as the workflow to run first when using the Invoke Process and Run Parallel Process activities in other processes. This feature is not yet supported in Orchestrator, but you can start to logically map your entry points.

Picture in Picture

Picture in Picture (PiP), the feature that enables you to run attended automations in a separate session, has graduated from experimental to generally available. Test a process in PiP and mark it PiP Ready to indicate that it can be executed in Picture in Picture, and mark it Starts in PiP if you want to make it the default option when executing the published process.

New in Studio Pro

Mock Testing

Mock testing is now available for your unit testing, so you can isolate and test specific test case functions (requires UiPath.Testing.Activities 1.2.1 or higher).

C# Support

You can now choose between VB.NET and C# as the language to use for expressions in all projects. You can set a global default language, select the language to use whenever you create a new project, and organizations can enforce the language to use through the governance file. For more information about C# support, see About Automation Projects.

Improvements

Managing Packages

• To make it easier for you to find just the packages you need when you are managing the dependencies installed in your projects, we’ve added additional filtering options to the Manage Packages window. You can select to view only activities packages, libraries, UI libraries, or packages published by UiPath, and show or hide prerelease versions.
• The search in the Manage Packages window now looks in the descriptions of activities packages, not only in their names.

Publishing Projects

• You can now prevent certain files from the project folder from being included in the package when a process is published. Right-click a file or a selection of files in the Project panel, and then select Ignore from Publish. To revert the change, right-click and select Set as Publishable.

  The options Make private / Make public available in the Project panel context menu for libraries have also been renamed Ignore from Publish / Set as Publishable and are now available when selecting multiple files.

• When Workflow Analyzer before publish is enforced, the published packages now contain a file with details about the results of the analysis for each enabled rule.

Governance

• Organizations can now configure whether or not users are allowed to change Studio design settings using the new"AllowEdit" parameter available for the settings in the governance file.

Source Control

• Checking in large projects to TFS repositories is now quicker.
• You can now change the GIT commit signature.
• You can now change the SVN repository credentials.

Workflow Analyzer

New Rules

• New Workflow Analyzer rules are available to ensure design best practices are followed in projects that support persistence:

  • Persistence Activity Check (ST-DBP-024) - Restrict the use of Wait ... and Resume persistence activities only to the workflow file that is set as Main.
  • Data Serialization Prerequisite (ST-DBP-025) - Check if there are any variables that are not serializable in the scope of Wait ... and Resume persistence activities or in the scope of their parent activities.
  • Delay Activity Usage (ST-DBP-026) - Check whether the Delay activity is used in the workflow file set as Main.
  • Persistence Best Practice (ST-DBP-027) - Check whether Wait ... and Resume persistence activities are used inside the For Each activity.
  • Arguments Serialization Prerequisite (ST-DBP-028) - Check if there are any arguments that are not serializable in the scope of Wait ... and Resume persistence activities or in the scope of their parent activities.

• Two new usage rules are available:

  • Required Packages (ST-USG-027) enforces the use of certain activities packages in a project. For example, you can use this rule to ensure a NuGet package containing custom Workflow Analyzer rules is installed as a project dependency.
  • Minimum Log Messages (ST-USG-020) checks whether the Log Message activity is used at least once per workflow.
• The new naming rule Prefix Datatable Variables (ST-NMG-009) checks whether the names of DataTable variables defined in the workflow with the type DataTable start with the dt_ prefix.

Command Line Improvements

• Additional information is now available when you run the Workflow Analyzer from the command line:

  • The output includes the name and the type of the item that generated each Workflow Analyzer error.
  • You can return the exit code of the command.

• Messages with relevant information are now returned when you run the Workflow Analyzer from the command line in the following scenarios:

  • No rule violations were encountered.
  • An incorrect project or workflow file path was provided.
  • The full path to the project exceeded the maximum limit of 260 characters for the file name, 248 characters for the directory path not including the file name, or both.

Other Improvements

• By default, Workflow Analyzer rules are arranged by code in the window, and enabled rules are displayed first.

• We've improved the functionality of the Workflow Analyzer with the following changes:

  • When you manually analyze a single file, rules with the Project scope are also executed for the file.
  • If Enforce Analyzer before Run is enabled, when you run or debug a single workflow file, all the rules with the Error action are executed for all the workflow files in the project. If the file is a test case, all test case files are analyzed as well.
  • You have the option to exclude test case files from workflow analysis when a project is analyzed.
  • You can manually analyze a single test case file.
  • If Enforce Analyzer before Run is enabled, when you select multiple test cases to run or debug at once, all the rules with the Error action are executed for all the workflow and test case files in the project.

• A number of Workflow Analyzer rules that target activities now also apply in flowcharts and state machines:

  • Rules that apply to activities added to the branches of Flow Decision and Flow Switch activities in flowcharts: Display Name Duplication, Activity Name Defaults.
  • Rules that apply to activities added inside the State activity in state machines: Display Name Duplication, Data Serialization Prerequisite, Prefix Datatable Arguments, Variable Length Exceeded, Variable Overrides Variable, Variables Naming Convention, Variable Overrides Argument, SecureString Misusage, SecureString Variable Usage, Unused Dependencies, Unused Variables.
• The rule Undefined Output Properties (ST-DBP-020) now identifies output properties that are defined using expressions. In addition, because there are many cases in which it is not necessary to define output properties for an activity, the rule is now disabled by default.

Usability and Speed

The 2020.10 version of Studio brings a number of usability improvements. In terms of speed, we’ve improved project load time, start time, and activities are now added faster from the Command Palette. We have also improved the library compiler, which brings a performance boost at execution time for activities from libraries installed as project dependencies. With these improvements, we aim at making your automation experience speedier and more seamless.

• Enable a slim view for collapsed activities in the Designer panel.
• The position in the currently opened file is kept after a dependency change.
• You can search for activities by description in the Activities panel.
• The description of an activity is displayed when you hover over it in the Activities panel.
• The tooltip that appears when you hover over an activity in the Designer panel now displays the activities package in which the activity is included.
• Press the Esc key to close the Expression Editor.
• When you edit the display name in the title bar of an activity, you can now press Enter to save the changes.
• The keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + E now displays the Error List panel.
• Copy and paste files from File Explorer directly into the Project panel. The same can be done using drag-and-drop on one or multiple files, including .xaml workflows. Using Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V shortcuts you can also copy a file and duplicate it anywhere in the tree.
• Searching for activities in the Command Palette returns better results by listing activities that contain the search term in the title before those that include it only in the description.
• The performance of searching and adding activities using the Add Activity search bar is now improved.
• Drag and drop assets, queues, or processes from the Resources panel directly to your automation project. Upon doing so, suitable activities are suggested in the Add activity search bar.
• You can now import namespaces for web services added to library projects directly from the Project panel: right-click a service in the Project panel, and then select Import Namespaces.

Robotic Enterprise Framework Template

The 2020.10 version of Studio introduces a couple of improvements to the Robotic Enterprise Framework template to incorporate some of the current features:

• The Robotic Enterprise Framework template is available for C# projects in the Studio Pro profile.
• The template has been updated to support Modern Folders in Orchestrator. For this, the Assets sheet in the Config.xlsx file received a new column to specify the Folder where the asset is stored, and the InitAllSetting.xaml file was modified.

Known Issues

• Because the namespace of several System activities has changed after version 19.4, if you added one of the affected activities to the list of Favorites using version 19.4 or earlier of the System activities package, the activities no longer appear in the Favorites list when you update the package to a version after 19.4. The available workaround is to add the activities to the Favorites list again.

  The activities with a changed namespace are: Log Message, Filter Data Table, Message Box, File Change Trigger, Invoke Code, Retry Scope, Do While, and While.

• When you publish a project to a custom URL that becomes unavailable while the Info dialog box at the end of the publishing process is open, if you click the Location link in the dialog box, it can take longer than expected (over 1 minute) for an error to be displayed and inform you that the location cannot be found.
• An error occurs when you use the Test Activity feature for an activity that requires a scope.

In Studio Pro

• Renaming a Studio Pro test project that includes test cases causes an error when publishing the tests.
• Design time and runtime performance of C# projects is lower when compared to VB.NET. When runtime performance is essential, we recommend using VB.NET instead of C#. We plan to update the speed related to C# with future updates.
• You cannot delete an activity within a mock file if the mock file is derived from an unresolved activity.

Bug Fixes

• The Universal Search bar returns annotations from .xaml files opened in the Designer panel. Please note that exact match annotations are trimmed in the search results.
• The Workflow Analyzer now correctly analyzes projects, regardless of the regional settings on the machine.
• The UiPath.UIAutomationNext.Activities package is no longer installed by default when migrating projects from a version older than v2018.3 to the current Studio version. This package was added when migration was performed to Studio version 2020.4.1.
• Fixed an issue that prevented publishing a project to a network drive and resulted in the ‘Directory has no writing permissions’ error even if the user had access to the directory.
• Studio no longer becomes unresponsive when you leave it idle for a longer period of time after working in a project connected to TFS source control.
• The Find References panel is now displayed as expected when you right-click a workflow file in the Project panel and select Find References.
• A validation error no longer occurs when you use Ctrl + K, Ctrl + M, or Ctrl + Shift + M to create a variable or argument in the To field of the Assign activity, and then add a double-quoted string in the Value field using the Expression Editor. The variables and arguments created in the To field are now of type String by default. If you change the type to GenericValue, adding a string in the Value field from the Expression Editor will result in a validation error.
• Fixed an issue that prevented publishing from the Project Dependencies Mass Update Tool to a Personal Workspace in Orchestrator.
• When you use the pull (rebase) GIT option, newly created branches are now visible in the remote repository in the source control Status Bar.
• The Unused Variables (ST-USG-009) Workflow Analyzer rule now correctly identifies variable usage in Multiple Assign activities.
• The Unused Variables (ST-USG-009) Workflow Analyzer rule no longer generates a rule violation warning when there is a case mismatch between a variable name and the name used to reference it in an activity.
• The Locals panel now sorts variables, arguments, and activity properties by name, type, or value.
• Breakpoints set on activities in an invoked workflow file now work when the WorkflowFileName provided in the Invoke Workflow File activity does not have the same capitalization as the invoked file name.
• Fixed an issue that prevented code autocomplete from working for expressions from the System.Data.DataSetExtensions namespace in the Main.xaml workflow file. Please note that this fix applies only to new projects created in this version of Studio.
• The installer no longer fails when encountering registry areas populated with non-compliant data.