2023.4.0

Release date: 27 April 2023

What's New

Trigger-based attended automation

Studio now includes a trigger-based attended automation solution, allowing you to build highly responsive automations by using triggers for various application or user events. The benefits of the new trigger-based attended automation solution are: improved performance, the ability to automate multiple scenarios at the same time, and to run them at the same time.

The components of trigger-based attended automation include Forms, Callouts, Triggers, and Global Variables. These new capabilities offer a wide range of common use cases, such as contact center scenarios, feedback processes, and digital adoption platforms, among others.

Forms

With the improved form capabilities, building and using forms has become easier and more varied. You can now create forms outside activities, display multiple forms at the same time, and set triggers to start based on form events. Additionally, you can choose to display a form while the workflow is running, edit and fetch form values at runtime, change form properties, and inject custom JavaScript into the form. To learn more about the new Form experience, see how Forms work inside the trigger-based attended automation ecosystem, and see the dedicated documentation.

Callouts

The new callout capabilities in attended automation allow you to guide users to specific UI elements and create custom validations. You can create callouts using a Form file and specify the target UI element for display. Callouts can also pass values to the elements inside them. Callouts are very similar to forms, but more suitable for scenarios like guided tours and custom validations.

To learn more about the new way of building callouts, see the dedicated documentation.

Triggers

Triggers now allow you to start workflows based on user or application events such as form events, application events, keypress events, click events, hotkey triggers, mouse triggers, click image triggers, system triggers, and SAP session attributes changed triggers. Additionally, you can automate multiple attended scenarios using the Run Local Triggers activity, Stop Local Triggers activity, Repeat Trigger activity, Disable Local Trigger activity, and Enable Local Trigger activity. Lastly, the Global Variable Changed Trigger activity now allows workflows to start when the value of a global variable changes. These new capabilities give you greater control over trigger-based attended automation in Studio.

To learn more about what you can achieve using the new trigger capabilities, see the Triggers section.

For more information on how to leverage the capabilities, see the Trigger-based Attended Automation chapter.

To get started with the new attended automation solution, see the dedicated tutorials, and the improved Attended Automation Framework template.

Search activities from all official packages

Finding the right activity for your project is now easier with the ability to search from all available activities packages without needing to install a package in advance. This feature is available in cross-platform projects with Studio connected to Automation Cloud Orchestrator.

The Activities panel now groups activities that are available in your project under the label Installed and activities that are included in uninstalled packages under Installable. To make searching even easier, activities packages also have more readable names.

You can add an installable package by right-clicking its name in the Activities panel and selecting Install. You can also double-click individual activities or drag them to the Designer panel. Packages are installed with the latest available version.

The Add Activity search bar was also updated to distinguish between activities that are installed and those that are available to install.

Note: This feature is available for activities from the Official and Orchestrator Tenant feeds.

Define values for activities in libraries

You can now set predefined values for certain input types in the properties of custom activities created via libraries. For more information, see About Libraries.

Support for Microsoft Office 2021

Studio is now compatible with Microsoft Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021. The Repair Tool for Microsoft Office now also supports Microsoft Office 2021.

Filter project files by file type

You can now filter the files in the project folder by file type. For example, you can select to view only workflow files. For more information, see About Automation Projects.

Live Stream support over remote debugging

You can now see the actions performed by the robot in real time when debugging a project remotely using an unattended robot connection. A new remote debugging setting, Show Live Stream, lets you visualize and take control over how the robot is interacting with UI elements. This feature is particularly useful for troubleshooting and updating automations that are running in the production environment. For more information, see Remote Debugging.

Show the Properties panel for all activities

In response to the feedback regarding the absence of the Properties panel from the new activity design unveiled with Studio 2022.10, we are excited to reintroduce the Properties panel for activities featuring the new design. This means that you now have the option to use the Properties panel to configure advanced properties regardless of the compatibility of your project. The Properties panel is enabled by default when you first start Studio. You can control the visibility of the panel by using the Show activities properties inline design setting. For cross-platform projects and some activities in projects with the Windows compatibility, the properties that were visible when selecting Show advanced options have been moved to the Properties panel. Organizations can use governance policies to control the visibility of the Properties panel.

Variables automatically generated from activity outputs

Until now, to store and use the output of activities you needed to manually create variables. In cross-platform projects, to help you build workflows faster, Studio now automatically creates a variable for each activity output and gives you the option to use the variable in other activities throughout the workflow. The variable is stored only when consumed, meaning that generating it doesn’t impact performance or project size.

The generated variable is available for use in other activities in the Expression Editor and by selecting the Plus button > Use Variable in other editors and builders.

The activity outputs behave just like any other variable and are available in the Data Manager once used. They are displayed with their actual name and can be used in IntelliSense.

The Auto-generate Activity Outputs design setting gives you control over the automatic creation of activity outputs.

New Test Automation features

Invoke execution templates as isolated

You can now invoke Execution Templates as isolated, by checking Invoke the templated workflow as isolated in the Set Execution Template dialog box.

New arguments supported for auto-generated data

The Auto Generate data variation source now supports arguments of type Dictionary and Array (of all primitive values, including String, TimeSpan, and DateTime) in symbolic executions.

Test Automation Framework template

You can now use the new Test Automation Framework template as a starting point for your testing projects. This template guarantees that you cover the best practices of test automation while creating your projects. For more information, see Test Automation Framework.

Improvements

Data Manager improvements

Data Manager sorting support

You now have more freedom to group variables, arguments, and constants by dragging and dropping them in the Data Manager panel. The way you group these items becomes the default order for your project. The drag-and-drop feature is disabled when you select the Group items by scope menu option. This menu option is selected by default when you first open Studio.

To make sorting data in the Data Manager easier, we've also introduced a new menu option, Sort sections elements, which lets you sort data in each resource category by name (ascending or descending) or revert to the default order of your project. This option replaces sorting the Variables or Arguments sections individually.

Data Manager refresh

Using the Refresh button at the top of the Data Manager panel now refreshes local resources independently from Orchestrator resources. This means that you can use resources that refresh instantly (variables, arguments, constants, and resources) while waiting for Orchestrator resources that can take longer to refresh. Refreshed resources are disabled while they are loading and become available after the loading finishes. Additionally, you can now use Studio while data is refreshing.

Other Data Manager improvements

• You can now right-click a global variable or global constant in the Data Manager and select Find References to find every place in the project where the global variable or global constant is referenced.
• New variables, arguments, constants, and namespaces now appear as the first items in their respective nodes in the Data Manager.
• Several performance improvements have also been made to the way in which data in the Data Manager panel is updated.

Separate design time and runtime dependencies

To increase Robot performance and reduce the size of published packages, activities packages and libraries are now separated into design and runtime packages. This means that published activities now contain a design package used by Studio and a slimmer execution package used by the Robot. The separation applies only to Windows and cross-platform libraries and activities officially supported by UiPath.

Note: Custom libraries published in Studio 2023.4 are not guaranteed to be compatible with earlier Studio versions that do not support the separation between design time and runtime dependencies.

Applications and URLs tracking

Studio can now track what external applications and URLs are targeted by an automation, providing insights into the automation workflow. This information is available for Windows and cross-platform projects after publishing in Orchestrator, Insights, and Automation Hub. App tracking requires the latest versions of activity packages to be installed and does not apply to activities included in XAML files that are ignored from publishing.

Important: Erratum 21 December 2023: App tracking is an automatic process that is not visible in Studio. The app information that Studio collects can only be accessed in Orchestrator, Insights, and Automation Hub.

Project validation improvements

Project validation is now faster and uses less RAM and CPU resources. In addition, a confirmation dialog now prompts you to automatically import missing references when you open or validate some Windows projects.

Test Automation improvements

• Uploading test results to Test Manager just got easier:
  • Local assertion screenshots now upload as well. After uploading, the screenshots display in Test Manager inside the Assertions tab of a test case result.
  • When you upload test results to Test Manager, changes to the project name or test case name now upload as well.

  For more information about uploading test results and screenshot to Test Manager, see Upload Test Results to Test Manager.

• You can now find the Export as Library control in the design ribbon. Also, when you export projects as libraries, you can now select the specific workflows that you want to extract as a library.
• When you’re in the Test Explorer, you can view a specific test case inside the Project panel, by selecting Show in Project Explorer from the test case contextual menu.
• You can now create Execution Templates based on existent templates inside your project.
• As part of managing your Studio projects, you can focus on the project element that is active in the Designer panel by clicking Sync with Active Document in the Project panel.
• When you update Test Data that is already used inside a test case, you can now see the following text: (already in use).

Other improvements

• You can now link Studio projects to Automation Hub ideas from multiple Automation Cloud tenants.
• Installing additional project dependencies is faster.
• We added new icons to better differentiate between different types of files in the Project panel.
• Studio and Assistant shortcuts are now automatically added to the desktop after installation.
• Pins added for Studio and Assistant to the Start menu or the Taskbar are now persisted after you upgrade to a newer version.
• We added a Triggers filter option that you can select from the Filter by button at the top of the Activities panel. Selecting this option shows all the available triggers.
• Activities Only is now the default filter when searching for activities packages from the Manage Packages window.
• We added a new way to create constants by opening the Data Manager panel and selecting New > New Constant.
• You can now use shared connections when designing projects that use Integration Service. The connection selector displays connections from your personal workspace, as well as those from shared folders in Integration Service.
• Searching within a project using the Universal search bar is now significantly faster.
• The main entry point is now opened by default in the Designer panel when a new project is created or when a project is opened in Studio. You can change this behavior by selecting a different option for the Open Project Behavior design setting. If no XAML file is set as the main entry point, Studio opens the most recent XAML.
• The Include Sources compilation setting is now selected by default when publishing a Windows or cross-platform project.
• Creating or opening a project on a machine that is not connected to the internet is now faster.

Bug Fixes

• Creating an argument from the Invoke Workflow File activity's Import Arguments panel sometimes did not work as expected in Windows - Legacy and Windows projects. Creating a variable in the Value field of the panel using the CTRL + K keyboard shortcut also did not work as expected.
• Some references and namespaces were not resolved correctly when converting a project from Windows - Legacy to Windows.
• An error occurred when using the Test Activity action on an activity that provides a scope for other activities (for example, on Excel Application Scope) and clicking the Continue button to continue the debugging process.
• An error occurred when clicking Open Workflow in the Invoke Workflow File activity in a project from a SVN repository.
• Running a Windows project with activities from a library that was converted from Windows - Legacy to Windows sometimes caused a System.NotSupportedException error.
• The toggle for a Boolean property in an activity that was part of a custom library did not retain its value (On or Off) when debugging or moving the activity inside the workflow.
• When using an activity from a library with a string array input type, changes to the value of the string array property were not saved.
• An error occurred when adding more than 16 array elements in the ArrayRow property of the Add Data Row activity.
• The progress of auto-generated data didn’t display as expected. Now, the auto-generated data progress is reported correctly.

Known Issues

• Using the Activities panel to search for trigger activities in projects created in Studio versions prior to 2023.4 does not show any results. To make triggers visible, enable the Triggers filter option from the Filter by button.
• A Could not load file or assembly runtime error occurs when importing the namespace UiPath.Constants and using Project.Location in the project. Using the full namespace (UiPath.Studio.Constants.Project.Location) solves this issue.
• Converting a Windows - Legacy project to the Windows compatibility fails if variable names are not consistently cased throughout the project (for example, using Config and config for the same variable results in a conversion error).
• Publishing a library fails during the compilation process if the library includes a workflow with an argument named System.
• The Stop Local Triggers activity may not immediately stop the execution of all triggers when you debug a project with an action that suspends or slows the execution of the workflow (for example, Slow Step, Execution Trail, or Highlight Elements).
• An error related to unremoved namespaces occurs when publishing an empty C# library or a C# library that contains only activities included in the Default Activities category.
• Windows and cross-platform projects created in Studio versions prior to 2023.4, as well as Windows projects converted from Windows - Legacy projects created in Studio 2022.10 cannot be built or analyzed in an Automation Ops - Pipelines process. The projects need to be validated in Studio 2023.4 before using them in the pipeline process.

Removed Features

• The 32-bit version of the UiPath Studio MSI installer (UiPathStudio-x86.msi) is no longer available.

Activity package versions

The following activity packages and versions are included in the UiPathStudio.msi installer and can be found in the local feed.

Activity package	Version
UiPath.UIAutomation.Activities	v23.4.4
UiPath.System.Activities	v23.4.2
UiPath.Excel.Activities	v2.20.1
UiPath.Mail.Activities	v1.18.2
UiPath.Word.Activities	v1.16.0
UiPath.ComplexScenarios.Activities	v1.4.0
UiPath.Presentations.Activities	v1.11.0
UiPath.Testing.Activities	v23.4.0
UiPath.WebAPI.Activities	v1.16.2
UiPath.Form.Activities	v23.4.3
UiPath.Callout.Activities	v23.4.3