Best practices

To ensure that your coded automations are efficient, maintainable, and scalable you need to follow their best practices. This section provides an overview of key best practices to remember as you embark on your journey of leveraging code to build automation solutions. Adopting these best practices will help you design coded automations, specifically when structuring your code, implementing error handling strategies, or creating reusable components.

Parallelism

Parallelism improves performance, and implementing it in coded automations is easier. A For Each loop can increase the speed with which an automation executes.

Nested classes

Coded automations (CS files) don't support using or invoking variables or arguments from nested classes within low-code automations (XAML files). If you try to invoke these type of arguments using an Invoke Workflow File activity, or to create such arguments in XAML files, then you'll receive errors. We recommend using variables and arguments from nested classes only within other CS files.

Coded workflow inheritance

Coded workflow inheritance promotes code reusability and modularity, allowing you to create a hierarchy of classes where child classes inherit and extend the functionality of parent classes. This inheritance hierarchy facilitates the organization of code and avoids duplicating common functionality across multiple classes. Additionally, it simplifies maintenance and updates because changes made to the parent class automatically transmit to its child classes, reducing the chances of introducing bugs or inconsistencies.

Let's demonstrate how inheritance works using three classes: CodedWorkflow, ParentFile (an intermediate class that inherits CodedWorkflow and contains a custom method), and MyCustomWorkflow along with AnotherCustomWorkflow (derived classes that inherit ParentFile). The table below shows how inheritance between these classes and files works:

Coded automation	Description	Code
CodedWorkflow (read-only partial class)	This class serves as the foundation for all coded workflows. It contains essential methods and properties that are common to all workflows, inherited from the CodedWorkflowBase class. In this example, it is the class from which all other workflows ultimately inherit. Important: The file you want other workflows to inherit must also inherit the CodedWorkflow and implicitly the CodedWorkflowBase classes. This ensures all workflows inherit essential functions and work as expected.	public partial class CodedWorkflow : CodedWorkflowBase { public CodedWorkflow() { //... } }
ParentFile (code source file containing an intermediate class and a custom method)	This class inherits from CodedWorkflow and adds custom methods and functionality. In this example, it includes a custom method called CustomMethod, which performs specific actions, such as starting a job in Orchestrator.	public class ParentFile : CodedWorkflow { public void CustomMethod(string processName, string folderPath, StartProcessDtoJobPriority jobPriority, bool resumeOnSameContext, out string jobId) { // Enter your custom code here. // For example, use the StartJob API inside this custom method. jobId = system.StartJob(processName, folderPath, jobPriority, resumeOnSameContext); } }
MyCustomWorkflow and AnotherCustomWorkflow (coded workflows that inherit the code source file)	These classes inherit from ParentFile and further customize the workflow by overriding methods or providing different parameter values. In this example, we have MyCustomWorkflow and AnotherCustomWorkflow, both of which inherit ParentFile.	public class MyCustomWorkflow : ParentFile { [Workflow] public void Execute() { // You can now call CustomMethod from the base class. string processName = "YourProcessName"; string folderPath = "YourFolderPath"; StartProcessDtoJobPriority jobPriority = StartProcessDtoJobPriority.Normal; bool resumeOnSameContext = false; string jobId; // Call the custom method from the base class. CustomMethod(processName, folderPath, jobPriority, resumeOnSameContext, out jobId); } }

In conclusion, because ParentFile inherits from CodedWorkflow, any class that inherits from ParentFile indirectly inherits the functionality and methods of CodedWorkflow. In other words, both MyCustomWorkflow and AnotherCustomWorkflow inherit the core functionality from the CodedWorkflow partial class through the intermediate ParentFile, along with other custom classes, such as CustomMethod.

Registering custom services

To enhance your coded automations, using custom logic, you can register custom services that you later use in your coded automations. Visit Registering custom services to learn how to register your own custom service.

Before and After contexts

Within test cases, the Before and After contexts allow you to execute certain actions before and after the test case is run. These contexts are commonly used to set up and tear down resources, perform logging, and manage the test environment. Visit Before and After contexts to learn how the contexts behave and how to implement them.

Tips and tricks

Design efficient and robust coded automations using the following tips and tricks. This collection of insights helps you to optimize your code, avoid errors, and maximize performance.

• We recommend that you do not make any changes to namespaces.
• Store an action inside a class and reuse it throughout your project, so you avoid duplicating code.
• You can remove namespaces that you imported during design time, but aren't necessary anymore.
• If you need to get data from multiple applications, separate the phases of the coded automation, so you don't mix data coming from various sources.