2021.10.3

Release date: 27 October 2021

New Features and Improvements

Excel Automation

New Activities

• Excel Process Scope - Opens or reuses Excel processes, loads the Excel project settings and applies them to the associated Excel file. This activity supports working with multiple Excel processes and determines the behavior of the processes in certain situations.
• Unprotect Sheet - Enables unprotecting a protected sheet in Excel in order to make changes to it.
• Protect Sheet - Enables protecting a specified sheet in Excel so that no additional changes can be made to it.
• Read Range - Reads the value of an Excel range as a DataTable.
• Remove Duplicates - Deletes duplicate rows in a specified range.

Improvements

• The Find First/Last Data Row activity has been updated with a new option that lets you select how the last row should be configured:

  • Last populated row – Returns the last populated row.
  • First empty row - Returns the first row that is empty.

• The Write Range activity has received a few updates:

  • The title has been changed to Write DataTable to Excel.
  • The tooltip of the What to write field has been updated to better reflect the intended use of this activity.
• You can now add UIAutomation activities inside a Use Excel File activity to quickly automate the interface of Excel.
• The Delete Rows activity has been updated to not work inside a For Each Excel Row activity when both activities target the same range of rows in order to avoid issues where unintended rows in the iteration would get deleted. A new warning message has been added to the activity for this.

Mail Automation

Improvements

• The For Each Email activity has been updated with a new option:

  • Include subfolders - Select this option if you want to expand the iteration to include all subfolders of the selected mail folder. This option is not selected by default.

PowerPoint Automation

Improvements

• You can now configure the location of an inserted item when using the Add Image or Video to Slide activity by using the Item height, Item width, Left and Top properties in the Properties panel.
• You can now add UIAutomation activities inside a Use PowerPoint File activity to quickly automate the interface of PowerPoint.

Word Automation

Improvements

• You can now specify the position relative to a text or bookmark in the document when adding an image in a Word document with the Add Picture activity.
• A ReadOnly option has been added in the Properties Panel for the Use Word File activity that opens a document in read-only mode so it can be used with locked Word documents or to avoid making changes when simply reading data.

OneDrive and SharePoint Automation

You can now create, edit, upload, download and share files in your OneDrive and SharePoint workspaces using OneDrive & SharePoint activities. To use the activities, you must first install the latest version of the UiPath.MicrosoftOffice365.Activities package from the Manage Packages window.

When configuring activities that require indicating files or folders from SharePoint and OneDrive, you can quickly make you selection using a file browser available in the activities.

The following activities are available in StudioX:

• Use OneDrive & SharePoint - Selects an account to use for OneDrive and SharePoint automation. After you add this activity, add the activities that work with files from OneDrive and SharePoint in Use OneDrive & SharePoint.
• Create Folder - Creates a new folder in a specified location.
• Delete File/Folder - Deletes a specified file or folder in your OneDrive or SharePoint site.
• Copy File/Folder - Creates a copy of a file or folder and adds it to the same or a new parent folder.
• Move File/Folder - Moves a specified file or folder to a new parent folder with the option to change its name.
• Download File - Downloads a specified file from your OneDrive or SharePoint site to a local location.
• Share File/Folder - Shares a OneDrive or SharePoint file or folder with the specified recipients.
• Upload File - Uploads a local file to your OneDrive or SharePoint account.
• Export File as PDF - Converts a OneDrive or SharePoint file to a PDF file and saves it to a local location.
• Get File/Folder - Retrieves the metadata of a specified file or folder and saves it to later use in other activities.
• For Each File/Folder - Executes an activity or a series of activities for each file or folder in specified location.

Google Workspace (G Suite) Automation

Improvements

• The Remote File browser for G Suite activities now loads the first 200 entries and then, once you scroll down to the bottom of the list, the next 200 entries are loaded and added to the list.
• The Add Gmail Account dialog has been renamed to Add Google Account in the following activities: Use Google Document, Use Google Drive, and Use Google Spreadsheet.

Common Activities

New Activities

• Browse for folder - Opens a dialog box at runtime to select a folder to use later.
• Select File - Opens a dialog box at runtime to select a file to use later.
• For Each Folder in Folder - Executes an activity or a series of activities for each child folder in a specified folder.
• For Each - Performs an activity or a series of activities, specified in the Body section, on item of the iteration.
• Create list - Creates a new empty list.
• Append item to list - Adds an item at the end of the specified list.
• Read list item - Retrieves the value of a specific item in a list.
• Update list item - Updates the value of a specific item in a list.
• Rename Folder - Renames a specified folder.
• Rename File - Renames a specified file.
• Remove Data Row - Removes a specified row from a DataTable.
• Add Data Row - Adds a row to a specified DataTable.

Improvements

• The Get Orchestrator Asset activity has been updated with a new functionality through the Plus button dropdown. Using the Orchestrator capability, you can navigate through available assets from Orchestrator and select one for the activity.
• New options for the Separator field have been added to the Text to Left/Right activity: new line, tab, space, comma, colon, semicolon, equals sign and custom.

Support for Source Control with GIT

• You can now manage your StudioX projects with source control using GIT. To enable the GIT plugin, go to Home (StudioX Backstage View) > Settings > Team. You can add repositories directly in StudioX by going to the Team tab. For more information, see Managing projects with GIT in the StudioX guide.
• Governance policies now allow organizations to enforce the use of specific GIT repositories, allow users to add and edit repositories and prevent users from saving projects locally. When a list of allowed repositories is enforced, StudioX users will only be able to use remote GIT repositories from that list. In the file-based governance model, use the AllowEditRepositories and Repositories parameters to indicate whether users should use only allowed repositories and to define the list of allowed repositories. Use the AllowSaveLocal parameter to indicate whether users should be allowed to save their projects locally or only on a repository. For Automation Ops, see Settings for Studio policies in the Automation Ops guide.

Support for Integration Service Connections

You can now quickly authenticate to Google, Outlook and Office365 by using connections from the new Integration service in UiPath Automation Cloud.

When the Integration service is enabled in your tenant, you can quickly authenticate by creating a connection or selecting an existing connection from the service. The following activities support the Integration Service:

• Use Google Drive
• Use Google Document
• Use Google Spreadsheet
• Use OneDrive & SharePoint
• Use Outlook 365
• Use Gmail

To enable the use of the Integration service for managing the connection, select the Use Connections option in the Properties panel of the activities. If you select the global setting Default to managed connections in the StudioX settings, the Use Connections option is selected by default in all the activities that support it. The global setting is selected by default if the Integration service is available in the Orchestrator tenant that StudioX is connected to.

Support for Object Repository

You can now import UI libraries and use the UI elements in them across your automation projects. The Object Repository makes it easier to work with UIAutomation activities by providing a platform to consume existing UI Libraries. We recommend starting with an existing UI Library with shareable UI Elements containing the required descriptors.

AI Activity Suggestions

A new option titled Enable AI activity suggestions has been added to the Design settings in StudioX that lets you enable or disable AI activity suggestions in the Add activity search bar. If this option is enabled, when you open the activity search bar, StudioX sends information about the current context to a UiPath AI service that suggests activities you may want to add based on the location in the workflow from which the search bar was opened. You can opt out of this using the Enable AI activity suggestions option in the Design settings.

Note: The service does not collect or record any information, it only analyzes the current context and returns a list of suggested activities.

Support for Task Arguments

You can now create and manage Task Arguments to pass data between activities in a project and to integrate a workflow with other products such as UiPath Apps.

To manage arguments in StudioX, go to the Task Arguments section located in the Data Manager panel.

Other Improvements

• The Activities Panel has been redesigned to be more aligned with the Studio profile and to facilitate the growing list of activities that are being introduced to StudioX. You can now access activities that are designed for the Studio profile by selecting the Show Developer filter in the Activities Panel. These activities may not work as expected in the StudioX profile.
• A new option called StudioX Only has been added to the filtering options in the Manage Packages window.
• The Open File Location option is no longer available in the Data Manager Panel when working with remote files (e.g. SharePoint).
• A new option called Use “Smart File Paths” has been added to the Design settings menu that lets you disable or enable the use of Smart File paths. If enabled, browsing for files automatically stores the relative path to the user folder where the file is located so they work when shared with other users. When disabled, StudioX stores the absolute file paths instead.
• The RowCount and ColumnCount properties are now available to be used in the automation when a DataTable was saved for later.
• Governance policies can now prevent users from selecting the Show Developer filter in the Activities Panel as well as prevent specific activities from being displayed in StudioX. For more information, see Governance for the file-based model or Settings for Studio policies for Automation Ops.
• The StudioX Home (Backstage View) has been updated with a new option titled Save as, which saves the automation project and creates a copy of it in a different location. You can use this option to add automation projects to source control by selecting a repository as the location or to convert a project into a template.
• Governance policies can now prevent production runs from StudioX by enforcing a maximum allowed number of runs for projects that have no changes. After the limit is reached for a project, running it from StudioX is no longer allowed, the user is prompted to publish the project to Orchestrator, and optionally, an event is logged in an Orchestrator queue. For more information, see Governance for the file-based model or Settings for Studio policies for Automation Ops.

Bug Fixes

• Email messages containing attachments that are sent from a shared mailbox using the Use Outlook 365 and Send Mail activities now appear in the Sent Items folder.
• Fixed an issue that caused StudioX to close the current project when removing a disabled (commented out) activity or when removing a sequence within the Check App State activity.
• An issue has been fixed where mail date filters didn't work correctly when the Windows regional settings were set to English (India).
• Fixed an issue that prevented several Mail activities to move, archive and delete messages when used with a shared mailbox.
• An error message has been updated to be more specific when opening a flowchart from Task Capture in the StudioX profile.