2023.4.0

Release date: 27 April 2023

What's New

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 StudioX 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.

Support for Microsoft Office 2021

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

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, StudioX 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.

To make it easier to see what activity generated the variable, the variable’s name follows the format activity name → the name of the output property. The activity output is not visible in the Data Manager.

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

Improvements

Data Manager improvements

Data Manager sorting support

You now have more freedom to group variables and arguments 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.

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 by name (ascending or descending) or revert to the default order of your project. This option replaces sorting by right-clicking 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, 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 StudioX while data is refreshing.

Other Data Manager improvements

• New variables and arguments 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 are now separated into design and runtime packages. This means that published activities now contain a design package used by StudioX and a slimmer execution package used by the Robot. The separation applies only to Windows and cross-platform activities officially supported by UiPath.

Applications and URLs tracking

StudioX 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. Organizations have the option to prevent this information from being logged using governance policies. App tracking requires the latest versions of activity packages to be installed.

Project validation improvements

Project validation is now faster and uses less RAM and CPU resources.

Excel automation

New activities

• Lookup - Finds data in a range or sheet using the LOOKUP function.

Improvements

• You can now use the Refresh pivot table activity to refresh all the pivot tables in a workbook. When you indicate the pivot table to refresh, a new option called All Pivot Tables is available in the Plus menu for each Excel file.
• You no longer need to specify the columns to compare when using the Remove duplicates activity. A new option now enables you to compare all columns.
• You now have more control over how the Copy/Paste Range activity handles the header of the source range. The Exclude source headers property has been replaced with a dropdown that enables you to exclude or include the header regardless of the source range, exclude it only if the source range is a range, or only if it is a table.
• When you create a pivot table using the Create Pivot Table activity, the fields added as pivot filters now appear one below the other in a column instead of in a single row.
• You can now use the Format Cells activity to set an underline style for the font. The following underline styles are available: none, single, double, single accounting, or double accounting.
• Columns with empty headers are now available for selection in the Plus menu in Excel activity fields where you can select a column. For example, if column C doesn’t have a header while columns A and B do, when you access the column selector from the Plus menu, the header values are displayed for the first two columns (A and B), and Column C is displayed for the third column.
• The Filter Pivot Table activity now enables you to filter by pivot table rows and columns, not just filters. Row and column labels are available for selection from the Plus menu of the Column Name field.

Other improvements

• You can now link StudioX projects to Automation Hub ideas from multiple Automation Cloud tenants.
• Installing additional project dependencies is faster.
• The Basic License has been renamed to Automation Express License. For more information about this type of license, see the Automation Cloud Admin Guide.
• 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.
• 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.

Breaking Changes

• In previous releases, the Match Function activity threw an error when the value to match was not found. The activity now returns the value -1 in this scenario.

• In previous releases, if you used the Copy/Paste Range activity with a sheet as the source range and selected the option to exclude headers, the first row was not skipped, and the copied range started from cell A1. The activity now skips the first row and copies starting with cell A2 in this scenario.

Bug Fixes

• StudioX stopped responding when changing the default value of a variable from a file path to an empty value and back to a file path in the Data Manager.
• The Find First / Last Data Row activity sometimes took longer than expected to process data.
• The modern Read Range activity took longer than expected to process data. To increase performance further, we recommend setting the Read formatting option to RawValue and deselecting the Visible rows only option.
• An error occurred if you used a localized version of Windows and ran a project containing an Insert Column activity in which the data format was set to General.
• The Write DataTable to Excel and Write Range activities didn’t copy the column headers of empty DataTables that contained only headers.
• The Chinese translation for the Plus menu option Ask when run was incorrect.
• An error occurred if the Windows regional format was not set to English (United States) and you ran a project that used a Delete Rows activity with the option All visible rows on a range that included hidden rows.
• When the activities added in a Word Application Scope / Use Word File activity finished processing a document, the document was closed but the Microsoft Word application remained open.