Install Robocorp's RPA software — Automation Studio
Robocorp offers two tools for building robots: Automation Studio and Visual Studio Code plugins. Automation Studio offers visual development of robots and is aimed at new users and simple experiments. Visual Studio Code is best suited for those with previous experience in programming or who need more advanced functionality that is not available in Automation Studio.
Robots created in Automation Studio are compatible with VS Code and can be edited there further.
Install Automation Studio
Before we start building our robot, you'll need to install Automation Studio. It is easy:
- Download Automation Studio for your operating system (Windows or Mac) from https://robocorp.com/download
- Follow the installer's instructions to install Automation Studio
- Open up your freshly installed Automation Studio
Excellent, now you should have Automation Studio set up!
Did you get errors or warnings while installing Automation Studio? Have a look at our troubleshooting section on solving them, such as the Windows support for long filenames.
If you have any problems or something unexcepted happens, you can find help on the
channel on Robocorp Slack. You can also open up "Report Problem" in the Automation Studio help menu, to tell us if something is difficult to do or not working as intended. #rpa-developer-training
Launch view
If everything went all right with setting up Automation Studio, you should now have a view open up like the one below.
This is the main view of Automation Studio that opens up every time you start the application. From it, you can create robots, manage settings and open previously created robots.
Automation Studio saves all your robots locally and in the folders where you like to store them, instead of storing them on the cloud or in one master folder. This means that you can organize the robots as you like on your hard drive.
Main actions of this view:
- New Robot — Create new robots from here
- Open a Robot Folder — Open an existing robot on your hard drive that you have downloaded or edited in another application
- Convert Robot — A tool that will help you in converting existing legacy robots to Robocorp robots from 1st generation RPA tools
- Preferences — Control settings, such as default browser and appearance, for Automation Studio
- Link to Control Room — Link Automation Studio to Control Room for uploading your robots
In this course, we'll cover creating new robots and linking to Control Room.
Create a robot
Click the "New Robot" button in the launch view to create your first robot in Automation Studio, a dialog like the one below should open up.
From the left you can select different templates to get set up quickly. In this course, we'll start with the empty one "New Empty Robot". Give the robot a name "My RSB Robot". If you want to change the path where the robot folders get created, you can click on the folder icon.
Click "Create Robot" to create the robot and open up the robot editor.
Add a task
When the robot editor opens up, in the middle of it you should see a "Add new task" button.
Click on the "Add new task" button, add your task a name "Insert the sales data for the week and export it as a PDF" and save your task.
Great, now you have created your first task!
Below the task name, type a documentation for your task. This is not required for your robot to run correctly but helps others understand what the robot does. For example: "Inserts the sales data for the week into the intranet and exports it as a PDF file."
You don't need to save your changes separately, Automation Studio saves your robots automatically when you edit them.
Editor overview
This is the main editor view of Automation Studio, where robots are built. Drag a keyword from the left-hand panel to the middle to add, and, vice-versa, drag a keyword outside the middle area to remove.
- Top bars — upload robots, link to control room, toggle views, run robots and open the web recorder
- Middle — main area, where you can drag keywords and create your automation
- Top-left — panels for managing tasks and user keywords.
- Bottom-left — adding keywords and managing variables, locators and work items
- Right — contextual panel that shows information about currently selected items
Don't worry if some of these items are not yet familiar to you! We'll get to them in more detail in the other chapters.
Now you have a rough understanding of what Automation Studio is and how it is used. Click "Next chapter" to create your first robot!