Install Robocorp's RPA software — Visual Studio Code with Robocorp Code extension

To build, test, and run your robot, you decide (well, we decide for you 😅) to use Visual Studio Code with Robocorp Code extension. You have heard it offers everything you need to create software robots using human-readable syntax. It's a complete Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and free to use!

Visual Studio Code is one of the de facto free-to-use IDEs in the world. Learning to use it will add a valuable skill to your "essential stuff to know" list. Since "Visual Studio Code" can be quite a mouthful, we can refer to it as "VS Code" to save our breath!

VS Code is easy to integrate with Control Room, allowing you to execute the robot entirely in the cloud! And get email notifications! Create workspaces with your future colleagues! Execute the same robot in a mix of cloud containers, physical machines, and self-hosted servers!

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 vice-versa.

All this sounds good, but let's concentrate on getting up and running.

Setup Visual Studio Code with Robocorp Code extension and register your Robocorp account

Time for some setup work! You will need to register a Robocorp account and install Visual Studio Code with the Robocorp Code extension.

1. Sign up for a Robocorp account and follow the instructions.
2. Install Visual Studio Code, Robocorp Code extension and the Robot Framework Language Server extension.

Done? Great!

Open Visual Studio Code and create a new robot

Let's create a simple robot from a template to get started!

• Open Visual Studio Code.
• From the VS Code top menu, select File -> Open Folder....

• A file explorer (or finder) opens.
• Navigate to a folder where you want to store all your robots. Pick a folder that you can find later!

• Inside that folder, create a new folder called my-rsb-robot (rsb = RobotSpareBin 💡).

• Select and open the my-rsb-robot folder.

• The file explorer closes and you should be back in VS Code.
• Open the Command Palette using your keyboard (macOS: Shift-Command-P, Windows / Linux: Ctrl+Shift+P).
• Type create robot and select Robocorp: Create Robot.

• Select Robot Framework - Minimal.

• Select Use workspace folder.

You will learn more about the Command Palette and the keyboard shortcuts and will soon be moving with the average airspeed velocity of a laden swallow when creating robots!

Done. Great! Now we are ready to start building!