Robocorp Automation Studio User Guide

Get Started

🚀 Download and install Automation Studio

When launched, Automation Studio shows you the projects you have been working on.

In this view, you can set your preference of light/dark mode, see recent projects and control them by exporting, duplicating, and so on. Click a project card, and the editor will open.

Editor overview

When working in the Automation Studio, you will be in the editor -view most time.

In the top-left corner, there is a grid icon for returning to the launch view
In the middle of the screen, there is a visual editor for code
On the left side are panels for navigating tasks, keywords and locators
On the right side, there is a properties panel for seeing more information about selection objects
In the top-right corner is a toggle for switching between views: Visual, Code and Flow

Different editor views

Visual view You can create your bot with drag-and-drop functionality in the Visual editor view. 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.

Code view In the Code -view, you can see the Robot Framework code of your robot and edit it as well. All the changes are visible in other views immediately.

Flow view This view shows a flow diagram of the robot. The view is for communicating and understanding what the bot does. You can zoom and drill down into keywords, switch between tasks and even perform undo/redo actions here. The flow block diagram is generated directly from the robot code, so it is updated when you edit your robot and does not need or create any extra files in your robot folder.

Keyword Documentation

You can see brief documentation for each keyword by hovering on it.

Quick creation of User Keywords

User Keywords (Custom Keywords) are a practical way to group related functionality and make code that you want to call from multiple places. They are similar to functions, methods or procedures in other programming languages.

To create User Keywords quickly from existing code lines, select all the keywords you want to group and click "Create User Keyword" in the right side panel. Another way of creating user keywords is to click on the plus button (+) next to "User keywords" in the left panel or by switching to the code view and creating the keywords there.

Command Palette

You can open up a Command Palette by selecting "Open Command Palette" from the View menu or pressing ctrl-K (command-K on Mac). This palette lets you quickly do common actions in Automation Studio just by typing.

Locators and the Inspector

To click on specific elements in web pages, you need to create locators. They are saved references to elements that can be used in your robots. Behind the scenes, the locators use technologies such as XPath and CSS to refer to elements on web pages and in applications.

The easiest way to create and edit locators is by clicking on the plus (+) button in the left sidebar, under the "Locators" sections. This will open up a Chrome browser and the Inspector view for picking elements and adjusting the selectors (locator expressions).

To learn more about locators, see: https://robocorp.com/docs/development-guide/browser/how-to-find-user-interface-elements-using-locators-in-web-applications

Running Robots

You can run your robot by clicking on the "Run" button in the editor view. While running a robot, you are taken to the output view:

The output view looks a lot like the editor view, but it displays the executed commands in the middle instead of code lines. You can see information about the execution and access generated artifacts on the right.

Note that you can click on the output rows to see logs related to them. This is useful when testing out lines of code and seeing what output they generate.

Saving Robots

Automation Studio saves your robots automatically when you edit them.

Environments and Dependencies

At this point, Automation Studio supports just one default environment, which uses Selenium for web automation. Windows automation or custom dependencies are not supported at this point.

For information about advanced environment management in Robocorp robots, see: https://robocorp.com/docs/setup/environment-control

Transferring Robots to Production

After you have developed your robot, you typically want to upload them to Control Room, the cloud-based orchestration platform by Robocorp. The easiest way is to select "Export Robot" from the File -menu in Automation Studio when you have a robot open. This creates a zip file that you can then upload to Control Room.

For detailed instructions on how to upload robots to Control Room, see: https://robocorp.com/docs/courses/beginners-course/running-in-robocorp-cloud

For advanced cases, have a look at using version control services, such as Github, for transferring robots to Control Room: https://robocorp.com/docs/courses/software-robot-project-workflow/setting-up-a-version-control-repository

As a developer tool Automation Studio will be in constant development so feedback is always welcome. So do not hesitate to share any feedback in our community Slack or Robocorp Forum

Reporting Problems

If you have any problems with the tool, you can report issues and problems via Help > Report Problem in Automation Studio menu. This way we can get the much needed logs so solve the problem cases a lot faster.

June 23, 2022