Param Kahlon,Chief Product Officer UiPath
I am glad to talk about the innovation delivered as part of the March monthly release cadence featuring updated preview version of 2019 Fast Track, Orchestrator Mobile, and Connect! updates. This preview version adds Git integration, a highly requested feature, and improvements in usability, scalability, and speed of development.
2019 Fast Track (Public Preview)
Git Integration
Building software is as much about managing teams and change control as it is about code. To enhance the productivity of our developers worldwide, Studio is now integrated with Git. GitHub is a product built on top of Git technology and is the world’s most popular version control system used by at least 31M developers worldwide. Just like SVN and TFS integration, Git integration lets developers determine what code was changed, who made the change, and when a change was made.
We have also added the ability for developers to compare two versions of code in the same Studio instance with visually highlighted differences. Developers can easily revert to a previous version in the case of undesired changes. These new capabilities simplify distributed and team development allowing team development of shared code and faster identification and resolution of issues.
User Experience Enhancements
With a 200,000+ strong developer community, developer productivity is always a focus. In this preview, we have included the following capabilities for our developers:
Uniform project updates
Various projects in Studio use activity packages, such as Excel activities. Whenever UiPath releases a new version of Excel activities, a user can opt to modify and publish every project separately where this package is being used. Simultaneously, a user can also choose to update all processes in Orchestrator which have a dependency on this package. With this new capability, a user can now select to make uniform changes in a single go from Studio’s user interface (UI) or command line.
Global settings
We have added an option to globally adjust project, library, workflow, and other Studio settings making it easier for developers to personalize Studio. This feature eliminates the complexity of manually editing various configuration files to make the required adjustments.
Document understanding improvements
The Taxonomy Manager is the newest release in the UiPath Document Understanding roadmap – a wizard in the Studio ribbon created to help RPA developers build the taxonomy that drives document classification and data extraction. Taxonomy refers to the collection of different document types (such as invoices, contracts, medical records), and the associated data fields (e.g., an invoice contains an issuer, a total amount etc., while a medical record contains patient name, record date, etc., according to the specific business needs).
Once this taxonomy has been defined, documents can be efficiently classified and processed for data extraction, while also enabling human validation and oversight.
Additionally, a new activity, “Load Taxonomy,” is also available. It leverages the new Taxonomy Manager output, granting the ability to load a taxonomy created with the wizard into a variable which can then be passed on to other activities.
Rapid Development
A core pillar of our platform is rapid results. In this preview version, we have added the following capabilities to speed development.
Execution snapshots
A frequently requested feature is simplified troubleshooting. Orchestrator will now store streams of execution snapshots across an automation. This means if an unattended automation fails a developer can play back the recording from the moments immediately before failure to better understand the cause of failure. Available for an on-premise user, this capability allows configuration of recording settings such as duration, quality etc. as an integrated part of configuring a new job for an unattended Robot. In addition to improving the troubleshooting experience, this feature also increases governance and control over unattended automation.
Full dependency tree
Developers can view all dependent packages and sub-packages in a project in the project panel. Packages are graphically segregated to distinguish NuGet and non-NuGet resolved packages.
Security
Security is of paramount importance and our defense-grade security is trusted by leading government agencies. In this preview we are adding the following:
Dedicated libraries
Release 2018.3 introduced libraries to share reusable components at the application level i.e., across all tenants. With this release, we now have the option to isolate libraries at tenant level providing reusability and an improved security posture. Now a developer can choose to publish data at tenant level or application level based on business requirement.
In addition to the 2019 Fast Track preview, we have a couple of other innovations to highlight this month.
Orchestrator Mobile
UiPath’s Orchestrator Mobile App has been a tremendous success with many downloads and positive feedback from customers. In our ongoing effort to improve user experience, and provide more for less, we have added two more capabilities to the Orchestrator Mobile App. For quick results, you can now search and filter asset or queues to determine transaction status details. Transaction details for a specific queue can be filtered and viewed in a graphical or linear format. The Orchestrator Mobile App is also now localized in Japanese for our customers based in Japan.
Connect!
UiPath Connect!, the premier social network for the robotic process automation (RPA) community, launched in January 2019 and has been a tremendous success. Developers around the world are building everything from Sudoku-playing Robots to Face Recognition Frameworks. More than 12,000 people visited Connect! in February.
Since UiPath started, the developer community has been the critical engine of our growth. We often hear transformative stories of RPA developers using UiPath to achieve new heights in both their personal lives and careers.
Starting this month, you can share that experience with the world. You can now add testimonials to your Connect! page. What do you think about the digital transformation enabled by automation? How did you discover UiPath? What has it enabled in your life?
Try writing a testimonial in your Connect! profile today. Who knows, we might feature you in an upcoming blog!
Your opinion matters!
You can, of course, try the 2019 Fast Track Preview with our Community Edition. If you want to try the preview as an enterprise user, we encourage you to sign up today for the Insider Preview Program. Participate and let your voice be heard by the product team.