 What's New in 8.2
|
Management Console |
In 8.2 we are introducing a new concept called Snippets. A Snippet
is a segment of a robot, like a group of steps, which can be shared
between robots. It is stored separately from the robot in a
.snippet file. This means that commonly used sequences of
steps e.g. a login sequence or converters, can be made into a snippet, so
that they can be developed and maintained in a single place and any
changes will be reflected in all the places the snippet is used.
A snippet can be 'Unshared' in a robot, so steps becomes detached from the snippet and embedded as a standard group of steps local to the robot.
Watch the Snippet Video to get started using Snippets.
A new option to loop over tag class attributes makes it easier to select the right tags to loop over and to build efficient and robust loops in robots. The Loop for Tags with Class option is available in the right-click menu in the browser view, and will show the available classes. The class options can also be defined directly on the For Each Tag Path step where class attributes can be matched with patterns, and you can choose both to include and exclude specific classes.
The new error indications in 8.2 are not only showing that a step has an error, but will also show exactly in which part of the step configuration the error is, making it easier and faster to fix errors when building and maintaining robots.
With 8.2 we are introducing a database view in Design Studio, where you can see all databases accessible to Design Studio, including indications of whether the databases are online.
The Development Database is always available and can be started and stopped directly in the Database View. If you open a robot that uses the Development Database, it will be started automatically.
The Database View offers direct access to Settings to configure databases and add new databases to the view.
When using, for instance, the Store in Database step in a robot, Design Studio will automatically validate the table in the database for consistency with the type of the variable selected to be stored in the database. If the database table is not consistent with the type, Design Studio will show a warning and assist in recreating the table in the database. This ensures that database synchronization issues are discovered early and without having to run the robot, thus assisting the robot developer in preventing unnecessary errors in deployed robots and shortening the development cycle.
We are introducing database mappings in Design Studio, so that, for example, a production database can be mapped to the Development Database while developing robots. This means that you can use the production database name in the database steps, while executing the steps will not interfere with the actual production database, but map to the embedded Development Database. This makes it easier for developers without access to production databases to develop and maintain robots.
The Send E-mail step now allows for adding an attachment from a variable. It supports both text based and binary formats.
The URL blocking capability in the robot configuration has been extended with the capability to specify patterns for URLs to allow loading from ("White-list").
This is a new step that scrolls a page or a tag, which can be useful to force a site to load more data.