robot

2021.10

false

OUT OF SUPPORT

Robot User Guide

Last updated Nov 11, 2024

2021.10.3

Release date: 27 October 2021

What’s New

Auto Update Client Components from Orchestrator

Ever thought how great it would be to always have your robots up to date? We have some great news then! You are now able to update Robot, Studio, and UiPath Assistant clients to newer versions from Orchestrator. This provides an easy way to deliver a version update to a large base of machines from a centralized location, helping remove user friction and streamlining the update process.

Linux Robots

The time to take full advantage of technology is here! Using Robots in Linux environments allows you to run unattended automations in Docker containers and provides a faster experience and an easier way of scaling up your deployment.

Endpoint Protection Integration

UiPath and CrowdStrike have partnered to deliver a unique solution that delivers seamless enhancements to Endpoint Protection for the robot workforce to our joint customers. As robots take on more and more tasks that humans give them, they can encounter similar risks of attack. For example, downloading a compromised file from a normally safe website or being compromised by an insider.

The integration is available starting with the upcoming CrowdStrike v6.32 release.

Runtime Governance

With this release we introduced a new way to govern what applications, URLs or emails your Robot can use. Choose which internal applications can be accessed by your automations, block URLs that should not be automated or deny or allow specific email addresses that you don’t want your Robots to send emails to. All of this is done from UiPath Automation Ops by setting robot governance policies, just like you would do for UiPath Studio or UiPath Assistant.

Marketplace Widget

The UiPath Marketplace Widget provides an easy way for business users to access ready-to-go RPA content that is published in the UiPath Marketplace. Here you can find numerous processes specifically created to run with your UiPath Assistant (including native UiPath integrations) covering numerous industries and use cases, there is no longer a need for building everything from scratch over and over again.

All of this is available in the UiPath Assistant through the Marketplace Widget.

The Marketplace Widget is enabled by default for all users, and appears in the UiPath Assistant as a new tab in the header.

Read more about this in the official Marketplace Widget Documentation.

Launcher for Task Capture

You can now launch the Task Capture desktop application directly from the UiPath Assistant.

Connections in UiPath Assistant

Users are now able to take advantage of our new Integrations from the comfort of the UiPath Assistant!

If a process already has connections set up in Orchestrator, the user can select it from the list. Otherwise, they can create a new one from the same menu.

Improvements

UiPath Assistant Version and Governance Policy Placement

The place where you can see the version of the UiPath Assistant has been moved in the same location as the one of the Windows Version. Right above the two versions, you can also see the currently applied governance policy. This has been thought to provide an easier way for the user to copy the information needed in troubleshooting.

Selected Process Highlight

For better visibility, when a process is selected in the UiPath Assistant, it stays highlighted in the list.

Warning Message When Changing Log Levels

A message has been added to the UiPath Assistant that notifies the user when changing log levels about sensitive information that can be included in the logs.

Robot Executor 64 Bit Support

To improve performance and to take advantage of the memory available on 64-bit operating systems, starting with 2021.10 release, the Robot Executor runs Windows — Legacy projects on 32-bit by default, while Windows and cross-platform projects on 64-bit.

Executing Compiled Packages

Starting with the 2021.10 release, packages are compiled from Studio in .dll files instead of .xaml. This provides a more secure way of running and storing automation projects on the user machine as their contents are no longer available to users.

Important: automations created using .NET 5 need 64-bit support in order to handle .dll files. For this, v2021.10 and newer Robots are needed as older versions of executors run on 32-bit.

Stop Attended Jobs from Orchestrator

For more control, starting with the v2021.10 release, attended jobs can be stopped from Orchestrator.

Use Default Entry Point from Orchestrator

Starting with this release, when running a process, the UiPath Assistant can use the default entry point set in Orchestrator.

Important: Erratum 22 December 2021: Added "Use Default Entry Point from Orchestrator" improvement.

Windows Credentials Proxy Authentication

The Robot can now work with proxy configurations that use Authentication via Windows Credentials. To enable this functionality, add the UIPATH_PROXY_USE_DEFAULT_CREDENTIALS system environment variable on the machine. For this environment variable, any value can be used.

Additional Fields in Activities

In this release, the FolderId, FolderName, TenantId, TenantName and RobotName fields are now available through RunningJobInformation.

Improved Message in UiPath Assistant for Troubleshooting Sessions

Whenever an RPA developer is troubleshooting a process on an Unattended Robot, and Assistant is connected to Orchestrator with a machine key using an unattended robot, the status shown in the user interface has been changed from: “Connected, Unlicensed” to “Connected, waiting for jobs”.

Breaking Changes

Projects started on 2020.10 robots using persistence activities and global exception handler which are paused cannot be resumed on 2021.10 release or newer robots. If these jobs are started directly on 2021.10 release or newer robots, they work as intended.
Starting with this release, unattended processes can only be started from Orchestrator. The latest 2021.10 version follows our current licensing , which only offers scheduling of your unattended processes via Orchestrator (either on-prem or cloud).
Starting with the 2021.10 release, running unattended background automations on service-mode robots run by default under the built-in "Local Service” Windows user. Prior to this, the username and password configured for the robot in Orchestrator were used.

To use credentials specified in Orchestrator, you need to configure the UIPATH_HEADLESS_WITH_USER environment variable and set the value to True.

More information can be found in the running background processes document.

Important: Erratum 11 January 2022: Added "Unattended Background Automations Run Under Local Service Windows User" breaking change.

Bug Fixes

An issue that caused the Apps Widget to break when a Tenant was renamed has been resolved.
An issue that caused the Service.UserHost.exe to use a high amount of memory has been resolved.
An issue affecting 2021.4 release Robots that caused automations to break when invoking a workflow from outside the project folder has been resolved.
An issue causing a process configured to use the "Run Parallel Process" activity with target session = "Main" (or process default when the parameter is set to Main) to start the process in the PiP session instead of Main session has been resolved.
An issue that caused the UiPath Assistant User Interface to break when a process name was too long has been resolved.
An issue that caused automations to fail when the “run under locked screen” feature was used has been resolved.

Error message displayed:

RemoteException wrapping System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'UiPath.Service.PasswordCredential' to type 'UiPath.Service.IdentityCredential'.

An issue that caused RobotJS authorization to fail when Chinese characters were used in the username has been resolved.
A fix has been introduced that corrected a race condition when different priority jobs were run against a single robot. This caused the jobs to fail with the following error message: "A foreground process is already running. Only one foreground process can run at a time".

Important: Erratum 4 February 2022: Added bug fix for "A foreground process is already running. Only one foreground process can run at a time".