The User Interface

The ribbon is straightforward and can be minimized or expanded by clicking the Minimize / Expand button . It consists of the following three tabs:

The Add activity search bar is opened using the Ctrl + Shift + T keyboard shortcut. You can search for activities in installed packages, and add them after the selected activity in the file. The bar automatically assigns keyboard shortcuts to the first five results, and remembers your previous findings.

Click the icon at the top or bottom of an activity from a sequence to open the Add activity search bar.

The Universal search bar enables you to find snippets, activities, variables, arguments, imports, project dependencies, and files in your current project. Searches return results from all workflow files, including files that are closed.

Search results persist until the next time you open the search bar if you use Universal search or Add activity. For Go to file and Jump to activity the previous search query is not persisted.

Double-click an activity or press Enter to add it to the currently opened file. Using the same commands, you can open files from under the All Files or Project Files category, or focus on the desired search result.

Default values of arguments from a process inside the Invoke Workflow activity are not searchable with the Universal Search.

The Jump to activity search bar part of Command Palette helps find and focus specific activities in large workflows. It is accessed by using the Ctrl + J keyboard shortcut, or by opening using the F3 or Ctrl + Shift + P shortcuts, and selecting Jump to activity.

Type the display name or the namespace of an activity, for example Assign. Use the keyboard arrows to select the activity and press Enter to focus it in the Designer panel.

Activities in the Jump to activity bar are arranged in the following order: container, parent, and child activities.

The Designer panel displays your current automation project, enables you to make changes to it, and provides quick access to variables, arguments and imports.

It is possible to navigate within a diagram by double-clicking the activity you want to view. The path is displayed as breadcrumbs in the header of the Designer panel. Please note that when using multiple displays scaled differently the text in the input field part of some activities might be improperly shown.

Activities can be copied using Ctrl + C shortcut or the context menu, to a text editor, receive changes, and then copied back to the Designer panel.

Activate Pan Mode by clicking the icon, holding the Space key or pressing the middle mouse button. Use the zoom drop-down to change the zoom level and click the icon to reset it back to 100%.

The Fit to Screen icon changes the zoom in such a way that the whole workflow fits in the Designer panel. Click the icon to get an overview of the whole project and navigate through sections by adjusting the focus.

The Activities panel shows available activities that can be added to the current workflow. You can search for activities by name and optionally by description using the search box at the top of the panel, navigate through them using navigation keys, and press Enter to add the selected activity to the currently opened file.

Hovering over an activity in the panel displays the package it belongs to and its description. To add an activity to the list of favorites, right-click it and select Add to favorites.

Right-click an activity in the panel and select Create Test Bench to test out one or more activities before adding them to a project. Read more about this here.

The Snippets panel enables you to easily reuse automations. It includes, by default, multiple samples and snippets.

You can add your own by clicking the Add Folder button and selecting a directory from your hard drive. Empty folders are not displayed.

To remove a folder, right-click it and select Remove.

The Properties panel is contextual and enables you to view and change the properties of a selected activity. When selecting two activities in the same workflow, common properties can be modified from the Properties panel.

The Expression Editor is accessible with the Ctrl + Shift + E keyboard shortcut when used inside activity input fields. It is also available from the Properties panel, from fields that require inputting text, and from the body of an activity, by adding text directly in the required fields.

Expressions can be written on multiples lines. Keyboard shortcuts for creating variables and arguments directly in expressions are available.

Use Ctrl + F inside the editor to open the search and replace capabilities. Select part of an expression and press Ctrl + F3 to add the text to the search field. Hold the Ctrl key to make the search pane semi-transparent and see the text behind it.

The Outline panel displays the project hierarchy, and all available nodes. You can highlight activities in this panel by selecting them in the Designer panel, or you can go to a specific activity by selecting it in the Outline panel.

The Output panel enables you to display the output of the Log Message or Write Line activities, among other things. Exceptions for packages are also displayed in this panel.

From the Output panel, you can show or hide messages that have different log levels (errors, warnings) by clicking the buttons in the panel’s header. Double-clicking a message displays further details about it, with the option to copy information.

When searching for a log in the Output panel and selecting an item from the search results list, the log is highlighted.

When debugging, the Output panel shows logs for when an activity starts executing and until it ends. This can be enabled from the Log Activities option in the Debug tab.

The Error List panel displays errors found in the file or project during the validation process, together with errors generated by About Workflow Analyzer rules.

The Clear All button erases all info displayed in the Output panel. Logs and other data stored in this panel are erased when a workflow is run. The Output panel displays up to 2,000 lines at a time.

The Find References panel displays results for references you search for in your project. To find every place in the project where an element is referenced, right-click it and select Find References. This works for the following:

The Resources panel in Studio can load assets, queues, processes, and entities, provided that the Robot is connected to Orchestrator. Read the Connecting Robots to Orchestrator page to find the steps.

If the Robot connected to Orchestrator is of type Standard, then the Resources panel can display only the Classic folder which has this Robot provisioned.

If the Robot is of type Floating, then the panel displays all Classic and Modern folders that this Robot has access to. Read more about creating Robots in Orchestrator here.

The panel displays assets, queues, and processes found in Classic or Modern Folders in Orchestrator. Read more about Folders.

To load resources into the panel, click the Refresh button at the top of the panel. Right-click any item in the Resources panel to copy its name and use it in activities that interact with such resources.

Hover over the folder name in the status bar to see the Orchestrator URL, and click the folder name in the status bar to switch to another folder.

Drag and drop assets, queues, or processes from the Resources panel directly to your automation project. Upon doing so, suitable activities are suggested in the Add activity search bar. For example, after dragging a queue in your project, pick the Add Queue Item activity from the Add activity search bar and notice that the queue was automatically assigned to the activity's Queue Name property.