- Getting Started
- Tutorials
- Automation Projects
- About Automation Projects
- About Workflow Analyzer
- Governance and Auditing
- Managing Projects With GIT
- Using the Data Manager
- Debugging Your Automation Project
- Creating Automations
- Automation Basics
- Object Repository
- Automation Best Practices
- Tutorial: Creating a Pivot Table
- Tutorial: Iterating Through Rows in a Table
- Tutorial: Comparing Excel Files and Emailing Reconciliation Errors
- Tutorial: Extracting Data From Automated Emails and Moving It to a Desktop Application
- Tutorial: Filtering Data in Excel
- Tutorial: Formatting Cells
- Tutorial: Adding Information About the Files in a Folder to an Excel File
- Tutorial: Adding Your Own Formulas to the Project Notebook
- PowerPoint Automation
- Data Automation
- Common Activities
- Google Workspace Automation
- OneDrive & SharePoint Automation
- Troubleshooting
StudioX User Guide
Debugging Your Automation Project
Debugging is the process of identifying and removing errors that prevent the project from functioning correctly. It is recommended to perform debugging during the design stage of the automation project, at activity, file and project level.
Debugging can be performed using several options, defined in the ribbon and explained below.
To start debugging your project, click the Debug tab to access the debugging options available in StudioX. You can start the debug process by clicking Debug ribbon button or using F5.
The default action under the Run/Debug ribbon button can be configured from Backstage View > Settings > Design > Run/Debug Default Behavior option. Pick from Debug File, Run File, Debug Project, or Run Project, as the default action when clicking the button.
StudioX provides several different actions to help with the debugging process, located in the Debug ribbon tab.
Use Next Step to debug activities one at a time. When this action is triggered, the debugger opens and highlights the activity before it is executed. The keyboard shortcut for Next Step is F11.
Retry re-executes the previous activity, and throws the exception if it's encountered again. The activity which threw the exception is highlighted and details about the error are shown in the Debugging panel.
The Ignore action can be used to ignore an encountered exception and continue the execution from the next activity so that the rest of the project can be debugged.
This action is useful when jumping over the activity that threw the exception and continuing debugging the remaining part of the project.
Restart is available after an exception was thrown and the debug process is paused. The action is used for restarting the debugging process from the first activity of the project.
Please take into consideration that when using this option after using the Run from this Activity action, the debugging is restarted from the previously indicated activity.
Breakpoints are used to purposely pause the debugging process on an activity which may trigger execution issues. You can set a condition and/or hit count to a simple breakpoint and turn it into a conditional one. Adding logging results turns the conditional breakpoint in a conditional tracepoint. Adding only a logging message transforms the breakpoint to a simple tracepoint.
Read more about Breakpoints and how to use them in our in the StudioX guide.
Break allows you to pause the debugging process at any given moment. The activity which is being debugged remains highlighted when paused. Once this happens, you can choose to Continue, Next Step, or Stop the debugging process.
The Execution Trail ribbon button is disabled by default. When enabled, it shows the exact execution path at debugging. As the process is executed, each activity is marked in the Designer panel, showing you the execution as it happens:
- executed activities are marked in green;
- partially executed activities are marked in orange;
- activities that threw an exception are marked in red.
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activities that were not executed are not marked in any way;
If enabled, UI elements are highlighted during debugging. The option can be used both with regular and step-by-step debugging.
If enabled, debugged activities are displayed as Trace logs in the Output panel. Note that the Highlight Elements and Log Activities options can only be toggled before debugging, and persist when reopening the automation project.
Logs are automatically sent to Orchestrator if connected, but you can have them stored locally by disabling the Allow Development Logging option from the Robot Settings tab in the Add or Edit user window.
Disabling Log Activities can be a way to send smaller log files to Orchestrator.
By default, the debugger logs activities so that each step appears in the Output panel. We recommend leaving it enabled for easier tracing, as you can see in the image below:
This debugging feature is disabled by default. When disabled in the ribbon, it throws the execution error and stops the debugging, highlights the activity which threw the exception, and logs the exception in the Output panel.
When enabled, the exception is logged in the Output panel and the execution continues.
%localappdata%\UiPath\Logs
folder where logs are locally stored. The naming format of log files is
YYYY-DD-MM_Component.log (such as 2018-09-12_Execution.log, or
2018-09-12_Studio.log). Read more about logging in the Studio guide.
