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RPA Recorder

RPA Recorder is one of the main Intelligent Automation Cloud Business components which provides an ability to automate web, desktop, and mainframe applications in a natural macro-like way without any coding or scripting.

By default, RPA Recorder uses object recording approach as a primary mode where the bot captures object properties with their values of active elements while recording and tries to find the same elements and click on them while script execution. At the same time, surface-based (image-based) automation where the bot captures images of active elements while recording and tries to find the same images and click (hover, drag, scroll) on them while script execution, is used as a fallback to support.

Additionally, some system actions can be added when editing a workflow, e.g., opening applications, switching to a specific window, manipulating Excel files, working with Clipboard, etc.

RPA Recorder main window

Recording toolbar

The toolbar contains a group of buttons to perform main operations with the recording.

• Create New Recording (Ctrl + 5) – create new blank recording
• Start New Recording (Ctrl + 6) – create and start a recording in a natural macro-like way
• Save Recording (Ctrl + S) – save the current recording
• Save All Recordings (Ctrl + Shift + S) – save all open recordings
• Settings – open Preferences
• Inspector (Ctrl + Shift + I) – open Inspector

Actions Library

The library contains all the actions that can be added to Actions Flow without recording them. See Actions Library for more details.

Recording window

The window appears as soon as you have created a new recording, or after you have finished the recording process. You can play, rewrite, append, or publish the recording to Control Tower.

• Replace with new recording – replace the current content of the recording with the new one
• Insert recording – append new recorded steps to the current recording
• Play recording – start playback of the recording content from the beginning
  • Play from current step – start the recording playback from the selected step; the option is selected from the Play recording drop-down menu
    
• Publish to Control Tower – create a new Business Process or update the existing one from the recording in Control Tower\
  • As new business process – publish to Control Tower as a new Business Process regardless of whether such Business Process has been published before and is available in Control Tower; the option is selected from the Publish to Control Towerdrop-down menu
    
• Export code – export the recording code – the code opens in a separate window you can copy it to insert either in you script or in a Bot Task. There are two options available.
  • Export code to groovy script – export the recording to a groovy script to insert to a script
  • Export code to bot task – export the recording to XML to insert in a Bot Task
    

Actions Flow

The window displays all the recorded steps with their main parameters. Actions can be nested inside each other, each action having a unique number showing its execution order.

Action properties

The window contains a detailed view of the currently selected action with all the parameters that can be edited.

Recorder variables

The section includes a list to define the recording variables. Refer to Recorder variables for more information.

Media files

The media files tree presents the explorer panel to display all the recordings from your project. Each recording represented as a folder contains a recording script and screenshots (if there are any).

Right-click on the project in the tree to open the context menu.

General operations

General operations with media files are intended to manage selected files within your project. The list of options is available via the context menu on right-clicking.

• New > Folder – create a new folder to store the selected element
• Copy (or Ctrl+C) – copy the element
• Paste (or Ctrl+V) – paste the copied element to a new location

tip

• Avoid copying one recording to another.
• To avoid inconsistency and loosing screenshots and image files, when copying a recording, do not copy a single recording file, but the folder
  
  or the entire folder content.
  
• If you copy a recording to create a new one out of the source, rename a new recording upon copying.
• To make a backup of the recording, create a new folder first, then copy the entire folder there.

• Delete (or the Delete keyboard button) – remove the element
• Move – move the element to another location
• Rename – rename the element
• Refresh (or F5) – refresh

Import/Export operations

Import and export options allow to import/export a wide variety of objects, projects, configurations, bot tasks, etc. For these purposes, specific import/export wizards are used.

Publish operations

You can publish a recording to Control Tower as a new Bot Task for a Business Process (the Business Process will be created automatically) or update a Bot Task exported before.

If you have already exported a Bot Task to Control Tower, you can update it with your recent modifications.

1. Select the recording, right-click and choose Publish to Control Tower.
   
   As the selected recording has been already published to Control Tower, it is updated with the new content.
2. Click Finish to update the Bot Task in Control Tower.

You can also create a new Business Process in Control Tower.

1. Select the recording, right-click and choose Publish to Control Tower as new Business Process.
   
2. Enter the Business Process name.
   
3. Click Finish to complete the export. The selected recording is published to Control Tower as a new Business Process.

Components

On the Components tab, you can perform the following actions.

• Enable server components
• Access server components
• Modify server settings

How to use RPA Recorder

note

The section explains general operations performed by RPA Recorder, such as creating, editing, and publishing of recordings. Descriptions illustrate how to use a typical robotic automation workflow. Level of experience required:

• basic knowledge of macro recording in Word and Excel
• understanding of simple algorithmization concepts, e.g., loops, variables, conditions

Start RPA Recorder

To start RPA Recorder/WorkFusion Studio, launch Intelligent Automation Cloud Business. On opening Studio, the RPA Recorder main window appears.

Step 1. Start recording process

1. To start recording your workflow, click the red button (or press CTRL + 6).
   
2. Enter a file name for the recording and click OK.
   In the bottom-right corner, the recorder panel with a running timer appears.
   
3. Perform your workflow actions in a natural way. Remember to follow our recommendations.

tip

• Do not be fast during recording process, take small pauses after each action.
• The Mouse Move event (hover) will be recorded after the cursor is not moving for 1 s and more. This can be used to automate navigation through dynamic menus that are collapsed on hovering.
• If one mouse action is located near another (two buttons close to each other), after clicking the first button, move cursor aside and then click the second button.
• Do not perform unnecessary mouse moves, clicks, and scrolls.
• Use keyboard hotkeys where possible.

4. If needed, pause and resume the recording by clicking the appropriate buttons.
   
5. On having finished the recording process, click the Stop button (CTRL + ALT + S), or close the RPA Recorder window. As a result, all the steps are displayed in the Actions Flow panel.
   

Step 2. Play recording

After finishing the recording, test it and play the recorded flow.

1. Click the Play recording button.
   The progress bar indicating the bot process, together with the number of executed steps and overall status, appears.
   
2. Pause, resume, or stop the execution, if needed.
   
3. If a step cannot be executed, the progress bar turns red with the Error occurred message and the step number (#3 on the screenshot) shown.
   To fix the recording, you have to edit the failed step.
4. After the bot execution is finished or stopped, each step result status is shown in the Actions Flow panel.
   

note

You can record your workflow in chunks by appending each new recording to the existing file.

1. Create a new recording.
2. Perform the required actions.
3. Stop the recording.
4. (Optional) Test the recorded chunk by playing it and fixing steps, if needed.
5. Click the Insert Recording button.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 as many times as needed.

Play from current step

When creating complex automation flows, it may be useful to run bot execution not from the beginning but from the current step and thus save time and effort.

1. Select some action in Actions Flow.
2. Click the arrow next to the Play recording button to open the drop-down menu.
3. Press Play from current step.
   

Disable steps

When testing various actions, it might be useful to temporary disable some steps, excluding them from the execution flow though not completely deleting.

To disable a step, uncheck the respective checkbox in the Active column - the step gets grayed out. To enable a step, check the respective checkbox again.

View Recorder variables log

When the playback is finished, you can check the Recorder variables values. See Recorder variables log for more information.

Add recording

There are cases when you have downloaded a sample recording, for example, from WorkFusion Forum. To play it, you should add it to your Media Files first. To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Unzip a sample.
2. Copy unzipped files into your workspace folder (by default C:\Users%USER_NAME%\workfusion-workspace\rpae_project).
3. Right-click the rpa_project folder in Media Files and select Refresh (or press F5).
   On finishing these actions, you should see a new project (.rpae file) in your Media Files.

Step 3. Edit recording

Work with images

RPA Recorder uses surface-based (image-based) and object automation approaches.

The image-based approach refers to the bot capturing images of active elements while recording and trying to find the same images and click (hover, drag, scroll) on them during script execution.

In some cases, the screenshots taken by the bot can be too large or small, not unique, or can have some unnecessary elements, e.g., tooltips, pop-up windows from other applications, etc.

Bad screenshot example

The situation can be easily solved by capturing a new image manually, or by editing image offsets.

Capture new images

1. Click Capture new image under the action screenshot.

   note

   A countdown in the bottom-right corner allows you to get prepared for the screen capturing. Meanwhile, you can switch to another app, open menu items, etc. Before capturing actually starts, an overlay with the help text appears.\

   

2. Select the required region by dragging.
   
   Finally, the captured screenshot is applied to the active action.

The delay before screen capturing can be set in Window > Preferences > WorkFusion Studio > RPA Recorder > Image.

Edit image offsets

By default, robot clicks (hovers, scrolls, drags) directly into the center of the captured image. You can set the cross-hair to a custom place by clicking the image.

A pop-up dialog with 100% zoom on image is shown. Here, you have an option to set the offsets

• by clicking on the image – crosshair will be moved to this position, or
• by editing the Offset X and Offset Y fields.

Choose another image

You can choose any image located in the project folder for the active action.

1. Select Target > Image and click Choose existing.
2. Choose an image in the list and click OK.
   

tip

The image can be copied from any folder on your machine using drag'n'drop or copy-paste.

Set action delays

In automation workflows, most actions are executed quite quickly, but some actions require a pause before their execution, e.g., page loading, document saving, opening new applications, etc.

To set action delays, proceed as follows.

1. Click the Advanced link.

2. Set a delay type.

   1. Wait up to XX ms – Bot will retry executing the action during specified timeout if the action has been failed. As soon as the action is successfully executed, Bot proceeds to the next one.
   2. Polling interval XX ms – interval between retries.
   3. Wait XX ms before performing this action – delay before action execution. No retries are done if the action fails.

   

   tip

   It is preferred to use retries rather than delays before action.

Use variables

You can use variables to store initial or run-time values that need to be entered from keyboard or copied to clipboard. See Recorder variables for more information.

All variables need to be defined in the Recorder variables table and can be used in actions' parameters.

warning

As the workflow completes, the variables, which values have been changed during the execution, are reset to their defaults.

Use loops

Loops can be used:

• to repeat a sequence of actions until some condition is met (While, Retry) or a defined number of times (Repeat)
• to iterate through lists and tables (For Each)

Loops can also contain other actions (clicks, drags, keystrokes) as their children. To read more, go to Loops.

Step 4. Publish recording to Control Tower

When the robotics automation is tested and appears to run smoothly, you can publish it to Control Tower.

1. Click the Publish to Control Tower button.
2. Enter Business Process Step Name.
3. Click the Finish button.
   The exported recording is automatically packed into a bot step of a business process and is opened in Control Tower.
   Afterwards, you can run this process and watch its execution on your local machine.

Step 5. Import from Control Tower

Intelligent Automation Cloud Business enables you to import both bot tasks and recorder scripts from Control Tower.

Import bot task

1. Right-click an appropriate bot step and select Edit in WF Studio.
   
2. A prompt window with the URL for import opens. Click Copy to clipboard.
   
3. Launch WorkFusion Studio, right-click the project folder on the Media Files tab, and select Import.
   
4. In the Import dialog, select WorkFusion > Bot Task and click Next.
   
5. Paste the link you copied earlier into the Bot Task link field and click Next.
6. Enter your credentials and click Finish.
   
   Finally, the bot task is shown with Actions Flow opened.

Import recorder script

1. Right-click on the step and select Edit in Click Recorder.
   
2. Click Copy to clipboard.
   
3. Launch WorkFusion Studio, right-click the project folder on the Media Files tab, and select Import.
   
4. In the Import dialog, select WorkFusion Recorder > Recorder script, and click Next .
   
5. Paste the link you copied earlier into the Import link field, name a folder, and click Finish.
   
   After that, your recording appears in Studio in the folder you have created.