Development environment checklist
Hardware
CPU: 4
RAM: 16 GB
HDD: 500 GB+
Operating Systems
Microsoft Windows 7+ 64-bit only
Checklist for customers
Developers software checklist v0.4.xlsx
Software
Microsoft Outlook: Public inbound/outbound. Internal communication. Required to exchange emails (alternative software would do)
Chrome Default browser to access Control Tower.
Postman/ is required to run direct API calls to the Intelligent Automation Cloud. Speed up development and simplify analysis of issues.
Chrome selenium driver without this driver applications cannot be automated through Chrome.
Mozilla Firefox: Optional browser to access WorkFusion SPA; can be used instead of Chrome
Mozilla Firefox selenium driver: Without this driver applications cannot be automated through Firefox.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.x.x required on the developers' machines if the application that has to be automated works only with IE browser.
MS Internet Explorer selenium driver Depending on the version of IE, it can be necessary to update IE selenium driver in RPA Express. Without this driver applications cannot be automated through IE.
Maven: Git/etc version repository client. Depends on a version control system used in the company. To centrally store code and development artifacts with version control.
WorkFusion the Intelligent Automation Cloud Business (includes WorkFusion Studio - WorkFusion IDE)
https://www.workfusion.com/products/ Full package to develop and run WorkFusion solutions.
ImageMagick A free and open-source software suite for displaying, converting, and editing raster image and vector image files.
GhostScript An interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF.
Cyberduck, S3 Browser, or any other tool to access S3 Storage. The tool should be compatible with Minio S3 server.
Utility to connect to S3 emulator (part of the WorkFusion Platform) used to store binary files.
MySQL Workbench Connect to MySQL DB to run SQL requests or investigate issues.
pgAdmin Connect to PostgreSQL DB to run SQL requests or investigate issues.
Notepad++ Text editor to work with text format files (config ones, JSON, XML, YAML, CSV, and so on).
Notepad++ JSON plugin To work with JSON (displays the selected JSON string in a tree view).
Putty or any other SSH terminal client. A tool to connect to Linux machines of WorkFusion setup.
WinSCP or any other FTP and SCP client. A tool to copy files to and from Linux machines of WorkFusion setup.
Webex, GTM, Skype for Business or any other communication tool to run screen sharing meetings.
Oracle Virtualbox with Guest Extensions or VMware Workstation Player (15.0+)
Deployed DA VDI image to Oracle Virtualbox.
Deployed DA VDI image to VMware Workstation Player
A tool to automate DOCX to PDF conversion process.
If BP performs extraction on large docs (40+ pages) and you have a large set of such files, the output CSV file DA exports through CT can have 50+ MB size & 2+ MB of XML content per cell. Standard tools, such as Libre Office can't process such files. Below is the list of tools you can use for CSV files processing (but not limited).
Tested on the following sample:
- File: 25 MB CSV with 100 rows, each row contains extracted XML (cell).
- Cell size: paste, read, edit operations with 2.5 MB of an escaped XML file.
| Tool | Link | Cell limit | Open or Read CSV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record-editor | http://record-editor.sourceforge.net/ | 2.5+ MB | Can use File or DB for data processing. Opens 40+ MB CSV file that contain 2.5 MB cells with no lags. Allows to modify cells & save files. (Java 1.5 + HSQL). |
| OpenOffice | https://www.openoffice.org/download/ | 1 MB | Cell's size is limited to 1 MB, can break the layout on file load. |
| LibreOffice | https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ | 1 MB | Cell's size is limited to 1 MB, can break the layout on file load. |
| OnlyOffice | https://www.onlyoffice.com/download.aspx | 1 MB | Opens large files, doesn't allow to modify large cells but allows to read/navigate through the content (low performance). |
| MS Excel | https://products.office.com/en/excel | 1 MB | Well-known data formatting issues, limit cell size by 1 MB. |
| MS Access | https://products.office.com/en/access | 65 KB | Fails on upload CSV file that contains > than 65,000 characters per table row. |
| Enterprise-class SQL Database (like Postrgre) | https://www.postgresql.org/download/ | Easy to use export from file, update content through SQL queries. | |
| ReCSVEditor | http://recsveditor.sourceforge.net/ | 30 KB | Opens large files with big cells, but limit cell size by 30 KB on save (Java 1.8) |
| OpenRefine (Google Refine) | http://openrefine.org/download.html | 1 MB | Self hosted opensource web app for big-data processing pretty fast, but has a 1 MB per cell limitation on edit or save. |
| Rons Editor | https://www.ronsplace.eu/Products/RonsEditor/Download | 2+ MB | Tested on 16 MB per cell. The file was opened but impossible to edit. Works fine for 2 MB cells. |
| CSVKIT | https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/en/0.9.0/ | Python lib/CLI to process CSV files (opensource) usage samples https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/en/0.9.0/tutorial/3_power_tools.html#csvsql-and-sql2csv-ultimate-power | |
| TadViewer | https://www.tadviewer.com/ | Unable to test in the WorkFusion network as it conflicts with the pre-installed AV software (Symantec Endpoint Protection). | |
| Custom BP in Control Tower | WorkFusion platform | Design a custom Business Process that replaces CSV cells by S3 links to extracted files. |
Internal resources
| Internal resource | Comment |
|---|---|
| Access to WorkFusion web applications of development environment (+URL) | Control Tower, WorkSpace, Platform Monitor, Tableau, Mesos, Marathon. |
| Access to Windows/Linux machines of development environment | Need to have access to debug/review logs/start/stop/restart WorkFusion services. |
| Access to S3 (Access, URL and Secret keys of development environment) | Put files into the storage to have direct access to them from WorkFusion Platform. Allows to split development of huge process on chunks. |
| Access to version repository provided by customer with an appropriate client to use it (Git/Maven/etc) | Entry point of a version system used to store code developed by the team. |
| Access to applications being automated (+ their /URLs); backend documentation if possible | Allows the team to analyse applications and find the best approach of automation. |
| Selenium grid URL | Check the list of connected RPA machines (helpful for debug purposes) |
| RPA Nodes access | Allows to monitor Robots activities, debug execution. |
| - All RPA nodes need to be able to access internal and external URLs used in the business processes and applications that have to be automated by Robots | RPA machines running Robots should have access to all Urls (internal and external ones) and applications that Robots touches emulating Human activities. |
| - nodes require installation of API SSL certificates required for each API | If applications being automated require SSL connections, appropriate SSL certificates have to be deployed to Robots to establish secure connections. |
You should also have access to external tools if any are used to implement a solution, for example, Google Geocoder to verify address, and access to proxy if a direct connection to public network is restricted.
If access to external network (internet) is configured through proxy, appropriate settings should be provided to the team to configure WorkFusion Studio to connect to external repositories to download frameworks or libraries.