Release Notes

Your friendly code gen assistant ReMark is a bit better again! Apart from tweaks and minor fixes, we’ve done two bigger things, both visible in the screenshot below.

Connect Action Server

Last week, we released the developer preview of Action Server. This new feature allows you to create AI Actions that interact with any data or application and connect them with any AI App and Agent framework, such as GPTs and LangChain.

⭐ Please leave a star to Action Server project in GitHub, and help us keep building open-source!

Testing your AI Actions run with Action Server is now possible with ReMark! Just hit “Connect Action Server”, then copy-paste the exposed URL and bearer token that you’ll get when starting the Action Server with action-server start --expose , and you are good to go! This is a handy way to test things while developing new AI Actions.

Reorganised “tool” collections

Remember that we created separate tools from different source data types, like Python docs, Robot Framework docs, API specs, etc. While moving over to agent/tool architecture has been great, it wasn’t optimal. So we went halfway back. 😎

There are now just two instead of multiple tools (or source data collections). These two highlight the biggest “choice” our users make: whether to build bots on Python or Robot Framework language. The generic source data is replicated on both collections, with the only difference being that they aim to serve you better than before, prioritizing the language (and examples) of your choice.

Features

• Connect Actions Server to ReMark

Updates

• Reorganised RAG data sources to two main collections: Python and Robot Framework

17 Jan 2024

• Library RPA.Cloud.Google (#1145, rpaframework-google 8.2.0):
• All init_ keywords will return initialized service instance.
• Library level documentation refactoring. Authentication related examples are now in their own markdown file.

See Github pull request for more details on the release.

We're thrilled to introduce a new addition to the Robocorp platform: AI Actions and the Action Server. You can think of AI actions as the connective tissue between AI agents and your applications and data.

These new features are available as a developer preview for the community and are fully open-source under the Apache 2.0 license.

Developers can now create AI Actions that interact with any data or application, along with our low latency Action Server connecting them with any AI App and Agent framework such as GPTs and LangChain.

Given the recent release of the OpenAI GPT Store, and the success of AI app frameworks like LangChain, developers are looking for ways to integrate these with various data sources and platforms. Robocorp provides the easiest way to enable AI agents, assistants, and copilots to use custom actions, all written in Python. It’s easier than building Flask apps, or figuring out how to deploy to Vercel.

The community preview release includes the following:

• Introducing the new package robocorp.actions with @action decorator. AI Actions are Python scripts, workflows, or automations that are securely exposed to AI apps. They are defined by their inputs and outputs, and are described in natural language. This makes it easy for AI apps to comprehend and use them. You can conveniently build and debug these actions with the Robocorp Code extension for VS Code.

• Action Server is a stand-alone executable that connects Actions with AI apps. This server automatically generates an OpenAPI specification for your Python code, allowing various AI/LLM Agents to understand and invoke your @action. It also offers a straightforward local UI for testing and monitoring, handling the full Action lifecycle, and provides comprehensive event traceability during runs.

• LangChain Robocorp Toolkit and a template for quick startup. Extending the AI apps built with LangChain is as simple as one, two, three. The new langchain-robocorp package lets you import all your actions into your project effortlessly.

• Revamped Robocorp Github Repository - This is your gateway to AI Actions and open-source Python automation. We've consolidated all the key features into one repository, which includes the Python framework with automated logging, libraries for automating tasks such as browser and desktop applications, and the new Action Server.

It's time to get started! Visit the GitHub repository for more details, and don't forget to leave a ⭐ while you're there.

We at Robocorp wish you a happy new year 2024! In this year's first release, we are introducing the new Activity View and Vault endpoints to the Control Room API.

Activity View

With the new Activity View, you are conveniently able to track what is going on in all of your Workspace from a single view.

You can see the status of the recent Process Runs, Step Runs and Assistant Runs, and also see what's going to be run next from the Scheduled Runs tab. With filters and search, you are able to filter e.g. all Failed runs, which will streamline the exception handling and troubleshooting flows.

API endpoints for Vault

To cover more use cases with the Control Room API, we have added new endpoints that you can use to create and update Vault secrets. This will enable you to programmatically manage your secrets, e.g. by automating credential updates.

For more information about the new Vault API, see the API documentation.

Features

• Activity View
• New API endpoints for Vault
• Account Member Management for Partners

A lot of improvements based on feedback to the new Web and Windows Inspectors

• Web inspector:

  • Test locators with a push of a button on all views.
  • Support iframes
  • Detect page changes
  • Define target webpage over inspections
  • UX improvements

• Windows Inspector:

  • Always provide the main application locator code line
  • UX improvements

• SideBar renaming to the new terminology (from Robot -> Task Package/Tasks/etc.)

Full changelog here

• Library RPA.Outlook.Application (#1144): Add reply_to and check_names parameters for Send Email.

Check Github PR for more details on these parameters.

Updates:

• Upgrade RCC to v17.12.0
• Improve RDP connection error messages
• Close the FreeRDP client gracefully to make sure the full logs are received
• Ignore native-certs module load failure in Windows evaluation versions
• If the module is not loaded the support for loading CA certificates from system store is disabled

New experimental feature to use Windows Remote Desktop Connection Manager tool as the RDP connector with desktop setup. RDCMan is used automatically if config file is found from path: %LOCALAPPDATA%\robocorp\workforce-agent-core-service\rdcman-config.rdg. It can also be configured via the environment variable "RC_WORKER_RDCMAN_CONFIG_PATH", pointing to the RDCMan config file path.

You can find the detailed changelog for Workforce Agent Core here.

New Robocorp Inspector is now available and directly integrated in VS Code.

The new Inspector is integrated into VS Code, so no extra pieces are needed; this comes with the Robocorp Code extension v1.14.0

👉 Get going via: Command-palette → Robocorp: Open Inspector

Web recorder in action:

Windows Locators in action:

🚀 Use Web Recorder to get started seamlessly, then fine-tune the recorded actions into locators you can store and manage later.

• Change strategies after picking/recording, the browser stays on while you develop, etc.

• Complete freedom to create more advanced locators

• Code generation for Python, get single lines or complete scripts

• Built on Playwright, but the locators work with Selenium and RFW

🚀 Much improved Windows capabilities

• Pick from an application or browse from the UI tree.

• Complete freedom to the developers to use the way they need to:

  • Create and combine rules into parent-child locators, use the UI, or type the advanced locator you know.

  • The test-button for each step is right there to enable you to create solid locators no matter what.

• Store as locators or just get the generated Python code, just like for the Web recorder.

We've had a 4-month gap in updating the latest RCC, which ends now 🚀

For the last four months, we've been working hard on the new enterprise Firewall setups coming online and finding solutions to work with those. RCC is the keystone in solving and distributing these solutions.

The breaking change between v16 and v17 is that we dropped the interactive commands for profile creation. These were only used to help bootstrap new network profiles, so the change is quite limited. The task of profile creation is now handled by Setup Utility, which has all the testing and diagnostics tools right next to profile creation with a nice UI.

The new features and improvements list is a long one, but I am raising a few here:

• A lot of TLS-related testing and diagnostic solutions were added
• A lot of tooling around certificates needed and used by the MITM firewalls
• Improvements in environment build speeds
• Space usage tracking to enable simpler cleanups
• Less load subprocess monitoring
• Detecting multiple users sharing ROBOCORP_HOME

That's not all; please check the full changelog for all the details.

(This version of RCC is already available in the latest Worker and is coming out to VS Code and other tools as well).

• Library RPA.Browser.Selenium (#1139): Keyword Open Available Browser won’t anymore try to initialize webdrivers for browsers that are not installed in the system.
• Library RPA.Crypto (#1140): Fix AES256 return types for keywords Generate Key and Decrypt String.
• Library RPA.Hubspot (#1106): Extract the RPA.Hubspot library out of the main package and into its own package rpaframework-hubspot. This is a breaking change, please update your conda.yaml accordingly.

⚠️ Warning

This is a breaking change if you are using the RPA.Hubspot library within your task packages, please add the rpaframework-hubspot package into your conda.yaml to continue using the library.

In this release, we are introducing Work Item Log, Documentation for Processes, new possibilities to integrate with AWS, and new Audit Log events.

Work Item Log

Want to know more about how your Work Items have been processed for troubleshooting or auditing purposes? The new Work Item Log feature enables you to do exactly that!

When you open the Work Item Log from the Work Item details, it will show you what has interacted with the Work Item, how, and when. This enables you to see the lifecycle of the item, giving broader visibility to the processing flow.

Process Documentation

Say hello to the new Process Documentation feature! You are now able to add a description for Processes, where you can include descriptive information about the Process itself, e.g., what the Process is about, how the Process works, and who are the responsible contact persons.

The Documentation supports Markdown syntax, so you are able to add images, links, or whatever you see as valuable to convey the information. And, of course, we also have an API available so you can programmatically fetch the process information, including the description!

AWS integrations

Robocorp Control Room runs on AWS, and so do many of our customers. AWS-native integrations can enable convenient and secure integrations utilizing the AWS backbone. Today we are announcing the first two:

• Production release: Accessing AWS resources from Robocorp-hosted Cloud Workers

• Early Access: EventBridge

Audit Log improvements

We have increased the retention time of Audit Log events to 365 days for new events recorded after the 16th of November. Also, three new events have been added to the Audit Log:

• Process Schedule Created

• Process Schedule Updated

• Process Schedule Deleted

Features

• Work Item Log
• Process Documentation
• New AWS integrations
• Audit Log improvements

Updates:

• Worker network actions now use CA certificates automatically from the system certificate store (NodeJS support for firewall / proxy certificates)
• Upgrade RCC to v17.10.0
• Fix an issue where a slow environment resulted to a backlog of desktop stream files to be sent long after execution had finished

You can find the detailed changelog for Workforce Agent Core here.

In this release, we are bringing new features to help utilize the new Control Room API, to improve Task Package version management, and to get familiar with the available Control Room features by examples.

New API helper features

Say hello to the new and improved API Helper! With the API Helper, you are able to conveniently select what you want to do, and the API Helper will select the right parameters, helps you to create keys with right permissions, and gives an example call in curl, python, and javascript code. In addition, you are able to directly test the calls from your browser to see that they work exactly the way you want.

Version control improvements

We have enhanced the Control Room version control integrations and introduced a new pinned version capability. With the new feature, you are able to select the exact commit or tag you want your tasks to use, which is useful when e.g., integrating with external CI/CD systems or when you need total control over your release cadence.

Example processes in the Control Room

Getting started with Control Room or want to have a quick walkthrough of the most important features? Try out the brand new example processes! When creating an example process, you will get a fully setup process with an example configuration, that you are able to explore at your own pace. In addition, you are of course, able to change the parameters to modify the example to suit your needs.

Features

• New & Improved API Helper
• Link to Commit / Tag with Version Control
• Improved Control Room New User Experience

• Library RPA.Robocorp.Vault (#1129): Improve error message when trying to connect to Control Room Vault without valid connection details.
• Library RPA.SAP (#1130): Add keywords for pressing F1 or F4 on textfield and gridview elements. Thanks to Enrico Franzelli for the contribution!
• Relax importlib-metadata version requirement to allow 4.13.0 and above.

• Update selenium package to the version 4.15.2.
• Library RPA.Crypto (#1128): Add AES256 encryption method support.
• Library RPA.Windows (#1134; rpaframework-windows 7.5.0): Add keywords Enable Process Listing and Disable Process Listing to enable/disable the listing of processes in the List Windows keyword.

The new OpenAI announcements on their Dev Day blew air into the already blazing AI fire (not to mention their recent leadership musical chairs). Overall, the AI app frameworks develop at an insane rate these days, so we keep re-iterating ReMark💬 to have all the latest bells and whistles. Improvements are not always visible other than “it answers better than before”. This time, we’ve done more - worth a release note.

ReMark uses the new GPT-4 Turbo

We are happy to report that ReMark now uses the new GPT-4 Turbo! To the end users, it shows up immediately as increased speed and fewer situations where the maximum prompt length would be reached.

Now, this is just the beginning, as there is much more we can do with the new model. For example, we expect the new large context window to open up possibilities like “find me all the form elements and their locators from this page”, which previously was tricky due to the limited size of prompts. We are already exploring the new use cases, so stay tuned!

The initial response time is much faster

Apart from the new underlying language model, the architecture also got a complete overhaul. We have felt the first reaction from ReMark took too long. What used to be a simple “RAG” is now a sophisticated tools-based architecture (we are using Langchain, by the way), allowing ReMark to answer much faster than before. It really feels better!

When asking questions from ReMark, you can see which tools ReMark uses and the source data these tools find relevant to your question. Like this:

Putting you in control of the source data

We’ve added a new “Settings” dropdown to the user interface, allowing you to control what data sources ReMark has available to answer your question. By default, they are all on. It looks like this:

But why? The reason is that the source data ReMark “knows” has already become quite broad, and it’s easy to get mistaken in the nuances. For example, for someone working 100% on Python, it’s useless to feed in Robot Framework built-in keyword documentation.

A user who, for example, only works with Control Room and is not interested in building the bots can drop the irrelevant source “tools” out. Here’s what each tool contains as of writing this:

• Robocorp Python - Robocorp framework and library docs, Python examples in the Portal, Playwright documentation

• Robocorp Robot Framework - Robot Framework built-in library docs, RPA Framework library docs, Robot Framework examples in the Portal

• Robocorp General - Stuff from our website, like blog posts, case studies and the pricing page

• Robocorp Developer - All the rest of the documentation and developer guides: topics such as operating bots with Control Room and setting up workers.

• Robocorp API - recently updated Control Room API docs.

In case you are wondering why they all have “Robocorp” in the name, we plan to add 3rd party sources such as docs from the most commonly used Python packages, and why not even let you add your documents?

The new API documentation in the source data

As you already saw in the previous chapter, API documentation is now covered as a separate source. They are unique from the “build bots” use cases that ReMark has been excelling in already for a while, as you might be working on any platform and language. The skills of large-language models shine here.

Try, for example, something like this, and you’ll get working code out:

How do I add a new work item with control room API but not start a process? Want to call it from JavaScript.

Your feedback is vital. Please help us by hitting the 👍 / 👎 emojis in ReMark’s responses to help us know when things are great, especially when things go south. Thank you.

• Library RPA.Outlook.Application (#1127): Fix how keyword Move Emails works. Read more from the pull request.

• Library RPA.Robocorp.Storage (robocorp-storage 1.0.2): Fix keyword List Assets for listing and returning correctly all the assets available in the cloud.
• Library RPA.Assistant (#1122; rpaframework-assistant 3.0.2): Show files selected with Add File Input to make it easier for users to know it has been used. Also shows a warning if the image path for Add Image is not valid or if the file does not exist.

🗒️ Note

This version is compatible with robocorp 1.2.1.

• Library RPA.Browser.Selenium (#1123; rpaframework-core 11.2.3): Fix “There is no such driver by url” error with Chrome/Chromium versions above 114 attempting a chromedriver version resolution.
• Library RPA.Robocorp.WorkItems: Fix dirty items logging and documentation nits.

• Add reply_to parameter for Send Message keyword for RPA.Email.Exchange and RPA.Email.ImapSmtp libraries.