Automation Workspace v.27 release

Review what's new and changed, and the fixes and limitations in Automation Workspace for the v.27 release.

What's new

Important: For information about the supported packages for this release, see Packages updated in v.27.
APIs and integrations
Workato Integration

You can integrate the Automation 360 platform and Workato by using the Automation Anywhere connector. You can establish a connection with the Automation Anywhere Control Room and perform various operations using the Control Room APIs.

Workato integration

SnapLogic Integration

You can now integrate the Automation 360 platform and SnapLogic. You can establish a connection with the Automation Anywhere Control Room and perform various operations by using the Control Room APIs.

Snaplogic integration

RPA Bots for Salesforce
Now when creating new connections, you have the option to include an API Gateway certificate.

What's changed

Packages, actions, and Bot editor
Control Room version compatibility check with specific packages

When you manually upload a package or a bot in the Control Room, the system now checks if the specific packages used in the bot are compatible with the Control Room version.

Analyze button renamed in Bot editor

The analyze button of Bot Insight (Analyze Task Bot) has been renamed to Bot Insight "Analyze" dashboard in the Bot editor page.

Fixes

Build 16701: This build includes the following fixes (along with fixes from the previous builds):

Fix for inconsistencies that were observed on the In-progress activity page.

Service Cloud case ID: 01949323, 01950696, 01944637, 01951100, 01953055, 01950639, 01951722, 01929156, 01954486, 01954920

Build 16694: This build includes the following fixes (along with fixes from the previous builds):

If the Manage my activity feature is enabled for a user role, then the user can view the pause, resume, and stop status on the In progress activity page. If this feature is disabled, then the user cannot view these statuses.

Previously, users were able to view these statuses even when the feature was disabled.

Service Cloud case ID: 01937106

Build 16667: This build includes the following fixes:

When synching with the Active Directory (AD), the user mapping no longer overwrites the Description field in the Control Room with blanks.
The Automation 360 Control Room no longer generates an error in the User Management log when a mapped security group has no members.
The In progress activity page no longer shows bots after they are run.

Previously, the page incorrectly showed bots in the active state even after execution.

Service Cloud case ID:

01914651, 01924866, 01923265, 01928088, 1918956, 01922321, 01931985, 01921849, 01938985, 01939812,
01940084, 01940585, 01940258, 01938868, 01934451, 01940222, 01941187, 01940900, 01941742, 01939639,
01941503, 01941496, 01939639, 01942720, 01942430, 01943379, 01943617, 01938885

When a user is assigned an admin role to create schedules and later the admin access is removed for that user, an audit log will be logged when the schedule is canceled because of the user not having the admin privileges.

Previously, when such schedules were canceled, no audit logs were logged indicating that the schedule was canceled because the user did not have the required privileges.

Service Cloud case ID: 01830359

The Administration > Licenses page and the Control Room banner displayed on the same licenses page now display correct information about license expiry.

Previously, the correct information about license expiry was not displayed.

Service Cloud case ID: 01807324

When you edit a role, the Edit role audit log page now displays the correct old, new, and run-as user values.

Previously, these values were not displayed.

Service Cloud case ID: 01759116

When you edit your first or last name on the My profile page, the description and auto login values on the Edit user audit log page will not be updated.

Service Cloud case ID: 01846878

You can correctly filter the status for activities on the Activity > Historical page.

Previously, some filters were not displaying the correct status for activities.

Service Cloud case ID: 01869361, 01875216

Users without permission cannot view the activities of other users on the In progress activity page.

Previously, some users were able to view the activities of other users even though they did not have permission.

Service Cloud case ID: 01911289, 01910582

If you configured the log collection level as Debug, the logs collected from some packages do not include customer data.

Previously, the logs collected from some packages included customer data.

Service Cloud case ID: 01862053, 01870001

If the CPU utilization and device memory threshold values are outside the percentage range defined by the Control Room administrator in the Administration > Settings > Devices > Threshold settings for multi-user devices, a clear error message now indicates the device unavailability and provides an appropriate action.

Previously, when the CPU utilization and device memory thresholds values exceeded the defined value, bot deployment failed with an unknown error message.

Device shows an accurate status when the Bot Agent is disconnected from the Control Room.

Previously, due to the default time (15 minutes) of the WebSocket connection, a device was shown as connected even when the Bot Agent was disconnected from the Control Room.

Service Cloud case ID: 01843990

In the Oracle Database environment, a checked-in bot is now automatically refreshed and can be viewed in the Public folder.

Previously, to view a checked-in bot in the Public folder, you had to manually refresh the Automation page by using the Refresh button.

When a Stop Task command is used, WLM work items are now marked as completed successfully and show the correct status in the Control Room.

Previously, WLM work items were marked as failed even if the bot was executed successfully.

Service Cloud case ID: 01841320, 01840748

When you run WLM automations, if the Control Room restarts during deployment, the WLM deployment continues without delay when Control Room services are active.

Previously, after the Control Room restarted, there was a delay of 15 minutes before the WLM deployment continued.

When you run a bot by using the Run bot with queue option, the correct value of the work item is now selected, irrespective of the modification source. Previously, when the value of a work item was modified through the API or bot setting, the older value was selected by the bot

Service Cloud case ID: 01786785

In an Oracle Database environment, when you select the number format and sort order for the work items in a queue and then run bot by using the Run bot with queue option, the queues are now deployed successfully. Also, the correct log entry is shown in the Audit log or Activity page.

Previously, queues were not deployed, and no errors were shown in the Audit log or Activity page.

In a clustered environment, the bot deployment progress is no longer stuck and the Bot Runner device connects to the Control Room successfully.

Previously, the bot deployment progress would get stuck sometimes and show an error message Waiting for user: <username> and/or device: <device-name> on the In progress > In progress activity page.

Service Cloud case ID: 01830285

When a bot keeps running for a few hours, an error no longer occurs due to high memory usage with the Recorder package version 2.9.2 or later.

Previously, an increase in memory usage caused the bot to fail after a few hours with a Java heap space error.

Service Cloud case ID: 01911565

When you read emails within a loop using a Microsoft Outlook Client connection with a subject filter, use the Delete action and run the bot, the bot now completes the set iteration and deletes the emails from the specified folder. Additionally, the variable that was used to display the count of total emails versus deleted emails now displays the correct counts in the message box.

Service Cloud case ID: 01845642,01857791,01880424

When you establish a connection with the EWS server, and emails are read within a loop to filter and move all emails from a subfolder created within the custom folder, the bot now executes without an error.

Previously, an error occurred because the bot could not read the emails from the folders created outside the predefined folder, such as Inbox, Junk, or Draft.

Service Cloud case ID: 01823238

You can now successfully create a bot by using the Upload file action from the Microsoft 365 OneDrive package.
Previously, the bot displayed an error when you used the Upload file action and if the file name had special characters such as brackets [].
Note: Brackets [] are now supported in the file name.

Service Cloud case ID: 01798568

When you choose the variable option to perform a task and during bot creation process you delete the variable you created (Your variables), and when you click the Add option in the variable field to insert a variable (such as global variable), the option is now enabled.

Previously, the Add option for inserting the variable was disabled.

Service Cloud case ID: 01869139

When you create a bot, you can now use the Update node action of the XML package to update the value of a node. Previously, the attributes were removed when you updated the text value of an XML element.

Service Cloud case ID: 01805643

In the Email package, connect to the EWS server and use Loop > For each mail in mail box. If the source mail is sent on behalf of some other user, for example, user xyz@aa.com sent mail on behalf of user abc@aa.com, the email dictionary variable emailFrom now returns the correct sender ID, which is abc@aa.com.

Previously, the email dictionary variable emailFrom returned the sender ID as xyz@aa.com.

Service Cloud case ID: 01856149

When you run a stored procedure in Oracle and it returns SYS_REFCURSOR, the Run stored procedure action closes the cursors.

Previously, the Run stored procedure action was not closing the cursor after the maximum cursor limit was reached.

Service Cloud case ID: 01842046, 01898572

In the Active Directory package, when you perform a user account operation such as Add users to group, Delete user, Disable user account, or Rename user, and if the username has an asterisk (*), open parenthesis, or close parenthesis, you can now add a user without any error.

Previously, the username did not support the following special characters: asterisk (*), open parenthesis, and close parentheses.

Service Cloud case ID: 01884962

When you create a folder in Outlook with a percentage (%) in its name (for example, Clients%ClientA), create a bot using the Connect action from the Email package and then use the Folder exists or Folder does not exist condition, the bot finds the Clients%ClientA and retrieves mail from it.

Previously, the bot was not able to retrieve mails from the folder because percentage (%) was not supported in the folder name.
When you connect to the Microsoft Access Database with JDBC and specify the database path, if you use the following specific aggregation functions in the query, an error is no longer encountered when you run the bot:
ASC, ATN, SQR, CBOOL, CCUR, CDATE,
CDBL, CDEC, CDATE, CDBL, CINT, CLONG, CLNG,
CSIGN, CSTR, CVAR, DATEADD, DATEDIFF, DATEPART,
DATESERIAL, DATEVALUE, FORMAT, IIF, INSTR, INSTRREV,
ISDATE, IsNull, ISNUMERIC, LEFT, LEFTS, LEN, MID,
MONTHNAME, DATE, NOW, NZ, SIGN, SPACE, STR, TIME, VAL,
WEEKDAYNAME, WEEKDAY, STRING, TIMESERIAL, CONCAT
When using the Task Bot: Run action, you can search dictionary and session variables to use as input parameters. Previously, no results displayed when using this Advanced search feature.

Service Cloud case ID: 01879539

A Task Bot no longer fails when you debug or run it when any in_Window input variable is set.

Previously, in edit mode, when you debugged or ran a Task Bot with an input variable by selecting the Use as input check box, the bot failed.

Service Cloud case ID: 01919263

When you use the Save action in the Email package, and if the email subject includes a comma (,), the emails are saved successfully.

Previously, if the email subject included a comma (,) and you saved the email, the comma (,) was replaced with an underscore (_).

Service Cloud case ID: 01786211

When you select the Package details page, and select the Availability tab, if the package (all users or selected roles) is changed, then the Package details page displays the last modified information of the user who made the changes, and the changes made at the access level (all users or selected roles).
You can create bots using the Download file action of the Google Drive package.

Previously, when you used the Download file action and marked the Overwrite existing file option to overwrite the file of the same name, the downloaded file became corrupted. If you then used the Excel advanced > Open action to open this file, or manually tried to open the Excel file, an error message displayed indicating that the Excel file was corrupted.

Service Cloud case ID: 01833815

You no longer have an incorrect starting date when you create an event using the Google Calendar package.

Previously, when you created an event in Google Calendar and entered the value in the Start Date field with the event type set to All Day, the Google Calendar package decremented the day value by one when you selected the All Day option.

Service Cloud case ID: 01815644

When you use the Excel advanced > Open action to open an Excel spreadsheet which did not exist and then run the bot, the bot now displays the correct error message in Japanese.

Service Cloud case ID: 01857992, 01925567

You can successfully extract fields from a PDF file when you use the PDF > Extract field or Extract text actions.

Service Cloud case ID: 01818304

When you use the 3.6.1-20220428-010115 version of the Simulate keystrokes package to enter keystrokes against specific webpages running in the Microsoft Edge browser with IE mode, the bot processes the keystrokes faster.

Service Cloud case ID: 01820418

When you use the PDF > Split document action to split multiple PDFs into various folders and then use the For each file in folder iterator to run the bot in a loop to split each file in the specified folder, the bot no longer encounters an error.

Service Cloud case ID: 01803983

When you use the File > Copy Control Room file action and choose the dynamic file path option to select a file from the Control Room repository, the bot no longer encounters an error. Previously, even if the uploaded file was available in the Control Room, the bot failed and displayed this error message: Get Resource failed: Error: Could not find the file at the Control Room path. Check the file path and try again.

Service Cloud case ID: 01805364

When you use the File > Rename action to rename and overwrite an existing file, the bot no longer shows an incorrect error message. Previously, when you tried to rename an existing file, the bot showed an incorrect file name in the error message.

Service Cloud case ID: 01845943, 01858350

You can successfully rename the file and remove an extension from the file name by using the File > Rename action. Previously, when used the Rename action to remove an extension from the file name, the bot trimmed the last character from the file name instead.

Service Cloud case ID: 01842995

When you use the Recorder to capture objects on an application that is installed on a virtual machine, finish the recording after the objects are captured, and then relaunch the Recorder, the bot successfully launches the Recorder and no longer inserts any actions that were recorded earlier.
When you use the Recorder > Capture action to automate Citrix virtual apps running on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers, add a delay of 60 seconds and run the bot, then if the object does not exist, the bot waits for the specified time (60 seconds) in the Keep trying for (seconds) field before executing the next steps.
When you run the bot using the following sequence of actions, the bot shows accurate data for each loop iteration:
  1. Use the Database > Connect action to connect to the database
  2. Use the Database > Read action to read the values from the database
  3. Use the For each row in a SQL query dataset iterator to run the bot in a loop
  4. Use the Database > Disconnect action to disconnect from the database and select the Keep database schema in cache until bot finishes running option.
Previously, during the second loop iteration, the action picked up data from the previous loop.

Service Cloud case ID: 01817192, 01853717, 01880154, 01940546

An error no longer occurs when you use Recorder package 2.8.6 and later versions to perform a click operation on a link element that opens a pop-up window on a web page running in Microsoft Edge with IE mode.

Service Cloud case ID: 01845776, 01858872, 01923003

When you install the AARemoteAgent_2.0, the DLL files are now copied to the correct A360 Remote Agent folder and the AARemoteAgent_2.0 runs properly. Previously when you installed the AARemoteAgent_2.0, the DLL files were copied to an incorrect A360 Remote Agent\Java folder.

Service Cloud case ID: 01935630

You can now successfully use the PDF > Extract field action to extract values from a PDF that contains a string data type with the dollar sign ($).

Service Cloud case ID: 01848220

You can now successfully run all migrated web actions of the Legacy Automation package in multiple steps of a bot in Microsoft Edge with IE mode.

Service Cloud case ID: 01853563, 01865846

In the File > Copy Desktop file action, when you use a variable that contains a number sign (#) instead of a file path to locate the file that you want to copy, the bot no longer encounters an error.

Service Cloud case ID: 01808009, 01845923

When exporting data to Excel CSV files, Boolean values return accurately. Previously, a bug caused values to return as -1 while using OLE DB Driver for SQL Server (version 18 or later).

Service Cloud case ID: 01826530

Updating the Bot Agent version sometimes failed. However, when you select the Automatically update all bot agents option, the Bot Agent updates to the latest version without failures.
Control Room now supports Windows NT in French.

Service Cloud case ID: 00682337

All DELETE /v1/configurations endpoints are not accessible anymore.

Service Cloud case ID: 01920980

While installing Automation 360 on a three-node cluster, the installer prompts you to enter the Elasticsearch password for the first node only and replicates this data across the other two nodes.
Bots that are running for longer duration display correctly on the In progress activity page.

Previously, these bots displayed only after bot updates and were removed after the page refresh.

Service Cloud case ID: 01921149

You can now update Internet Explorer bots created in Automation 360 to Microsoft Edge with IE mode using the Update Bot wizard even if these bots (or its dependencies) contain a '.' (dot) character in its name.

Service Cloud case ID: 01809003, 01814904, 01822014, 01858820

If you selected the Log off windows session post bot execution option under Auto-login settings in the Control Room, data in the resource folder is cleared after the bot run.

Service Cloud case ID: 01795752, 01778828, 01804711,01864871,01923299, 01823515

If you delete a device entry from Manage > Devices in the Control Room, the device registration properties are removed. This enables you to reregister the device.

Service Cloud case ID: 01808450

You can successfully log in to Automation 360 using Active Directory credentials when the Auto-login users into Control Room option is enabled, without encountering any issues..

Service Cloud case ID: 01808170, 01826805

The generated Control Room operational log files contain readable characters.

Service Cloud case ID: 01872473

The Repository Management (/v2/repository/files/<file_id>/content) API now returns file contents only for the files the logged-in user has permission to view. The content of these files cannot be updated using a different API.

Previously, this Repository Management API returned file contents for the files that the logged-in user did not have permission to view. And the user could update the content of these files.

Service Cloud case ID: 01819101

Bot deployment now resumes and completes without any issue when the Task Bot > Pause action executes before or while the runtime window is loading.

Previously, the resume option was not displayed in the runtime window, and the bot deployment was not completed.

Service Cloud case ID: 01835794

You can create a folder within the Bots folder in the public workspace.

Previously, folder creation failed with an error in the public workspace.

Service Cloud case ID: 01257981

You can now successfully compare different versions of your bots and dependencies in both the public and the private workspaces.

Previously, comparing the bot versions failed with a timeout error.

Service Cloud case ID: 01770115, 01905037

When you export the user data to a CSV file, it now shows the correct user type and device license information for all users.

Previously, user data exported to the CSV file showed incorrect information.

Service Cloud case ID: 01840507

You can now check in a bot successfully to the public workspace.

Previously, the bot check in failed because the audit trial was processed unsuccessfully.

Service Cloud case ID: 01860361

The BLM export is an asynchronous call and when used with the existing API endpoint /v2/blm/status/{requestId}, there is a delay associated with the API call. Due to this delay, you cannot retrieve the current status of the export if there is not enough time gap between the export and the status call. To bypass this limitation, a new API endpoint has been added GET /v2/blm/status/{requestId}/timeout/{timeout} which introduces a time delay that waits for the export process to complete and then retrieves the status.

Service Cloud case ID: 01806109

Upgraded Swagger UI and Swagger Editor to version 4.15.5 to fix a security vulnerability.

Service Cloud case ID: 01843148

When you create bots that use the Excel advanced > Select cells/rows/column action and set the Cell Range with an expression (such as B1:$SampleNumber.Number:toString$), the Bot editor no longer displays an error and the action now works properly.

Service Cloud case ID: 01941537

When you use the File trigger to modify a BAT or VBS file, the trigger is generated once. Previously, the trigger would generate twice when you enabled the file modified scenario.

Service Cloud case ID: 01816589, 01877498

You no longer encounter issues with bot check-in or cancel check-out after the bulk package update operation. When you try multiple bulk updates of packages, now an appropriate error message indicates to perform bulk updates of one package at a time.

Previously, when you performed multiple bulk updates of packages, it resulted in check-in or cancel check-out errors.

Service Cloud case ID: 01849828, 01881950

Bots with a large number of automations complete successfully without any pre-processing issues or errors.

Service Cloud case ID: 01949415, 01949372, 01949033

Security fixes

The version of Springframe Work is updated to 5.3.22 and does not exhibit the security vulnerability. 

Service Cloud case ID: 01850811

Limitations

When you create a device pool with a temporary (disconnected) device, the device deletion job does not complete successfully. Additionally, the Audit log page shows the device is deleted, whereas the Device list page shows the deleted device in the list.
When you check out bots in bulk, you cannot check out the bots for which you have the required permissions. This is because bots for which you have the required permissions are also excluded along with the bots for which you do not have the required permissions.
The bot checkout fails in the following scenarios:
  • If a bot with same name (but different case) exists in your private workspace with the same path.
    Note: In such cases, the bot checkout or overwrite fails even when an overwrite confirmation message displays.
  • If a folder with the same name exists in your private workspace with the same path.
When you compare bot versions from the View history page in a Public workspace, the Compare versions page shows an error message.
Workaround: To fix this error, perform one of the following actions:
  • In a Public workspace, click the three dots icon next to the required bot in the Action menu and click Compare versions.
    Note: You cannot compare the bot versions when only one bot version is available.
  • If you check out a bot to a Private workspace and then modify and save it, click the three dots icon in the Action menu and click Compare versions.

Service Cloud case ID: 01949094, 01946533

In Windows and Linux operating system, notifications are not working with the Oracle Database.
We use a third-party parser to convert from HTML format to plain text. As a result, when you convert an email from HTML format to plain text, you will see that, sometimes, the text is not converted into plain text and is not displayed in the correct format. For example, you might see that some lines are added or skipped.

Service Cloud case ID: 01822614

In any package, when you select the Add argument option, select String or Number as the Argument type, and then try to insert a value, you might not be able to navigate through the options using the scroll functionality.

When you use the System > Get environment variable action to select the list of environment variables to return the system parameters of the device, some environment variables might not be visible.

When you use the Text file > Read variables option to read the values of variables from the text file, use the If > String condition to execute actions based on the value of the specified source string, and run the bot, the bot might fail if the key value added to the mapped variable does not match the value in the text file.

Workaround: To pass null values successfully, perform the following steps:
  1. Use Text file > Read variables action to add a dictionary variable.
  2. Use Dictionary > Get action to find and save a specific key value.
    Note: If the key value does not match with the value in the text file, then an empty string is returned to the string variable.

Alternatively, use the If > Dictionary > Check key condition to validate if the key is present in the text file. You can then assign value to the string variable accordingly.

After you upgrade to Automation 360 v.27, if a new package (first version) is added to the Control Room and in the setting for packages you selected Disable for the new version of package, you will see that the package will have status as Enabled and set as default instead of Disable.
In an Oracle Database environment, when you upgrade to Automation 360 v.27, the new package versions that are shipped through the installer remain in the disabled state and are not set as the default version.

Workaround: You must enable each updated or new package manually and set the package as the default version.

In the Automation page, column customizations made on the Files and folders are not retained when you navigate away from that page. For example, if you customize the columns in the private workspace, move out, and navigate back to the private workspace, the previous customization is not retained. It returns to the default view.

Similarly, searches and customizations such as filters, sort orders, custom columns, and partially completed edits are not retained when you navigate away from the page.

When you run the v1/audit/messages/list API in Control Room swagger, the following error message is displayed:

Please correct the following validation errors and try again.
propKeyfilterErrorValue must be a string.
PropKeypageerrorValue must be a string.

Workaround: Run the v1/audit/messages/list API using Postman application to avoid the error.

Service Cloud case ID: 01988096

you
When you check in a bot or a file, it might not reflect immediately in the public workspace and takes sometime to appear.

Recommendation: Ensure that you do not attempt to check in the same bot or a file again while the check in is in progress.

Service Cloud Case ID: 02067111

Updates to the interface