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WinAutomation Version 8 Release Notes

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London · Athens · New York · Houston · Bangalore [email protected] www.softomotive.com

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Last Updated: 2018-06-05

mailto:[email protected]




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Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3

Naming Conventions ................................................................................................................... 4

WinAutomation Console ................................................................................................................. 5

Robust Robot and Process control .............................................................................................. 5

Enhanced central options configuration ................................................................................. 5

Rich error visualization & monitor capturing .......................................................................... 6

Detailed process tracking ........................................................................................................ 6

Flexible and Secure Unattended Automation ............................................................................. 7

More options provide Autologin password. ............................................................................ 7

Process Designer ............................................................................................................................. 8

New, Improved Process Actions .................................................................................................. 8

Unlimited Web Automation .................................................................................................... 8

Improved Email functionality .................................................................................................. 8

Faster Excel functionality ......................................................................................................... 9

Introducing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) actions ...................................................... 9

Pixel perfect image capturing via Image Magnifier ................................................................. 9

Extended rule-based decision actions ................................................................................... 10

Multiple time-zone support ................................................................................................... 10

New PDF actions .................................................................................................................... 10

Improved process development and debugging ...................................................................... 11

Advanced text search and sorting capabilities. .................................................................... 11

Interactive guidance for debugging ....................................................................................... 12

Massive clearing and deletion operations ............................................................................ 13

New actions for Json – ........................................................................................................... 13

Custom Object data type and conversion ............................................................................. 13

How to upgrade ......................................................................................................................... 14

Summary of changes ................................................................................................................. 15





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Introduction WinAutomation is the leading desktop automation solution powered by Softomotive, used by more than 6000 professionals and enterprises worldwide. This document contains the Release Notes on WinAutomation version 8, offering the latest brief, high-level descriptions of enhancements and new features since the previous release (version 7).

The enhancements and changes listed in this document are available with the latest license of WinAutomation offering version 8 of the software. Customers can choose to upgrade to the edition that suits their needs best.

If you are unsure which WinAutomation version you are using, please check the version number at the bottom of the home page when you start the program next.

Version 8 focuses on enhancing the core capabilities of WinAutomation. Specifically, users of WinAutomation will experience improvements to the UI of the design environment, added automation capabilities for the development and debugging stage, as well as enriched system monitoring and security features.

Overall, this new release makes WinAutomation even easier for users to create and deploy automations rapidly, at the most affordable price in the market.

For detailed feature descriptions and configuration instructions, refer to the latest Help File found with your WinAutomation installation.





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Naming Conventions Νew terminology is applied with the release of WinAutomation version 8 and this document. Namely:

“Robot” or “Bot” is the name of the software installed on a workstation (desktop, laptop, virtual machine), rather than an “Automation”. This aligns with an RPA industry accepted norm that any kind of software that resides on a machine which is running automated tasks is referred to as a Robot.

Automations, a term reserved to describe any action, or series of actions, that users automate, is named a “Process” that is executed by robots.

Consequently, the “Robot’s Designer” is renamed to “Process Designer” and all the “Robot” relative actions will now become “Process” actions.

Table 1 Old versus new naming conventions for WinAutomation software

WinAutomation version 7 and lower

WinAutomation version 8 and higher

Software Automation (software) Robot or Bot (software)

Automation Bot Process

Environment for developing automations

Robot Designer Process Designer

Building blocks for automations

Robot Actions Process Actions

This new terminology applied to WinAutomation will bring it into alignment with the terminology familiar to the users of ProcessRobot, Softomotive’s Enterprise RPA platform. This will ensure consistency of approach for users of both WinAutomation and ProcessRobot.





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WinAutomation Console

The WinAutomation Console is where users can configure general settings and properties for processes, triggers, schedules, logs, or general system options, such as authentication, notifications, etc.

Changes in the WinAutomation Console includes more ways for users to

Configure the Robot software (options and settings) Monitor the Robot software (what it is doing) Start the Robot software (unattended automation) Safeguard credentials (access and security)

Robust Robot and Process control One of the biggest needs in robotic desktop automation is the ability to understand what robots are doing, quickly set exception handling mechanisms, and handle (or repair) possible failures.

Among the most important upgrades in WinAutomation version 8 are related to the software’s architecture leading to enhancements in monitoring and reporting capabilities. The new release introduces new central options, rich error visualization and monitor capture logging, and provides the ability to search for items in the Process Designer or use the “Find Usages” feature to find controls images and functions, enabling much faster debugging times.

Enhanced central options configuration Version 8 enhances the user experience by introducing a new set of settings under the “Options” Tab. This is designed to simplify and introduce new ways for users to configure the Robot (software), as well as set configurations.





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Rich error visualization & monitor capturing WinAutomation 8 captures a screenshot of the machine’s monitor at the time a process fails. This rich error visualization and monitor captures, identifies errors or unwanted behaviors so they can be easily evaluated and acted upon.

This new advanced auditing and logging capability, Winautomation 8 gives developers superior debugging techniques and procedures that save time and effort.

Detailed process tracking Monitoring and logging is enhanced with the new Automatic Logging capability. When enabled, WinAutomation v8 will log each and every action of a process, step-by-step, and from start to finish. This allows perfect monitoring of process execution and better identification of delay.





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Flexible and Secure Unattended Automation WinAutomation version 8 enables more robust and agile solutions when it comes to Unattended or self-reliant automation and process execution.

More options to get Autologin password. In Unattendeed automation periodic password changes can be a big issue, as they interrupt the automation process.

WinAutomation 8 enables processes to obtain a user’s password via a command in the command line as an output and then use it to login and execute the process automation

For added security, the password will be retrieved and used (but not saved) only when a robot attempts to login on the machine, and at no other time. With this feature there is no need to worry about periodic password changes, saving valuable time.





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Process Designer (formerly known as the Robot Designer)

WinAutomation has the most user friendly interface in the market, offering an easy and intuitive design environment suitable for users with a range of different skills, from novice to advanced users. The latest release includes unique application controls, enhanced find, sort capabilities, and new group level commands that minimize the time needed to develop or debug a process.

New, Improved Process Actions WinAutomation version 8 offers more ways to automate and control applications than ever before, supporting new development capabilities across web automation, excel automation, email integration support, text analytics, and image processing.

Unlimited Web Automation Based on our client experience, most of the automations implemented by our users involve a web component, making use of Web Automation. To provide greater choice WinAutomation version 8 supports two new web browsers (Google Chrome and Moizilla Firefox), in addition to the existing Internet Explorer to support all Web Automation actions.

Additionally, to help advanced users building more complex processes, the ability to execute a Javascript

on a web browser through a dedicated action has been added.

Improved Email functionality From WinAutomation version 8 onwards, apart from the IMAP and SMTP protocols that are provided through the “Email” group of actions, Exchange is also supported in order to be able to manipulate emails on an Exchange server. So far, users could only do so, via the “Outlook” group of actions which work in a protocol agnostic manner for WinAutomation.





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Faster Excel functionality WinAutomation enables complex Excel automations to be built quickly and easily. WinAutomation version 8 builds on this existing functionality with the addition of two more actions:

“Save Excel” provides the new ability to save any changes to an excel file, without the need to close and re-launch the application. With this capability, any complex excel process will be automated efficiently.

Users can also run their chosen excel macro directly with a straight forward “Run Excel Macro” action.

Introducing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) actions One of the major enhancements in WinAutomation version 8, are the new OCR actions designed to improve computer vision and VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) automation, by allowing for more cases via Citrix or RDP automation.

Pixel perfect image capturing via Image Magnifier To enhance the precision of OCR, an Image magnifier tool is included in WinAutomation version 8. With Image Magnifier, images are captured in detail down to the last pixel, which is invaluable when executing processes with OCR or Image recognition actions.





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Extended rule-based decision actions WinAutomation version 8 is equipped with new decision making functionality “Switch-case” in the Conditionals group, beyond the traditional rule-based conditions (if-then-else). The switch-case action is designed to make developing complicated processes easy and clean, quicker to build and less prone to error.

Multiple time-zone support Added time-zones to the “get current date and time” action, in order to be able to retrieve and use the local time of any country worldwide.

New PDF actions This new action add a new dimension when it

comes to handling and processing pdf

documents. Users can create processes that

can split a pdf and re-create a new one with the

page numbers they select. Additionally, users

have the ability to merge multiple pdf files into

one.





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Improved process development and debugging A series of changes have been made in the panes of the process designer with the goal to provide more information on actions, variables or errors, as well as, enable faster search and sort capabilities that enhance discoverability. As a result, users will be able to make appropriate informed decisions for debugging, more efficiently.

Advanced text search and sorting capabilities.

Advanced text search is enabled in the Process Designer environment.

Now users can search for simple text which may be present in the actions, or functions, This saves time, especially for very large processes with multiple functions.

With the “Go to line” feature, users can directly go to a line in a large script, without needing to manually scroll down to get to the bottom of a function





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Images repository is enhanced with the “Sort images” capability, enabling users to handle and navigate through larger amount of images, by sorting according to Date or filename.

Interactive guidance for debugging

When a process fails, users will be able to get full details of the problems and errors that cause the process to fail right within the designer environment. This increases situational awareness and enables faster troubleshooting that saves both time and effort during the debugging stage.

Previously, in the Process designer it was possible only to see if a process had an error, without any specific information about the error. Details on error messages were only visible from the console. In WinAutomation version 8, the full error description is available in both the console and in the process designer.





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Massive clearing and deletion operations We have added two commands that will help users clean up entries of large data sets like variable values and multiple functions.

In WinAutomation 8, variable values in the Variable pane, will no longer disappear once an action is edited. Still, when debugging a process, it is important to track variable values. To help users view the new values after the action edit is complete, we are adding the “Clear Values” option. Now, users will be able to review the initial variable values during the debugging process, clear them upon demand, and get refreshed values when they re-run the process.

New actions for Json –

Custom Object data type and conversion Version 8 includes dedicated actions that enhance support for Json responses

In cases where a WEB API is used WinAutomation v8 now supports “Custom object” related actions that read and parse the Json text string and define a mapping into a custom object, and vice versa.

Users can automate faster and more accurate of data exchanges between web services and network-based applications.





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How to upgrade

WinAutomation is made available in 3 editions, Basic, Professional and Professional Plus.

To view the set of features for each of these licenses, click here.

Existing clients can upgrade through the User Area, the portal through which they can

view and manage any existing licence.

Users will have to login, select the checkbox of the license keys they wish to upgrade, and

select the appropriate ‘upgrade’ button (at the bottom of the screen that matches the

edition they wish to obtain. If you have question on how to upgrade, please contact

[email protected]

If you want to purchase a new license, you can do so online, right on our website. If you

are looking to buy licenses in bulk, contact [email protected].


http://bit.ly/2szpPMj

http://bit.ly/2kSu1T6


http://bit.ly/2sG7EoD





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Summary of changes

Feature Description Location Advantage

Image magnifier

Image magnifier tool is now showing in all Image related actions

Process Designer

Better image capturing ability with greater detail, enabling better and faster image related action results

Run excel macro “Run Excel Macro” New Action

Process Designer

New ability to run an excel macro directly instead of having to use complicated VBscripts

save excel “Save Excel” New Action

Process Designer

New action to save an excel file while still being used by an automation process, eliminating the need to use the close excel action which was needed previously

2 new OCR engines

Support for OCR with two engines: MODI and Tesseract

Process Designer

Addition of 2 new OCR actions to cater for VDI automation, or for reading data from images and uneditable pdf, tiff, jpg...file.

2 new browsers Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome support for better Web-Automation

Process Designer

Enhance the variety of web automations available, by supporting 2 more major browsers

Execute JavaScript on browser

“Execute JavaScript on Web Browser” New Action

Process Designer

The ability to run a JavaScript on a specific webpage

Email Exchange Supporting Exchange with new Email actions

Process Designer

Enriched range of email protocols supported for Email automations, beyond imap and smtp.

Extract PDF to new page

“Extract PDF Pages to New PDF” New Action

Process Designer

New ability to split a pdf document into more files, or merge multiple pdf files into one.

Time zone Time Zone added to “Get Current Date and Time” Action

Process Designer

With this new feature we can get the current date and time of any time zone, not just the one of the current machine.

Switch case action

New conditional actions for decision making “Switch-Case”

Process Designer

With the switch case we avoid using other conditional decision making actions (like if then, else if, then else) multiple times

Clear values “Clear Values” option after debugging a Process

Process Designer

Better handling of variable values on demand. Instead of values disappearing upon an action edit, user can see all values even after the edit and can clear them when they want.





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Find usage “Find Usages” for Functions

Process Designer

being able to see where a function is being called. In large scripts it helps to get a good idea of the flow

Mass function delete

Mass Function delete. Process Designer

The ability to select multiple functions and delete them at-once, instead of manually deleting them one-by-one

Added error description

Additional details of an error

Process Designer

Enhanced the information on error occurrence during debugging by providing the full error description from within the designer environment

Sort images “Sort Images” Process Designer

Ability to sort images by Date or Name improving handling of multiple files in the image repository

Go to line “Go to Line” Functionality

Process Designer

Go directly to a line and not scroll down all the time to get to the bottom of a large script function

Text Search in Process Designer

“Text Search” within to search for any text present in the actions, comments or regions

Process Designer

Search for a string of text in actions, comments or regions. View highlighted results and jump to the relevant result with one click. Find variables easily

Obfuscation Obfuscation in generated executables

Compiler When turning a process into an executable, all the variables values, especially usernames and passwords are encrypted and cannot be retrieved

Automatic Logging

Log ALL actions and their execution timing in the Logs

Console Log all details and steps of a process, beyond start/error/end

Screenshot of exception

Get a Screenshot of the monitor(s) and add it in the logs, upon an exception

Console When a process errors out, v8 takes a screenshot of the monitor to help determine the root of the problem

Password via command line

The option to provide the Autologin password via a Command Line

Console Retrieve and use (but not save) password of the user from a command line, making autlogin process safer


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