UiBot Creator by Laiye - wow!

[burque505]

About five days ago, absolutely by chance, I discovered a reference to UiBot Creator, an RPA platform which has a Community Edition that is remarkably complete.
The company behind it is Laiye, founded in 2015. When I last visited it, there was no link to the English-language Community Edition, but that may have changed by the time you read this.

I first downloaded a version in Mandarin (found a link on a blog) to see if I could change the UI, no luck - but an email to Laiye got me a download link to a version in English. The links are below.

64-bit download
32-bit download

I recommend using UiBot Creator on Win10 at 100% scaling, otherwise your results may not be what you want.

Signing in after installing and launching might be difficult, maybe not. (I had trouble, but that was very likely due to installing the Mandarin version first.) If you have trouble, contact the company - they are incredibly helpful. There is support (in English, even for Community Edition users) using a new (free) team collaboration app called Lark, which is very impressive.

The workspace is unique, and after you get used to it a real pleasure to use. Here's a shot of the screen for creating a new project or function library:

1.PNG (8.9 KiB) Viewed 3738 times

When you open your first project you'll see this:

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Seems pretty sparse, but all the heavy lifting goes on inside each block:

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The web scraping capabilities of this platform are insanely good. Power Automate Desktop's capabilities in this regard are quite a bit less powerful. UiBot can easily compete with UiPath as far as web scraping goes. UiBot Creator uses the Python lib 'pandas' for scraping data, but hides the complexity of using it with a great UI. There is also a recording function that works quite well.

There is lots of Python powering this platform, in addition to lots of .NET libs. It is NOT another rehosted Windows Workflow Designer, which is refreshing.

I was pleased as can be to find I could automate scraping an Angular website (one that has given me grief in every other platform) in a manner of minutes.

Plugins can be created in Java, Python, C#, Lua and probably C++, but the examples provided are for the first three.
The documentation is still in the translation process, so you may have to reach out to the staff for instructions quite a bit at first. I don't have a URL for documentation as PDFs, but the staff kindly provided me with several manuals through Lark and via email.

I was able to create an AHK plugin in C# based on AutoHotkey.Interop. So far it working well, at least as well as UiPath's AHK scripting (if they still have it, that is), which was also based on AutoHotkey.Interop. As soon as I'm satisfied with it (which may be a while) I will post it on GitHub.

The platform seems to be in very heavy development.

Regards,
burque505

p.s. One of the best parts of using this platform is the Code View. I can't display any more images in this post, so more on that later.

[burque505]

Here are couple of screenshots of UiBot Creator using Visual View and Code View.
The code you generate by dragging and dropping or double-clicking commands in Visual View can be seen (and edited) as source code in Code View.
A proprietary scripting language called BotScript, which will be familiar to anyone with VBA or Delphi/Lazarus/Free Pascal experience.

Here's Visual code in a simple block:

visual.PNG (49.67 KiB) Viewed 3727 times

That generates the following code. Reach it just by clicking on the Code tab.

code.PNG (12.13 KiB) Viewed 3727 times

One really helpful use of Code View is editing selectors. Another is writing libraries from scratch in BotScript.

Here's code you'll see when you create a new library:

Code: Select all

/*
Writing a Library: you can create a library containing multiple process blocks, 
and each can be used as a standalone command.
Publishing a Library: after you have created a library, use the Publish Library button to 
provide additional library configurations and output the library to a specified directory.
Using a Library: inside a project, navigate to Command Center > Custom > Library to install a library. 
Once installed, you may access the imported commands in the command PerformanceObserverEntryList.
*/

Function name(attribute)

End Function

The comment needs to be updated. Where it says

Once installed, you may access the imported commands in the command PerformanceObserverEntryList.

it should say

Once installed, you may access the imported commands in the 'Extend Command' section.

After you've imported a library into a project, you'll see this additional command:

extend_command.PNG (6.9 KiB) Viewed 3727 times

Regards,
burque505