Note: You are looking at a static snapshot of documentation related to Robot Framework automations. The most recent documentation is at https://robocorp.com/docs
When we say X we mean it (The Official Glossary)
Process, Locator, Assistant, Step... It's actually easier than you think! 🕺💃 The table below is your guide to all the important terminology with Robocorp. Ready for a pop quiz?
| Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Artifact | Artifacts are the technical output, primarily robot logs, that are generated each time a robot is run as either Process Step run or Assistant run and are stored in the Control Room. |
| Assistants | Assistants work together with humans to complete automated tasks in an attended way, sometimes known as “human in the loop”. Assistants require the Robocorp Assistant application to be installed on each human operator's local machine and will run on Windows, Linux and macOS. |
| Control Room | Control Room, aka orchestrator, is the central command of all the automations. It's a convenient way to distribute, monitor, and manage your Unattended and Attended Automations and manage who can and where they will be executed. Control Room is HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant. |
| Keyword Libraries | Keywords are used to add actions to your robot code. These Keywords come from various Libraries, and implement tasks like Open Workbook in Excel or Get Vendor Bills in Netsuite. Besides Robot Framework's built-in Libraries, the most common source of the Keywords is our open-source project RPAFramework. |
| Locator | Locators, aka selector, is the common name for finding and interacting with user interface elements using different strategies, such as XPath and CSS. |
| Organization | Organizations group and provide access control and admin features to Workspaces and users in Control Room. Usually, one organization represents one entity, like a company, client, or agency. |
| Portal | Portal is the home for our robot code and solutions examples. Check out the Portal for ready-made snippets of code and complete reference architectures. |
| RCC | RCC is a command-line tool that allows the creation, management, and distribution of Python-based self-contained automation packages. RCC is the invisible magic powering all our tools and ensuring that you will not end up with Python environment mess. |
| Robocorp Assistant | Robocorp Assistant application provides a way to execute attended robots, a.k.a Assistants (human in the loop) in an isolated environment on a target machine. The Robocorp Assistant can access local resources on the machine and interact with the user. The application supports Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems. Installation instructions. |
| Robocorp Code | Part of our developer tools, Robocorp Code lets you create robots, run them locally, and publish them directly to Control Room right from VS Code. Robocorp Code extension is available for free. |
| Robocorp Workforce Agent | Robocorp Workforce Agent is the application that provides the Workers for Unattended Processes. Workforce Agent can be setup in multiple ways which enables you to Find the correct setup for your needs. |
| Robot | Robots are code packages that contain one or more Tasks and, when joined together, form a Process or an Assistant. Robots are either uploaded to Control Room directly or through a version control system such as GitHub. |
| Robot Framework | An open-source project that was originally developed for test automation at a large telco, published in 2005. Robot Framework with it's vibrant developer community and a solid Python foundation is today used by thousands of organizations globally. Robot Framework scripts are the most common way to develop Robots in the Robocorp stack. |
| Robot Framework Language Server | Oftern referred as LSP, it's the VS Code extension that provides code completion, syntax validation and highlighting code formatting, and other powerful robot development features. Robot Framework Language Server is available for free. |
| RPA Framework | An open-source Keyword library maintained by Robocorp that implements most RPA-specific capabilities. You'll see Keywords like Open Available Browser or Open Workbook a lot! |
| Step | Unattended Processes consist of one or more Steps, which tell the process of what robot is run in which Environment on what condition. Each step can take inputs from the previous and send outputs to the next. By utilizing steps, you can utilize different Unattended Workers in different phases of your process and hyperscale your automation using parallelization where needed. |
| Task Log | Each Step run automatically outputs a detailed log of actions and attributes (if the developer allows). This Task Log is HTML based and becomes one of the Artifacts and can be easily accessed from Control Room. Task Log is automatically available when using Robot Framework. |
| Unattended Process | Robocorp's term for the unattended automation". A process contains Steps each of which can be assigned a different Robot which holds the logic and an Worker which provides the place to run that Robot. |
| Vault | Vault holds the secrets, such as access credentials, centrally in Control Room and lets developers and Unattended Workers access them without exposing the content. |
| VS Code Extensions | VS Code is our recommended development environment, and we provide two Extensions for it: Robocorp Code and Robot Framework Language Server. |
| Work Data | Anything a Process handles during its execution is referred to as Work Data. Work Data consists of individual Work Items. Work Data is similar to the term "queues" in some other RPA platforms. |
| Work Item | Work Item is a single entity that a Process Step handles that contains the business process data, e.g. variables or files. Each Step has its input Work Items and might generate output Work Items for the subsequent Steps. In Robocorp, each Step can be configured to process Work Items in parallel. |
| Worker | Unattended Worker is where the Unattended Processes' Steps run. Robocorp supports different Worker setups so that you can tailor the infrastructure according to what your automation requires rather than what your automation tool vendor dictates. |
| Worker Group | Worker groups is a named set of Unattended Workers. It allows Unattended Processes to run in parallel and enables building redundancy for your process executions. |
| Workspace | In the Control Room, you can create multiple Workspaces, recommended way to manage large-scale deployments in enterprise environments by segregating different business units within the same organization. |
Memorized them already? Great, now test your knowledge with the pop quiz! 😎
Next, we recommend you look at the robot structure & configuration. The article goes deeper into details of a robot's building blocks, giving you a great start in automating with Robocorp!
Last edit: December 22, 2022