This article is the beginning of in-depth description of Studio Pro, its features and application. Let us take a closer look at what does Studio Pro consist of.
Introduction
ElectroNeek Studio Pro is a low-code development environment that utilizes visual programming approach. Workflows are built using activity blocks that represent specific actions.
This is how the main program window looks like. Below we will provide more detail about the main interface features.
Main Studio Pro window
First of all, let us have a look at the program interface in general and then we will move to breakdown of its main parts. The main sections include the toolbar and control buttons (top left corner), activities and elements list (to the left), canvas (big dark window in the middle), activities properties and variables section (right part) and console with its control elements (below the canvas).
Toolbar and control buttons
This section lets users to manage files as well as access different features and settings. Here we will take a closer look at its elements.
Let us describe the following buttons first.
This part includes the buttons that control files creation, opening and saving
- 'New workflow' - creates a new empty workflow.
- 'Open' - open the specified workflow file (.neek).
- 'Save' - save the current workflow. The current file will be overwritten. When using this with a newly created file, 'Save as' will be triggered instead.
- 'Save as' - lets you save the workflow with more options. You can overwrite the same file or save the changes in a new file as well as choose a different save location.
- 'Connect this workflow to Orchestrator' - lets you publish the current workflow to Orchestrator. Read more about it in this series of articles. Orchestrator Admin Guide, Orchestrator SaaS description
- 'Run' - these buttons let you launch the bot both in normal and debug mode.
- UI scale - lets you adjust the interface scale.
- Undo/Redo - cancel the last change or redo it.
- Process Recorder - lets you record your actions in a desktop app or a browser and save these actions as an algorithm.
And now some details about this section.
This panel contains a few tabs that let you access various options that are described below
'File' menu lets you create, save, open workflow files, export your workflow to .neex format for Bot Runner, publish your bot to Orchestrator and import elements from .elm files.
'Edit' menu lets you manage the blocks in the canvas and do actions related to them. You can undo/redo the last changes, copy and paste and delete blocks, find and select blocks and remove unconnected blocks.
'Run' menu lets you run the bot in normal or debug mode and manage debug options.
'Tools' menu lets you access Process Recorder and open the logs folder.
'Account' menu lets you check you license and log out of your current account.
'Settings' menu contains different options related to workflow execution, browsers, connection, specific actions etc.
'Help' menu lets you visit the Knowledge Base, check for updates and get in touch with our tech support.
Activities and elements list
This part contains all the available activities ('Activities' tab). The elements created by the user during the process of development will also be shown in 'Elements' tab. Activities are grouped based on their functions. Click the group name to open the drop-down list containing the related activities.
Activities list. 'General' is one of the groups and it contains the related activities
Canvas
Basically, the main part of the program. It is used for the workflow development process and contains your current algorithm. New activity blocks added to your workflow will appear here. It also has tabs that let you switch between the opened workflows and a search window. Read more about workflow features here. Workflow composition
Canvas with an example of an opened workflow
Properties and values section
This section lets you set the activities parameters and manages the variables created during development. It changes according to the type of the selected activity block. 'Properties' tab contains a set of options depending on the selected block. 'Variables' tab stores the user-created variables that can be used in development.
Overview of the section that contains block properties and variables. In this example a browser-related block properties are shown. The represented options will change according to the selected block
Console
Console stores all kinds of output messages and can be used with some activities. There are also a few control buttons. They let you clear the console, change its position and open the logs folder.
Console window. In this example an output message indicating that the bot was saved successfully is displayed
Here we described the main features of Studio Pro interface. The next article will describe the basics of workflow creation. Workflow composition