Frequently Asked Questions

You have just installed Automation Studio, or have just upgraded your Real-Time Client. When you enter Automation Studio the installation window displays prompting you to install the Real-Time Client.

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Possible reasons include:

• The Automation Studio Launcher service did not start as expected. Try to restart the service.

During installation you receive a message that the NICE Real-Time Client could not be downloaded.

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Possible reasons include:

• Your Windows needs to be updated. Cancel installation, run any outstanding Windows updates, and then try to install Automation Studio again.

After entering your username and password to begin using Automation Studio, you receive a Permissions Required error.

Possible reasons include:

• Your user's role (typically Agent) is not assigned the Manage Automation Studio privilege.

  Ask your administrator to log into the Automation Studio Management Portal and navigate to Security > Roles and Permissions > (Your Role) > Permissions, and set Manage Automation Studio to On.

  

You try to connect to the Real-Time server (RT server) but Automation Studio is unable to connect.

Possible reasons include:

• Your version of Chrome is out-of-date. The minimum supported version is 73.

An error occurs when trying to run a workflow or start a project.

Possible reasons include:

• Some security and anti-virus software packages may interfere with regular operation of Automation Studio. In particular, they may cause errors when you try to run a workflow or start a project.

  A typical set of related errors in the Automation Studio log file (%appdata%\Nice_Systems\AutomationStudio\Log\AutomationStudio.log) is shown below.

  2021-05-27 11:49:01,815 [9] ERROR Studio.Dom.Developer - Failed to load deploy implementation

  System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'PowerLeech, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=012b62721be4aeeb' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

  File name: 'PowerLeech, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=012b62721be4aeeb'

  In such cases, Automation Studio should be added to the security software's exclusion list (white list).

  Security packages that are known to interfere with Automation Studio include:

  • Cybereason

• Your firewall might interfere with normal operation of Automation Studio.

  If your firewall interferes with normal operation of Automation Studio, Automation Studio should be added to the firewall's exclusion list.

You imported a package into a project and it is not listed under Imported Automation Libraries in the Assets Panel as expected.

Possible reasons include:

• The full path to the .dll file that was meant to be created when importing the package exceeded the Windows limit of 260 characters.

  The full path to the .dll file that is created in the project when importing a package is limited by Windows to 260 characters. Importing a package will fail if the full path to the .dll file would exceed 260 characters.

  The full path to an imported package .dll file is structured as follows:

  <Path to project folder>\Dependencies\<Package Name>\<Package Version>\<.dll file name>

  For example:

  c:\My Projects\CRM_Automation\Dependencies\Customer_Admin\1.0.0\dproj_4MzIk23d2Gx3tCNw.dll

  To ensure that the character limit is not exceeded, avoid placing your project folder under multiple levels of sub-folders.

When you built and tested a project, it successfully retrieved application credentials from the Real-Time Server. Now, the application credentials are not being retrieved, either when testing the project through Automation Studio, or when running the solution on a client machine.

Possible reasons include:

• You developed your solution while Automation Studio was connected to one Real-Time Server, but you are now running the solution while connected to a different Real-Time Server.

  During run-time, credentials will only be retrieved successfully if connected to the same Real-Time Server to which Automation Studio was connected during design-time when selecting which applications to retrieve credentials for.

  You must modify your project by re-selecting the applications to retrieve credentials for while Automation Studio is connected to the Real-Time Server that the solution will connect to.

See Switching Between Real-Time Servers.

The following special characters are legal when naming any component in Automation Studio:

p{L}\p{N}~!@#$%^()_+=|,.? -

Space is also legal in component names.

When running a project that uses methods of the OCR variable types (Advanced Picture and Advanced PDF), those methods seem to be ignored and are not performed.

The RTClient.log file, typically at %appdata%\Nice_Systems\AutomationStudio\Log, includes OCR-related errors, for example:

2021-05-18 17:12:22,782 [Direct Logic Thread] ERROR OCR - OCR library is not installed or not registered

Possible reasons include:

• NICE Advanced OCR is not installed.

• NICE Advanced OCR is installed but is only licensed for Real-Time Designer.

See Install NICE Advanced OCR.

When running a project that uses functions from the Outlook built-in service, those functions don't seem to work. The following message might be displayed:

Possible reasons include:

• Outlook security settings are preventing those functions from working.

  To enable the MS Outlook built-in service functions to work as intended, you must enable programmatic access to Outlook on every machine on which the robotic solution will be run.

  See Allow Programmatic Access to Outlook.

The project includes variable of type Outlook Application, but the New Mail event is not triggered when new email messages are received.

Possible reasons include:

• The Outlook Application variable has not been populated using the Get Outlook Application function from the MS Outlook built-in service.

  See Get Outlook Application.

If you need to automate a process in which a user moves their cursor over a screen element on a web page, you need to fire an appropriate event using the element's Fire Event Async method. Typically, use mouseover event, as shown below.

For more information, see Fire Event Async.

Automation Studio supports the use of externally developed SDKs although that functionality is not exposed through the user interface. To learn about using SDKs in Automation Studio, see here.

One of the steps in a workflow includes multiple actions. It seems like the actions are performed up to a certain point, but the workflow then continues to the next step without first completing the rest of the step's actions.

Possible reasons include:

• The last action that was performed in the step resulted in an error. For example, the action included a function to move a file from one directory to another but the file could not be found. When an error occurs, the workflow will stop processing that workflow step and will follow the transition to the next step.
  

If you type or paste a lot of text into a text parameter, it is difficult to see the entire text and edit it.

To open a larger text editing window, select the text parameter and press Shift + Enter on your keyboard.

If you would like to represent a line break (or Enter) in a text parameter, simply click the parameter and press Enter.

In the example below, multiple lines of text with line breaks are assigned to the variable textInput.

The developer wants to replace all line breaks with + symbols instead and to store the resulting string in the variable outputText, and so sets up the action below using the Replace Subtext function.

To specify that all line breaks (Enters) must be replaced, simply click that parameter and press Enter. If you then click Shift-Enter on that parameter, you will see that a second line is shown, indicating the presence of a line break.

You created a project that runs successfully, but when checking it out from a GIT repository the project is corrupted and cannot be opened in Automation  Studio.

Possible reasons include:

• GIT is automatically converting line endings to CRLF when the file is checked out.

  To prevent that from happening:

  1. Create a simple text file named .gitattributes in the working directory.

  2. Add the following text to the .gitattributes file:

     *  -text

     This setting forces GIT to normalize line endings to LF on check-in and prevents conversion to CRLF when the file is checked out.