Introduction to actions in the Designer
Introduction to actions in the Designer
The Designer is Roberty Studio's visual environment, where you build your robots' flows. In it, each step of a process is an action — a configurable block that does one specific thing.
What is an action?
An action is a robot's basic unit of work. It is a command the robot carries out at a given point in the flow, such as:
- Opening a browser at a particular URL
- Typing text into a field
- Downloading a file from a page
- Reading the content of a spreadsheet cell
Actions are grouped into categories (Browser, Spreadsheet, Windows and so on) and live in the action catalog.
Adding an action to the flow
There are two ways to add a new action to your robot:
The + button
When an action is already in the flow and selected, two + buttons appear around it — one before and one after. Click the + where you want the new action to go.
The creation block
A new or incomplete flow shows a block reading "Click here to add an action". Click it to open the catalog and pick the action you want.
The action catalog
When you add an action, the catalog opens with everything available, grouped by category. Use the search field to find an action by name.
- Click once to select an action.
- Double-click it (or use the Create action button) to add it to the flow.
Press Enter after selecting an action in the catalog to add it straight to the flow, without reaching for the button.
Next
Now that you can add actions to a flow, read about:
- The anatomy of an action — the structure of the card and the settings panel
- Input field types — every kind of field there is
- Chaining actions — use one action's output in another
- Running and monitoring — control the run and follow each action's status