This page explains how to configure our development environment to modify the new robotic process you've created.

Modify a robotic process

At this point, you'll have completed the following steps:

• Install JDK 1.8 to compile robots
• Install and configure Maven to deploy projects
• Create a new robot in the Appian RPA Console
• Download the source code in a local folder in zip format

Now let's modify the source code of this robot.

The first step is to unzip the zip file in our development directory. The result will be a directory with the source code and the pom.xml file already configured. This file allows you to display the Maven project in the repository.

The source code can be edited and compiled with any IDE chosen by the developer. In this guide we are going to use Eclipse.

Import Eclipse project

If you don't already have the project imported to your IDE, refer to the steps in Importing the Project to your IDE to do so.

Modify the Java code

In this section, we discuss how to make a simple change to the newly created robot.

In this example, the robot opens notepad and writes the line "this is a test". The modification will consist of inserting a new line. To do this, we will include the following code in line 111 of the MyRobot.java class

1
   windows.keyboard().type("Hello World, this is my first Appian RPA Robot").enter();

The final code will look like the following image.

Compile and deploy

At this point, we are going to proceed to compile, package and deploy the Maven project as robot binaries, using the utilities provided by Maven and Eclipse.

Visit Deploying Code to learn more.

Execution

After compilation, run the robot again in the Appian RPA Console.

Once the robot is finished, we can check in the log that the new line was written in the notepad.

Overwrite a robotic process

It is very useful to copy a robotic process's configuration settings to another process. For example, when you have a robot deployed in a live environment, and its clone as a development version, this feature allows you to easily clone the setup to the live version when development is finished.

To overwrite one robot setup with an existing robot setup:

1. Open the Robotic processes tab and find the robotic process whose configuration you want to copy.
2. In the Actions column, click the Configure icon.
3. On the Robotic process configuration page, click the Copy this configuration to other robotic process icon .

4. In the window that appears, search for the destination robot identifier on which you want to overwrite the setup. You can see it in the picture below.

   

Once confirmed, the console will take you to the destination robot so that you can check its setup.