[UiPath] Task Capture Good Practices

Level of Difficulty: Junior – Senior.

UiPath Task Capture is a tool that exists within the UiPath product offering. It has been tagged as a “Prepare Automation” type tool which assists in mapping out a process in terms of process steps, screenshots, actions and descriptions. The UiPath Task Capture Document can be exported as a diagram image, a Process Definition Document (PDD) or a UiPath Studio xaml solution file.

Getting Started With UiPath Task Capture

Before getting started with UiPath Task Capture, take a quick browse through the UiPath Task Capture docs. If you haven’t yet done so, download UiPath Task Capture.

So it’s clearly a great tool that could be quite beneficial to process understanding and automation preparation. But what are some of the good practises that can be implemented?

UiPath Task Capture Good Practises

There are a few things that you should focus on when working on Task Capture documents.

Add swimlanes

Swim lanes are a really great way to separate out ownership, accountability and/or responsibility. Whether it be systems, people, processes or even technology, swim lanes can be used to show separation in one overall process.

Implementing swim lanes is a great way to visualise where the most complexity in a process occurs. It can assist in dividing processes up into phases and identifying where change management should occur.

To add a swim lane, hit Edit > Insert swimlane and then select either Horizontal or Vertical.

Define business exceptions

Business rules and business exceptions are a very important part of a process. They are crucial in determining the success of a process and require a lot of consideration when designing and architecting a TO BE process. For this reason, I like to denote process steps that relate to business exceptions by adding “BE:” as a prefix to the title (alternatively you could use BR as well, just remain consistent with your choice):

Pay attention to titles and descriptions

It is important to remain cognisant of describing what a process step is trying to achieve through appropriate naming of an action’s title. It is a common problem when capturing a process that the titles are not very descriptive or intuitive. For this reason, it is important to go through each action, critically, once you’ve recorded the process and double check that the title and description accurately represent the action that is being executed. The naming has a knock-on effect on the UiPath Studio solution layout.

Group steps logically

It is important to think about how steps should be grouped when building out the flow in Task Capture. The layout of the flow created in the Task Capture document becomes the layout created in UiPath Studio when opening the xaml file. For this reason, it is very important to remain conscious and attentive to how that flow could be grouped, possibly into reusable components.

Once the solution is exported from Task Capture, a design pattern may be implemented and some additional work could be done to fit the layout into existing templates. By focusing on the smaller aspects, at a process mapping level, you are avoiding significant rework from a PDD level and a xaml solution level.

Pay attention to the PDD template

UiPath Task Capture allows you to choose a PDD template which might have your company or organisation’s specific branding on. In order to create a custom template, download the existing UiPath or Automation Hub PDD template, adjust the document based on your branding themes and styles then upload the customised PDD to UiPath Task Capture when Exporting to Word. Select the template and press Export.

Pay attention to UiPath Studio solution templates

Many organisations and development teams put together a UiPath Studio solution template that meets their organisational standards, governance and policies. The export from Task Capture would need to be applied within that template solution so keep it in mind when you are working on the Task Capture document.

Do you have any other good practises you’d like to add? Drop a comment below.