Activity Builder

Estimated reading: 3 minutes

Robility’s Custom Activity Builder is an exclusive feature that allows developers to create reusable activities using Microsoft Visual Studio. This enables users to create their own activities that can be integrated into automation workflows in Robility Designer. The integration with Visual Studio makes it easy for developers to build and deploy packages for their custom activities

Why do we need custom activities?

In Robility Designer, when you want to create specific functionalities using an activity, utilize the Robility Custom Activity Builder. It not only allows you to create specific functionalities within existing features in Robility Designer but also enables you to create new activities that perform specific tasks within the workflow.

Pre-requisites

To build and integrate the custom activity into the Robility Designer, below are the requirements.

1. Visual Studio Enterprise 2022
2. Familiar Knowledge with code development.
3. Robility Designer.

Extension

The Robility Activity extension for Visual Studio is a crucial tool for developers creating custom activities. It streamlines the development process and simplifies packaging and deployment. By leveraging this extension, developers can create robust, reusable, and maintainable custom activities that can be integrated with Robility Designer.

Installation steps:

1. Open a new or existing project in Visual Studio.
2. On the top of the menu, choose “extensions” and click on “Manage extension”.
3. From the “Manage extension” window, search for “Robility Activity Builder” and install it.
4. Once installed, the extension will be available in the “Extensions” menu as “Robility”.
5. Click on the “Robility” to add and define the activities.

Setup in Visual Studio

To set up Robility Custom activity in the visual studio. Follow the below steps,

1. Create a new project.
2. Under the “Templates”, search for “Robility Custom activity” and choose the template.

Default code template

When you create a custom activity using Visual Studio, the default code template typically includes a few essential components to get you started. This default code template will be created only when you define the activities and properties for it. These components generally consist of the following:

1. Namespace Declarations: Includes the necessary namespaces for the activity.
2. Class Definition: A class that inherits from CodeActivity to make sure that the activity runs synchronously.
3. Execution Method: An overridden Execute method where you define the logic of your activity.
4. Activity Arguments: Definitions for input and output arguments that your activity will use.
a. InArgument and OutArgument are used to define the input and output parameters of the activity.
b. Execute method contains the core logic that will be executed when the activity runs.
c. Category and Required Argument attributes are used to specify the metadata for the activity’s arguments.

Activity Builder

Why do we need custom activities?

Pre-requisites

Extension

Setup in Visual Studio

Default code template

Activity Builder

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