UiPath Picture in Picture 20.4 (Experimental) Hands-on

With release of UiPath Community 20.4 Stable Release, We have tried our hands on super cool experimental features published by UiPath…

Uipath says “This would be most transforming feature for attendant Robots as you will be able to continue your work while Robot is Running the task in Picture in Picture mode.”

Lets see how can you use it?

How to use UiPath Picture in Picture

Let me tell you there will be no change in way you develop your workflow. Its simply means is you can configure your bot in same way you do it now …

The change would only in way you debug it or you run it.

Inside Studio, You need to enable it before you debug it…

1. Inside your project, go to the Debug ribbon
2. Activate the Picture in Picture (Experimental) toggle
3. Debug or Run your project

You will be prompted with Pop-Up Saying that Picture in Picture is not enabled on Your Computer & Asking for you to enter your windows credentials ?

You’ll be asked to enter your credentials every time you start a PiP process either in Debug Mode or Runtime. After the next login, you’ll not be asked about your credentials anymore.

For trying this feature with UiPath, I have written quick workflow to launch google finance and get data for script NSE:SBIN and read search result. You can try your existing process as well.

Once you start debug You will be prompted to enter your windows password.

Once you input your credentials it will be open in Separate window, How ever at the moment you don’t have any control to click or enter any input in new window.

Important thing to notice here is bot is able to perform the task in the new picture in picture mode however there is very limited features as available.

Picture in Picture works by creating a new session for the same user on the same machine. It behaves like you logged in to Windows again opening a VM session and start the UiPath process from there.

However as suggested by UiPath Picture in Picture announcement, These feature are pretty much experimental and certainly lacks in various required features to be added.

Here is list of limitation shared by Uipath.

1. Chrome and Edge Chromium cannot be opened at the same time in both sessions (main Windows session and PiP session). We suggest using one of them for personal use and the other for automations, if possible.
2. There isn’t any notification for the user when the process needs their input.
3. You may encounter strange behaviors if you try to work with a file in the same time as the Robot
4. UiPath Assistant crashes in the PiP session on Windows 8
5. Mouse cursor is moved while hovering on PiP preview window
6. If you are using a PIN in order to log in into the main Windows Session, whenever you start a Picture in Picture session, you’ll be asked to enter your credentials. This does not happen when you log in to Windows with your password.

Read more at – UiPath Forum

And here is the list of issues faced by me while doing this.

#1 .Message: StartProcessInChildSession timed out. Exception Type: System.TimeoutException

I got error message several times when the child session has got timed out, even after inputting the password as fast as i can type.

Session Time out duration should be configurable to avoid this.

RemoteException wrapping System.TimeoutException: StartProcessInChildSession timed out. ---> RemoteException wrapping System.Threading.Tasks.TaskCanceledException: A task was canceled.
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)

#2. Asking for Password even after restart

I use PIN to login my windows machine and as listed out by UiPath it has asked for password again and again.

Few Improvemnts we would like to see –

1. As this works in attendant mode,Notification to user when ever input is-required is must to have.
2. This works exactly in Same way of RDP Connection, There should be provision to run –
   1. With different credentials than of current user
   2. On different resolutions in case Image activity is used

We will keep watching this space for updates on Picture in Picture feature of UiPath.

Please let know what you think, or if you found any other issues. Thanks a lot!

Happy Automation!