Release notes

Version 8.5.0

New

• New filtering options to exclude folders and directories:
  • Allows extra versatile syntax—supports path wildcards—use of ? and * mask characters.
  • The multi-mask feature enables the exclusion (or inclusion) of both partial and absolute paths, allowing for unlimited local and remote locations to match user-defined parameters.
  • Supported by most Triggers and Actions…

Fixed

• File & Folder Watcher stability and consistency fixes:
  • Fixed an extremely rare Service crash in the UNC path monitoring logic (now impeccably handles incomplete/out-of-band Windows filesystem notifications).
  • Resolved an issue where, under specific circumstances, larger "Smart file operation detection cooldown" values were not providing consistent file detection results (eliminating delayed or skipped events).
• Revised interconnection highlighting (during workflow editing):
  • Fixed an issue where some variables in most Action exclude fields, specifically for excluding files and relative dates, were not considered for accentuation.
  • Resolved a problem where highlighting could be abrupt (not complete) in certain scenarios, such as when opening newer Tasks in older versions or vice versa.
• Queue Manager always refreshes the status bar smoothly, without causing any flickering.

Improved

• The new Exclude Folders feature is now supported by the following Triggers and Actions:
  • File & Folder Watcher,
  • Synchronize Folders,
  • Zip Files,
  • Copy File,
  • Move File,
  • Rename File,
  • Delete File,
  • List Files,
  • Set File Attributes,
  • Set File Date & Time.
• Remote cloud Watchers and remote file operation Actions introduce support for the Exclude Directory and Exclude File features:
  • FTP Watcher,
  • SFTP Watcher,
  • WebDAV Watcher,
  • Amazon S3 Watcher,
  • Google Storage Watcher,
  • DigitalOcean Spaces Watcher,
  • Synchronize Directories—with even more options—Include Directories and Include Files,
  • Upload File,
  • Download File,
  • List Remote File.
• Further enhanced all remote cloud Watchers (FTP, SFTP, WD, S3, GCS, and Spaces):
  • Introduces a new option to initiate the workflow only after the file is no longer being modified (aka, file is fully accessible).
  • Further networking engine optimizations allow the monitoring of remote locations with extremely large directory and file sets (e.g., 100,000+ items and beyond) using significantly less memory and greatly increased speed.
• Error reporting has been fine-tuned to precisely identify the specific path or file that caused the workflow to stop:
  • Zip Files,
  • Copy File,
  • Move File,
  • Rename File,
  • Delete File,
  • Set File Attributes,
  • Set File Date & Time.
• Enhanced Action reliability in multi-task and race-condition scenarios, where folder creation may overlap with another process creating a folder of the same name. In such cases, the workflow will seamlessly and uninterruptedly continue for the following Actions:
  • Synchronize Folders,
  • Ensure Folder,
  • Move Folder,
  • Copy File,
  • Move File.
• An extra option for the Enclosed Text Action—capture search wrappers—combined with extended search patterns, enables effortless capturing of dynamic content for seamless reuse within a workflow.
• The Separator Action adds 2 new colors—Periwinkle and Amethyst.
• Minor adjustments for the Increment Variable and Decrement Variable Actions.
• The Action editing window now features a Full Screen mode, temporarily enabling a near-fullscreen canvas and providing an effortless Task editing experience for extra-large workflows.
• Dramatic UI performance gains for Automation Workshop instances with 10,000+ Tasks.
• The streamlined filtering UI delivers a seamless user experience while adjusting the include and exclude date ranges, dynamically presenting necessary options as needed.
• Minor adjustments to the status bar in Workshop Manager, along with the Queue, Log, and Trigger Managers.
• Added help tooltips for some menus, along with subtle UI/text changes in Task Properties.
• Expanded and fine-tuned the features of Variable Wizard:
  • More control characters—form feed, backspace, escape, etc.
  • The variable "App name" of the App Information Action returns the executable's name if the app name is not available (e.g., for a system driver process).
• Other small fixes and improvements.

Changed

• Adjusted default values for all remote cloud Watchers (for new Tasks):
  • The "Trigger only after file is no longer modified" option is now enabled.
  • Reduced the polling interval from 1 minute to 30 seconds, allowing for the same responsive file detection and ensuring file accessibility in cloud environments.
• Slightly refined the auto-detect logic of the Lookup Text Action for advanced grid row and column separators, improving accuracy in complex text parsing scenarios.
• The Create Folder Action now treats an existing target folder as a success condition, rather than reporting an error when the folder already exists.

Version 8.1.0

New

• Added 5 new FTP & Cloud Actions, further enhancing remote file and directory management capabilities:
  • Clear Remote Directory—empties a specified directory on a remote server completely or selectively removes files while preserving the directory structure.
  • Wait for Remote File—suspends workflow execution until a specified file meets certain conditions (exists, is not changing, or is absent) on a remote server.
  • If Remote File—verifies the presence or absence of a file on a remote server, enabling conditional workflow branching.
  • Wait for Remote Directory—pauses workflow execution based on granular directory state checks (existence, emptiness, file presence, etc.) on a remote server.
  • If Remote Directory—enables smart workflow branching based on detailed remote directory state verification.

Fixed

• Enhanced the status bar tooltip for improved resilience, providing real-time reporting on running workflows, including Task count and names, regardless of service workload. Addressed rare service stability issues, ensuring a more robust and reliable experience.
• Implemented a workaround for S3 pseudo-directory implementation when using specific Unicode characters, guaranteeing the persistence of higher-level directories on S3-compatible storage systems.
• Corrected the display of exact error codes for the Ensure Remote Directory Action, facilitating straightforward error handling. The underlying fallback procedure remained unaffected.

Improved

• Optimized FTP & Cloud Actions to reliably detect remote directories, even on non-compatible file transfer protocol implementations.
• Refined Task stopping and reconnecting behavior:
  • Allows stopping of any Remote Action (via Queue Manager or Stop Task Action) during reconnection attempts following connection drops in unreliable network environments.
  • Optimized the Stop Task Action timeout behavior when halting another Task—slightly extended forced wait period before workflow continuation. Previous behavior can be enabled using Registry override.
  • Fine-tuned cascading Stop Task Action behavior for enhanced workflow control.
  • The Ensure Remote Directory Action from now on reconnects on unreliable internet connections like all other FTP & Cloud Actions.
  • Reconnection capabilities of the Ensure Remote Directory Action now match other Cloud Actions during unreliable internet connections.
• Automation Workshop user interface minor tweaks:
  • Streamlined user experience across all Triggers, Actions, and Variable Wizard with improved navigation.
  • Minor Task Scheduler Trigger improvements.
  • Optimized For Each and Split Text Actions to display more compact separator symbols in the workflow view.
  • Refined Else integrity tooltip for improved clarity.
  • Added Esc key as an additional keyboard shortcut for Queue Manager's Focus Mode.
• Further optimized search experience across the entire Automation Workshop suite, with particular emphasis on improving super short search query results.
• Minor rewording for Duplicate Folder events.

Version 8.0.0

New

• Per workflow Performance profile empowers to fine-tune Task priorities based on overall system resources, enhancing workflow efficiency:
  • Supreme—assigns real-time CPU usage with the highest priority for business-critical workflows.
  • Optimized—intelligently allocates resources across CPU, disk, and memory to maximize efficiency.
  • Conservative—minimizes overall usage, employing the lowest available system resources.
• New Action—Ensure Remote Directory—guarantees (by creating, removing, or clearing) that the specified directory on any (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, AWS S3, GCS, or DigitalOcean) remote server is present, is empty, is free from files, or is absent.
• Assures initial compatibility with upcoming Windows Server 2025.

Fixed

• Workshop Service fixes and improvements:
  • Accurately addresses identical usernames (local and domain), preventing mismatches and failures in Task execution.
  • Reliably deals with situations where the connection to an SMTP server is lost, preventing disruptions.
  • Properly audits and records very long Task names, including those with Unicode characters, in full (without truncation) in the Log file.
• While Task Scheduler Trigger was not affected, the per workflow Execution policy (using both include and exclude options) did not correctly handle leap day (February 29). Consequently, Tasks were prevented from running and may have failed (with an incorrect date error).
• The Upload File, Download File, Move Remote File, and Delete Remote File Actions were not trimming excessive whitespaces in filenames (custom file list and multi-list scenarios).
• Along with minor UI improvements in the Arithmetic Action, ensures consistent Modulo operation (especially for negative values).
• Special characters are correctly displayed in the Queue Manager and Remote Manager.
• Occasionally, some remote instances displayed incorrect folder icons. Remote Task workflows were not affected.

Improved

• Networking engine improvements and core security enhancements:
  • Signature generation from ECDSA private keys when using NIST P-521.
  • Increased compatibility for older SFTP server implementations.
  • Latest improvements including security features.
• Workshop Service Agent (per user) engine quality improvements:
  • Steady performance for Shell interactions and Notification icon animation.
  • Ensures graceful Agent exiting on user logoff.
  • Improved Agent logging capabilities with more diagnostic Event messages.
  • From now on, the Agent automatically restarts in case of failure, ensuring fewer workflow disruptions.
• Elevated Automation Workshop search experience:
  • Improved broad matching for web (Knowledge Base).
  • The current working folder is now prioritized when searching for Tasks.
  • Maintains real-time (sub-millisecond) results across the entire Automation Workshop suite—Tasks, Commands, and the whole Knowledge Base with 1,500+ help articles.
• Fine-tuned Automation Workshop user interface:
  • Improved the status bar with enriched tooltips providing quick and extended information about Service Guard latency, Service responsiveness, Trigger status, active Triggers, running workflows, and new context menu options.
  • Consistent behavior during Task folder creation and renaming. Removed flickering, improved clipboard handling, and made additional copy/paste improvements.
  • Trigger Manager now opens the Task Triggers tab directly when locating Triggers.
  • Minor UI improvement for the Add Triggers window.
• Multiple consecutive warnings of "Trigger restart is imminent" for FTP & Cloud Triggers are no longer logged.
• Improvements in consistency and reliability for the File & Folder Watcher:
  • The "Watch for existing files" monitoring option now prevents triggering while instances of the same Task are still running. This can be overridden with a Registry option.
  • When monitoring the "file count" in a folder, the Trigger fires the Task even if there are no changes in the monitored location, as long as the triggering condition remains true. This can be overridden with a Registry option.
  • Improved reliability of the File Folder Watcher polling engine.
• Further workflow design and management features:
  • The Add Action window introduces a new fuzzy search experience, enabling users to find Actions even when their search terms do not exactly match the target keywords.
  • The Action list in the workflow now highlights optimization opportunities. Additional highlighting is shown when a variable from a deleted Trigger or Action is used.
• New Action features, options, and enhancements:
  • The Create Remote Directory Action now attempts to create subdirectories recursively when it is not possible to do so in one step. It is now possible to create a path of multiple subdirectories in one step, even on file transfer protocols that do not support such operations.
  • Added wildcard support for the If File and Wait for File Actions.
  • The If Folder and Wait for Folder Actions now feature a new option to check if a folder has no files in its root, while allowing subfolders and files within those subfolders.
  • The Clear Folder Action now includes an option to remove files from a folder without affecting its subfolders.
  • The Execute Script Action now features an option to show and log the script's output for easier automated Task troubleshooting and debugging. This option allows logging none, a few, or many output lines in the Log Pane and log file.
  • The Separator Action now includes a live color preview. Additionally, two new colors have been added—Rosé and Beige.
• Additional Action improvements:
  • The Upload File, Download File, and Synchronize Directories Actions ensure speed limits are always correctly set, even at very low transfer speeds.
  • Streamlined and optimized the Services and Applications Actions (and Triggers) to display information in a compact format when possible.
  • Extra input value examples for more File and Folder Actions.
  • Minor UI fixes and improvements for the Start Task and For Each Actions.
• Optimized and improved the logic of workflow's Advanced Fallback Options:
  • The "On error continue with next Action" now respects Comparison and Loop scopes, functioning more like "Continue workflow" to ensure smooth operation and avoid unexpected behavior.
  • The option to Run a Task when an error occurs now waits until the just-run Task has finished before continuing with other On Error options.
• Expanded feature set of Variable Wizard:
  • New date presets—Compact date (regular, longer, US, and EU), Military date, and Military time (regular and long).
  • More characters and character groups—hyphens, marks, math, logic, etc.
  • The user interface dynamically adapts to display taller selection boxes (based on available canvas).
  • Made minor variable name changes for consistency with other Actions. Refinements were applied to the Run CMD Command and Start App Actions.
• Minor improvement in auto-backup timings and logic.
• Other small fixes and improvements.

Changed

• Changed the logic of how the Advanced Fallback's "continue with next Action" behaves in respect to conditional and loop scopes. Applies to Actions—the Loop, For Each, If, If File, If Folder, If Service, If App, Else.
• Changed the On Error—Run Task behavior to delay the following On Error options until the initiated fallback Task has finished.
• The Automation Workshop's current user detection has been updated. Now, when multiple users are simultaneously using one server (e.g., via Terminal Services or Remote Desktop), the user with the Automation Workshop interface open is considered the currently logged-on user. This behavior can be reverted to the previous version using a Registry option.
• A new Task with a Logon/Logoff Trigger now uses a shorter startup timing by default.
• While the underlying logic of Event 2049 remains the same, it now more accurately describes the actual action taken—Local user logon not processed. Engaging a hybrid SYSTEM/Network credential authentication strategy.

Version 7.6.0

Fixed

• Addressed the SSH "Terrapin" client-side bug.
• Corrected the behavior of time-limited Task instances:
  • Ensures consistent logging of warning events when a timeout occurs.
  • The advanced fallback handler was incorrectly invoked for certain time-limited instances.

Improved

• Updated the FTP & Cloud engine to support the latest SSH and TLS features.
• Minimized interference with other Task instances while a Task is requesting a new Automation Workshop Agent.
• Redundant commands and data are no longer sent to the Automation Workshop Agent.
• The amount of free physical and virtual memory is now logged.
• Implemented a new fallback scenario for unreliable DigitalOcean file transfers.
• The context menu for the Remote Tasks folder now behaves consistently.
• On rare occasions, refreshing Task folders led to slight screen flickering.

Changed

• The SSL 3.0 protocol can no longer be enabled for FTPS, WebDAV, and custom S3 server implementations.

Version 7.5.0

New

• Added 2 new Folder Actions:
  • Ensure Folder—combines Create Folder, Remove Folder, and If Folder into a single highly convenient Action, streamlining the workflow creation experience.
  • Wait for Folder—expands the range of Wait Actions by adding the capability to conditionally wait for folders on both local and network drives.
• Introduced a new multi-triggering feature—a seamless Variable Wizard experience that simplifies accessing variable data in the same manner as with any individual Trigger (automatically populates variables from the Trigger that initiated the workflow).
• Launched the Remote Trigger Manager—an extensive view of the Triggers on your remote machines. Observe the most recent execution dates, along with forthcoming schedules and detailed triggering information.

Fixed

• Tasks with multiple Task Scheduler Triggers now always behave consistently. Minor improvements in the triggering algorithms ensure reliability of such Tasks.
• To assess whether a file requires syncing, the Synchronize Folders Action accurately evaluates the size of particularly large files (exceeding 4GB).
• List Remote Files Action now sorts file lists (especially by applying the modified date option) in a consistent and reliable manner.
• Now, the Enclosed Text, Find Text, and Find & Replace Text Actions are correctly processing empty values (and not the next character) for zero-length matches (e.g., parsing empty tags, regular expressions, boundaries, etc.).
• Terminate App Action assures smooth, precise, and consistent operations when terminating child processes—it intelligently discards incorrect PIDs, especially in scenarios where Windows kernel rapidly reassigns the same Process ID to different processes.
• Fixed the Close Connection variable to always return the correct server name, regardless of workflow complexity or active connections.
• Occasionally, certain FTP & Cloud Actions, when utilizing the ignore specific errors feature, were resulting in unexpected behavior.
• While executing the Task with SYSTEM credentials, the spare error message (related to an invalid handle) may be encountered for most App and all Service Actions. Yet, the actual workflow functionality was not affected.

Improved

• Automation Workshop interface:
  • Remote Log Manager is now available from the Remote Tools menu.
  • Slightly rearranged context menu items of the Task Pane.
  • Manually refreshing the Task Pane now invokes the Task auto-importing feature.
  • Prevents minor flickering in the Task Wizard's final step on considerably slow servers.
  • Minor UI refinements in the Task and Remote Task Properties.
  • Minor visual changes to the status bar.
• Automation Workshop Service:
  • Further improved Task compatibility with previous versions (e.g., downgrading scenarios), ensuring functionality even when certain features are absent in those versions. Upgrading to a higher version is always 100% compatible.
  • Further fortifies the Service engine by eliminating potential numerical overflows and reducing large variable stack sizes.
  • AW should not hang when downgrading to the previous versions.
  • Ensures consistent syntax in the command line API.
• Productivity improvements:
  • Trigger Manager now displays comprehensive, verbose details for each Trigger in a Task, replacing the previous simple, generic data.
  • Queue Manager introduces Focus Mode for effortless and continuous real-time Task monitoring. Also, the toolbar and status bar are slightly redesigned for a streamlined UI experience.
  • Remote Queue Manager now features the Locate Task option (via the context menu).
  • Aligned the Remote Manager Deploy form with other similar windows for consistency.
  • Lists in all Managers now correctly handle any number of items—from zero to extremely large.
• Trigger refinements:
  • Trigger operations, such as copying/pasting, adding, and removing, now consistently function within the context of the current selection.
  • The UI for some Triggers has been subtly realigned.
  • Inactive Triggers are now displayed as remarks (slightly grayed out and in italic) for instant recognition of their disabled status—both in the Task Properties and in Variable Wizard.
• Workflow canvas improvements:
  • The context menu of Actions list is overhauled (with new viewing and adjustment features) and improved to respect indentation for seamless navigation.
  • Added a new option to display long file paths in a compact format.
  • The current selection now retains its correct position within the workflow after adding specific FTP & Cloud Actions.
• Multi-copy improvements:
  • To ensure an uninterrupted and seamless experience, activating the multi-copy window in larger workflows will now retain the same scroll position as the main workflow.
  • The footer now always displays the count of selected Actions.
• Minor tweaks to the Add Action window:
  • The search feature has been upgraded with supplementary keywords and tags, enhancing both search speed and relevancy.
  • Refinements in subcategories, by including the "Use web content" shortcut in the FTP & Cloud category, "Characters" in the Text category, among others.
• Numerous improvements in Actions:
  • The UI has been slightly rearranged and aligned for nearly all Actions. Additionally, more input fields now include hints with examples.
  • The FTP Connection Action now supports Anonymous FTP templates, offering 3 methods—standard, simple, and fast.
  • New variables have been added to the App Information Action—process creation date/time, running time (since), and CPU time (usage). Additionally, the case of some keys for values has been adjusted to match the overall theme.
  • The Text Lookup Action now can retrieve the following columns (using extra output variable) which are located to the right of the regular key/value pairs.
  • Both the Enable and Disable Task Actions now include a new option to prevent failure with an error if the Task is already in the desired state.
  • The Print File and Open Document Actions display the default printer, if available.
  • The Rename Folder Action has been updated to allow more flexible syntax—with or without a backslash character.
  • The If Folder Action has been aligned with other Folder Actions by introducing a new variable that includes a mandatory backslash character.
  • The UI of the If Action is now in line with other Actions.
  • The preview example of the Pad Text Action is now consistent and accurate.
  • The color name Endeavor was renamed in the Separator Action.
• Variable Wizard visual adjustments:
  • Improved handling of the F2 keyboard shortcut to seamlessly navigate from variable editing to variable adjustments.
  • From now on, the Variable Wizard will display comments in italic, aligning with the style of the workflow canvas.
  • The Split File Path variables have been aligned with other path variables to ensure consistent display of the backslash character.
  • The variable "Task startup folder" no longer displays a forced backslash character.
  • Minor and consistent renaming has been applied to the "Task Parameters" variables.
  • The "Process ID" variable for the Run CMD Command and Start App Actions is now displayed as "PID".
• A lot of minor UI & UX improvements.

Changed

• The length variable in the Remove Partial Text Action now reflects the length of the final string. Also, adds a new variable—Removed length.

Version 7.1.0

Fixed

• Rare crash in the App Actions UI on multiple instances of the same application. Task execution was not affected.
• While the Tweak App Action was functioning flawlessly at the Service level, the UI tooltip was showing slightly wrong (partially static and partially debug) vCPU information for the initial few cores.
• Automatic backups extremely rarely ran multiple times instead of just once.

Improved

• New Action features and improvements:
  • The Lookup Text Action introduces novel methods of reverse matching types—compare keys against the input value. It now features 7 distinct comparing options.
  • The FTP & Cloud Connection Actions now support proxy servers. Use the Custom connection settings to configure proxy host, port, username, password, etc.
  • The Send Email Action uses enhanced input validation, to consistently and reliably process multi-mask attachments.
  • The Terminate App Action now supports flexible exit code formats—decimal, thousand-formatted, hexadecimal, etc.
  • The Get File Information Action employs an infallible method to retrieve owner information, maintaining efficacy even in the absence of mapping between account name and SID.
  • The extended App information tooltip now prominently features a visual priority and boost meter.
  • Subtle UI improvements (text formatting) in the extended Service information tooltip.
• Further enhancements in the Task Properties—Actions (workflow) list:
  • The multi-copy feature enables you to copy/paste multiple Actions across different workflows.
  • Improved workflow scope preservation during Action manipulations—disable, delete, paste, move, duplicate, and drag & drop.
  • Quick information cue for the currently selected workflow Action.
  • Disabled Actions are now distinct (displayed as remarks) across all dialogs—Actions list, Variable Wizard, and multi-Action windows (multi-copy and advanced connection settings).
  • Minor context menu improvements and fixes for Actions and input lines.
  • Rarely, the Actions list was flickering (on Windows 11, 64-bit).
  • The option for a custom name is now automatically filled with a default value.
• Minor UI improvements in the Log Manager title and toolbar.
• Remote machines in the Folder Pane provide quick access (via context menu) to the properties of every remote machine.
• Backup options now explain the schedule of backups and the initial start time.
• Minor UI improvements in the Check for Updates dialog window.
• Consistent start-up screen behavior.

Version 7.0.0

New

• Added 4 new Actions that works with Windows services and drivers:
  • Tweak Service—adjust the service startup types (manual, automatic, delayed, or disabled).
  • Service Information—retrieve essential service details, like the short and display name, full description, executable, command line arguments, present status, and startup settings.
  • If Service—lets you execute one group of Actions when a specific service is in a certain state, and a different group of Actions when it is not. You can compare the service status against: is running, is stopped, is paused, is disabled, is installed.
  • Wait for Service—lets you pause a workflow temporarily until the particular service reaches a certain status, such as running, stopped, paused, and so on.
• Added 4 new Actions for application and background process management:
  • Tweak App—enables your automated workflow to fine-tune CPU affinity by pinning certain programs to specific CPU cores. It works with large systems having 64+ logical processors and multiple Sockets / NUMA nodes. Additionally you can adjust CPU priority and boost for any process, to achieve peak performance.
  • App Information—collects data points about running applications/processes and shares it with other Actions. The data includes—the app name, version, Process ID, memory used, CPU time, priority and boost, bound CPU groups, and more.
  • If App—allows executing different sections of a workflow depending on whether a specific program is active or not.
  • Wait for App—pauses a workflow until a certain application is running or has exited.

Fixed

• Actions that offer the option to store their output in a variable no longer consume extra memory if no destination variable is selected.
• Connect to FTP Action wrongly attempts to reconnect when there is an error not related to network issues.
• When the Service Agent was experiencing minor (yet expected) communication issues with the Automation Workshop Service, these events were wrongly logged as errors in Windows Event Log, instead of regular info events.
• From now on, if writing to the regular log file does not work, the error Event 2250 is recorded in Windows Event Log once.
• The Remote Queue and Remote Operations Manager context menus sometimes mistakenly appeared in the top left corner of the Desktop.
• Remote Log Manager UI fix—after connecting, the remote endpoint name is correctly displayed in the window title.

Improved

• The Process & App Monitor Trigger is now using the smart detection algorithm to prevent triggering on applications and background processes that are being terminated.
• The Task Scheduler tooltip always formats the list (tooltip) of next execution dates.
• The Terminate App Action now allows ending all child processes related to the specified application.
• Updated functionality for all FTP & Cloud Actions:
  • The Upload File and Download File Actions improve their configuration experience by auto-detecting a remote directory when a filename seems to be specified (without an ending slash).
  • The Upload File, Download File, Move Remote File, and Delete Remote File Actions now supports using file lists, as well as combined lists with files and wildcards.
  • The Remove Remote Directory and Create Remote Directory Actions permit flexible syntax—you can specify a directory with or without the ending slash.
  • From now on, all remote file and folder operations for DigitalOcean cloud will automatically resume file transfers after a short delay when encountering the "reduce your request rate" error.
• Enhancements in the Task Properties—Actions (workflow) list:
  • Visual cue (a tiny arrow) is displayed for each Action that directly stores its output value in the user selected variable.
  • You can now scroll the view up and down using CTRL+Arrow keys (the same as the mouse wheel).
  • Now has a flicker-free redrawing on mouse cursor movement.
• Multiple new features in Variable Wizard:
  • Variable Wizard UI seamlessly uses the full height window (if the Task editing mode is set to maximized).
  • The Use Web Content feature detects XML files and properly changes them to plain text.
  • The Delete Remote File variable Last File returns an actually deleted file when possible.
  • The Start App and Run CMD Command Action now has a new Process ID variable.
  • The Read from File Action adds a new Text Length variable and the choice to store file content directly into a variable.
• Further improvements in Queue Manager:
  • New advanced Task removing options that are accessible via the context menu—remove all Task instances, terminate all Tasks, pause all running Tasks, and more.
  • Task elapsed time, while the Task is running, and during clock changes (e.g., DST), is shown as an approximation.
  • Significantly improved the readability of Finished Task details.
• A lot of UI refinements:
  • The Mini Start Menu is available for all App Actions (like Start, Terminate, Tweak, etc.). The menu has been improved (more compact layout excluding empty items) to effortlessly choose an application.
  • The autocomplete feature now correctly suggests folders (excluding files) while choosing folders from the input fields.
  • Minor UI improvements—Task creation Wizard, Task importing, all the Dialog Actions, About box, etc.
  • The Search Menu minor enhancements (current language and updated aliases).
  • Numerous small UI improvements and adjustments based on user feedback.
• The Automation Workshop help menu introduces the Localized Pages section—instantly access multiple knowledge base resources in your preferred language.

Changed

• Changes and improvements in Advanced Fallback—each retry wait time gets longer; the retrying Task can be stopped right away.
• The Arithmetic Action will attempt to calculate the result even if a non-valid input value is given.
• Read from File Action now reads up to 250MB by default, instead of 100MB.
• The Start App and Run CMD Command Action variable names slightly refined.

Version 6.5.0

New

• Added 2 new Triggers to monitor Windows services and processes:
  • Service Monitor—react to the status changes in Windows services (including kernel and filesystem drivers). Monitor all possible service statuses in real time—just now, is, or is not—running, stopped, started, paused, resumed, disabled, installed, etc.
  • Process & App Monitor—keep track on the performance and health of your Windows applications, background processes, or custom executables. Initiate different workflows if the selected application is running or is not.
• Added 5 new Actions to manage apps and services:
  • Start & Stop Service—intelligently start, stop, pause, resume, or restart a service (and optionally, all its dependent/linked services).
  • Service Maintenance—perform service install and uninstall procedures. Send custom commands (control codes) to a service.
  • List Services—create a "snapshot" of Windows services. Sort and filter services using a multi-step sorting feature.
  • Terminate App—automate workflows by closing (forcibly kill or terminate) any application or background process. Further streamline termination operation by enabling custom exit codes (reported by the terminated process).
  • List Apps—retrieve all or only some applications based on their performance metrics. Sort, filter, and limit applications to your liking—names, PIDs, memory or CPU usage, etc.

Fixed

• FTP and Cloud Triggers gracefully handles situations when Windows terminates a user session/desktop.
• The Locate Task functionality now works consistently.

Improved

• Minor networking engine improvements and enhancements—WebDAV/HTTP and TLS/SSL. Seamless auto-reconnect in case of an unexpected connection failure.
• Visual improvements of the Task Scheduler tooltip (the list of next execution dates). Minor shortcut key changes for weekday and month names.
• New and improved Action features:
  • Stop Task—new option to "Do not update Task statistics".
  • Get File Information—new Variable Wizard option to retrieve Owner SID.
  • Wait for File—new timeout option.
  • Write in Service Log—slightly different value displaying in the Action list.
• Additional newline option for Variable Wizard characters—IBM mainframe system NL.
• Global Variables Manager—new Recent Activity feature displays recently used variables.
• Minor UI changes across entire automation suite:
  • Queue Manager—new Locate Task option, simplified context menu, cleaner status bar, and minor shortcut changes.
  • Task Finder—reworked status bar, slightly adjusted shortcut keys, and ensures consistent filtering behavior.
  • Trigger Manager—minor toolbar shortcut changes, and the interactive status bar.
  • Operation Manager—minor shortcut changes.
  • Log Manager—updated status bar.
• Most inputs now support the new pasting option—Paste as Text.
• Minor improvements and behavior changes in the Search menu.
• A lot of minor UI & UX improvements.

Changed

• The Run As context switching is not forced if the same execution scenario (the same credentials) is specified both for logged in and logged off users.
• Minor refinements in the Folder Watcher network polling engine.

Version 6.2.1

Fixed

• In most cases, upon opening the Variable Wizard date presets created in earlier versions, a false error or warning message was shown. Still, automation processes were not affected, and flawless Task functionality was kept.

Version 6.2.0

New

• New Action—Change Default Printer which selects a new default printer. Option to automatically restore previous default printer when a Task finishes.
• New Lookup Text Action greatly improves workflow clarity and reduces otherwise repetitive/unnecessary Task complexity—performs input value matching against predefined list of keys, and returns corresponding key (or default) value. Supports advanced freeform data input, multiple matching types (exact, contains, ends, etc.).
• New Enclosed Text Action extracts single or multiple text parts from any arbitrary structured data (such as HTML, XML, etc.). Rich search options with simple or extended search patterns.
• New Append to Variable Action adds single or multi-line text value to a particular variable (in the very front or at the end).
• Variable Wizard new features:
  • Quick in-place variable adjustments—perform instant refinements on any value using replacement (all, first, or last occurrence), trimming (whitespaces, quotes, etc.), or changing capitalization. Chain up to 5 operations. Optionally, set a custom variable name.
  • Use web content—retrieve webpage or file contents from any regular web address. Fetch either complete HTML or auto-convert it to plain text, with an optional metadata included—page title, page description, and final URL (after any possible redirects).
  • UNIX epoch time—a new date preset to express any point in time as seconds since the Epoch (January 1, 1970). Option to use minutes, hours, days, or weeks—to effortlessly use and compare time span between two data points.

Fixed

• All internal UTF-8 to UTF-16 text conversions are performed even on strings containing non-valid code points.
• Text search Actions—Find Text and Find & Replace Text—may freeze (due to infinite loop) when using very specific regular expressions. This is now fixed, and additionally, the new hint is shown when regex is detected (and is not activated in the search options).
• Both loop Actions—For Each and Loop—were incorrectly interpreting multi-level nested loops (with zero items to process). Now all workflows (of any structure or complexity) are handled impeccably.

Improved

• Numerous networking engine improvements and core security enhancements:
  • Amazon AWS/S3—support for ACL and newest AWS regions; more tenacious connections (with the forced auto-reconnect feature) in case of transfer failure or the auth region changes during an active session; complete error reporting (with HTTP message included) for inoperable connections.
  • FTP—seamlessly handle file changes after initial download (or sync) operation started; error-prone processing of malformed server responses.
  • SFTP—new SHA2-256 and SHA2-512 RSA public key algorithms; support for Curve448 and Ed448 keys; the SSH-1 protocol abolished (it is now generally considered obsolete).
  • WebDAV—special characters in the username no longer cause issues with authentication; commas in folder and filenames are processed correctly for the OneDrive connections.
  • Samba based network shares—seamlessly access network resources with paths longer than the legacy MAX_PATH 260 limitation; the File & Folder Watcher polls older/incompatible shares more consistently and with different timings.
• The Remove Folder Action automatically retries deleting a folder again with a slight delay.
• The Show Message Action dialog offers two layout height options—Compact and Tallest.
• Multiple improvements for the Task Properties and related workflow elements:
  • Additional name validation during the Task renaming procedure.
  • Streamlined the Advanced Fallback UI behavior.
  • Action list now highlights related local and global variables for every selected Action.
  • The Comment Action now uses different coloring (while being selected).
  • Search behavior and UI improvements in the Add Action window—new aliases and keyword matching, better suggestions with hints for built-in Variable Wizard categories such as date presets, system folders, network, and internals.
• Variable Wizard enhancements:
  • New Characters category—access and insert special chars (such as new lines, bullets, math operands, and currency symbols) directly in text input boxes.
  • New Freeform text category—compose multi-line text and use it in a single-line input field to greatly improve Task readability.
  • New Temp location variable—retrieve the same temporary folder (as in the AW options).
  • Remarkably better default variable names for all date & time elements (any component).
  • Greatly increases user experience while accessing both local and global variables.
  • More minor VW improvements—smarter default choices, improved viewport, etc.
• Queue Manager further improvements:
  • The Finished Tasks folder displays total elapsed time and last finished Task details.
  • Queue variables (running, queued, and finished Tasks) are returned in a predictable (strictly sorted) order.
  • Toolbar and context menu behave consistently.
• More miscellaneous UI improvements.
• All executables and setup files are now dual signed with SHA-1 and SHA-256 digital certificates.

Changed

• The Find & Replace Text Action does not perform replacement on empty search patterns.
• The Close Connection Action applies an auto-closing feature upon Task finishing. Now, it's executed in the Task scope (as a virtual last Action) instead of as a post-process event.
• The Print File Action uses the "Slight delay after printing" option for all newly created Tasks.
• Auto-imported Task causes a new log entry (Event 1064) instead of a confirmation dialog.
• The Variable Wizard group "File" renamed to "Contents". Along with existing Use file content, it now includes additional options—Use web content and Freeform text.

Version 6.1.0

New

• Introduces the Synchronize Folders Action to sync folders (including unlimited subfolder structure) across local drives and network shares using mapped drives or UNC paths. Supported modes—Push, Pull, and Two-way transfers. Rich condition options—sync only or combination of new, deleted, and modified files (detect changes using date, size, or file content). Rule out files using multi-mask wildcards, and include/exclude ones based on date range—new or old, recently modified, lately created, or used.
• Streamline automation processes even further with a new Modify Global Variable Action to change any global variable on-the-fly from within a managed Task.
• The Remote FTP Command Action allows you to execute a single standard FTP command on the remote FTP or FTPS server.

Fixed

• Now, the Remote Tasks folder structure is always displayed consistently and in the correctly sorted order (with folders containing at least 1 Task file).
• Rarely, the manual Service restarting was not updating the Manager UI. The "Task triggering unknown" status was shown, while everything at the Service level was working impeccably.
• Refinements for the Get File Information Action allows to correctly retrieve owner information for files located on a local network (non-Domain UNC shares).
• Arithmetic Action correctly processes zero decimal places (no digits instead of auto).
• The Move Folder and the Duplicate Folder Actions properly processes a single empty folder.
• Pick Item Action correctly processes empty lists with no separator.
• Else Action (while being disabled) was causing spare info events.

Improved

• Numerous improvements in the Task Properties (across all tabs), including:
  • Actions—all related Actions (both directly accessed, and used by) are highlighted (light, lighter, lightest, none) for the currently selected Action.
  • Actions—for some file and folder Actions (such as Copy, Move, List Files, etc.) the default empty values are visually displayed as "Current folder" instead of "Not set". The actual behavior is not changed in any way.
  • Log—the "Display in Log Pane" option explains the best real-time reporting options. For example, Show everything—Useful for debugging, and Show important messages—Great for production.
  • General—both local and remote Task Properties distinctly show count of all enabled (and disabled) Triggers and Actions.
• Remote Operations Manager displays remote backup information (backup schedule, and the most recent copy).
• Remote Task management ensures the best user experience during Task deployment—all non-disabled AW instances report their status (Ready, Timeout, or View only).
• Several improvements for the Queue Manager:
  • During Task execution, the Estimated time remaining or Historical average run time is shown in the queue details column.
  • Option to automatically group finished Tasks—Never, Dynamically, or Always.
  • Right after the network congestion occurs, the new Event is displayed with the live queue status (currently running Tasks, and recently finished ones).
• It was not possible to clear the Task startup folder, if the File & Folder Watcher was added to the Task.
• More minor UI improvements.

Changed

• Both Remove Folder and Clear Folder Actions now treat read-only folders and subfolders as regular ones by simply deleting them without throwing an error.

Version 6.0.0

New

• Introduces the Remote Manager—connect to (on local network or over internet) and orchestrate multiple Automation Workshop instances securely (using AES-256 encryption). Auto discovery feature automatically recognizes other AW instances on the LAN.
• Use "Remote Tasks" in the Folder Pane to browse (and act on) all Tasks. Task Deployment feature allows effortless one-click Task distribution and management—Run, Push (upload), Enable, Disable, or Delete Tasks on selected or all remote servers.
• Supported Remote management Modes—None (disabled), Discoverable (identify), View & reporting (overview), and Full Access (complete remote management features). View all important server statuses—ping times, memory usage, total Task count, and a recent Event log snippet (Info, Warnings, and Errors).
• Wide range of Remote Management Tools—Remote Operations Manager, Remote Queue Manager, Remote Log Manager, and Remote Task Properties.
• Global Variables Manager—supports an unlimited number of variables and constants. Protect & make the variables read-only, and assign custom groups (such as Crucial, Files & Items, Shared, Passwords, etc.) for easy variable management. Effortlessly access any local or global variable using the Variable Wizard.
• New API features extend and provide api-like functionality for automated & unattended Task management—Import, Export, Delete, Enable, Disable, and Execute Tasks from third-party apps, directly from the Command line, or external scripts.
• Task Properties introduces the Schedule Policy (per Task execution plan)—allow to run, or prevent to run a Task only on specified date & time range.
• Queue Manager with new Task status—Disregarded (due to Concurrency or Schedule Policy) when a Task is prevented from execution.
• Added a new quick Search menu—instantly access any Command, find Tasks, and search the entire Automation Workshop knowledge base (1,300+ help articles).

Fixed

• Fixed a rare crash on very slow servers (with under-provisioned system resources) caused by invalid memory allocation (Access violation).
• The UI may become unresponsive or freeze, if the Task Scheduler include or exclude filters were set within 1 second range.
• Read from File Action was not always correctly detecting UTF-8 encoded files.
• Sometimes, the Enable Task, Disable Task, and Toggle Task Actions may fail if a Task name contains an equality = character.
• In most cases, the Arithmetic Action was not preserving the previous variable value.
• In most cases, all Dialog Actions were not displaying & (ampersand) characters. Improved visuals and icons of all Dialog Boxes.
• Rarely, the shortcut key CTRL+SHIFT+E was not toggling the Task state (enabled and disabled). The keypress was simply ignored.
• On GUI start-up, user preferences are loaded in a safer manner—upper and lower bounds of some settings are now validated (Task Pane width and height, Log Pane, etc.).
• Custom DPI may cause some UI elements to be misaligned (notably, the Custom name option in the Task Properties).

Improved

• In many workflow scenarios, the Service performance significantly improved.
• Arithmetic Action now uses far greater precision—about 80 decimal places, instead of 50.
• Remove Folder Action now offers 5 deletion options instead of the previous 2. New options—Attempt to delete a specified folder, and do nothing if it is not empty. Delete empty folders only—Process all subfolders, and the specified folder too; Process subfolders only.
• Read from File Action on 64-bit Windows now can read up to 4GB files.
• The Go To Action always correctly jumps out of the Loop and For Each Action loops.
• The Increment Variable and Decrement Variable Actions default message output improved—now shows the final result, for example: incremented to 72,650.
• The Set Variable Action now auto-suggests other local variables.
• The Separator Action adds 2 new colors—Lavender and Whisper.
• All Text Actions (except Split Text) and all List Actions can automatically store the result in any specified variable.
• The auto reconnect feature (via custom connection settings) for FTP servers now correctly detects and is able to recover from even more failed connection states.
• The Browse for folder feature (in some Actions, Triggers, Options, etc.) now uses the regular Browse window instead of the simplified one.
• Trigger Manager provides additional information—last Task run time, and Task execution statistics (successful and failed runs).
• Task Finder, Trigger Manager, Log Manager, and Queue Manager uses simple UI layout. Task Pane uses translucent selection.
• Task Scheduler now uses correct (far better) wording in all the include and exclude scenarios.
• All Triggers (Local and Remote folder Watchers) provide more detailed error reporting (in case of initialization failure).
• Queue Manager now consistently removes finished Tasks from the queue list.
• The Queue Manager and main Log Pane window are updated using flicker-free refresh.
• Log Manager consistently processes and prevents new line characters in custom/complex event messages.
• Variable Wizard offers default possible item/selection more consistently, i.e., local file operations do not suggest remote operations, and vice versa.
• New layout size options for Variable Wizard window (both width and height). Visual changes for subcategories—Queue, Service, and Settings.
• Improvements in the Task Properties statistics—options to manually clear some or all Task performance details: error count, performance stats, and fastest & slowest execution times. Additionally, reset the Task creation date. Extremely long running Tasks now display an hour part, i.e., 8h 34m, instead of 514 minutes.
• The Task extension .task is now associated with Windows file types. The New Task icon is displayed in Windows Explorer, and provides quick access to importing instructions.
• The Add Action Search feature improved—smarter default matching on very short queries (1–3 characters).
• Task Importing and Exporting experience greatly improved.
• Minor visual changes in the New Task Wizard (Welcome and Finish screens).
• Minor item rearrangement in the Tools and Help menus, in some context menus, etc.
• Minor visual UI changes, namely, in the Event details, Queue Task Information, Remote Watcher connection settings, Email notifications and templates, Permissions (Upload File, List Remote Files, SFTP Watcher), etc.
• Numerous UI adjustments and improvements.

Changed

• The UI attempts to handle network congestion gracefully. During excessive message bursts (for example, 10k+ messages in 1 second, or 200k+ in 10 seconds), the Service and UI may decide to skip some messages from displaying in the Log Pane. Instead, a new event may be displayed and logged—Network congestion occurred; Due to network congestion 120,000 event messages were skipped. Still, all events are logged in the Service.log file.
• Both the Trim Text and Split Text Actions now treats all regular and special whitespace characters equally (in the same way).
• Both the Reverse List and Pick Item Actions now consistently process "Pipe or Line break" and "Whitespace" separators.
• The Pick List Item Action now processes an empty separator differently (will treat the provided list on a char-by-char basis).

Version 5.5.0

New

• 2 new Cloud Watchers—Google Cloud Storage and DigitalOcean Spaces—fully featured file and directory monitoring capabilities. Watch for new, existing, modified, or deleted files. Also watch for the number of files in a directory, or trigger when a file reaches a certain size.
• 2 new Actions—Connect to Google Cloud Storage and Connect to DigitalOcean Spaces—perform all basic and advanced remote file and directory operations using all existing Cloud Actions such as upload, download, synchronize, list, move, rename, etc.
• New Remote SSH Command Action executes one or multiple shell commands directly on a remote SFTP server (over an SCP or SFTP connection).
• New simplified UI—combines the Main menu and Toolbar items. The new simple style is used by default. Full customization options are accessible from the Tools menu.
• New Maximized view mode (in addition to Compact, Expanded, and Extended) allows editing the Task workflow using the entire screen height.
• Password policy to protect Automation Workshop from unauthorized access.

Fixed

• The Advanced connection settings of all Cloud Watchers may not report full Task name (partially truncated) during Trigger pre-initialization process. While this behavior may happen very rarely, the correct Task execution itself never was affected.
• Rarely, the Amazon S3 connections were unable to reconnect in case of connection failure.
• Amazon S3 file timestamps now work correctly across all timezones.
• The Convert List Action was silently failing (with an out of memory error logged) when no current separator was provided.
• In some cases the Separator Action was returning an empty variable.

Improved

• Updated networking engine—performance, stability, and security features.
• FTP and WebDAV connections now support SHA-256 fingerprints.
• SFTP connections now support private key files PPK v3 (supported in PuTTY 0.75+).
• Remote File Information behaves consistently in case of non-existent files.
• The Add Action window UI introduces shortcuts to other relevant Action categories. Filtering is enhanced with additional search aliases and provides keyword-rich instant Action filtering. Some Actions and some Action groups slightly reordered.
• Improved UX when manually running a disabled Task or Tasks that depend on Triggers.
• Visual UI fix in the Advanced Connection Settings (ensures all list item visibility).
• Task Wizard UX improved—redesigned the Welcome and Finish steps.
• New Shortcut key to enable or disable a Task, or multiple Tasks; and to enable or disable individual Triggers or Actions.
• The Shortcut key CTRL+C (or CTRL+Insert) now copies content of the Show Message, Input Dialog, and Question Dialog windows more consistently.
• Upon Automation Workshop resizing, all Panes maintain their minimum size.
• Slightly rearranged and added new Help menu items.
• Full compatibility with Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.
• A lot of minor improvements.

Changed

• For new Tasks, the FTP and WebDAV connections now use SHA-256 fingerprints by default.

Version 5.2.0

Fixed

• The List Files and the List Remote Files Actions were correctly saving listing options, and was working as expected. However, when loading and editing existing properties of both Actions the "List files" checkbox was always preselected while "List folders" checkbox sometimes was deselected.

Improved

• All the panes (Folders, Tasks, and Logs) of the Automation Workshop Manager now clearly define minimum size constraints.
• The Else Action now uses the correct header image (when editing this Action).
• Slightly improved Demo Tasks.

Version 5.1.1

Fixed

• Updated the Cloud & FTP networking engine to fix potential connection problems with servers using SSL/TLS 1.3 version.
• In some input fields the copy shortcut key CTRL+Insert was not working.

Improved

• New startup Event to warn about the incompatible Windows codepage UTF-8 beta setting.

Changed

• SSH fingerprints (all Ed25519 variants) are reported more consistently.

Version 5.1.0

Improved

• The Log Manager filtering features are greatly enhanced—view only a single Event ID, or choose to temporarily hide one or more Events. Additionally, search and filter all log entries by multiple keywords.
• The File & Folder Watcher is enhanced with additional memory guarding functions.
• Ensures behavioral consistency of the Separator Action—prevents spare disabling, shows a correct Variable Wizard tooltip, and adds 2 more color options (light blue and yellow).
• Adjusted visuals of the Comment Action in the Task Properties.
• Slightly rearranged options of the Unzip Files Action.
• Task Properties recommends clearing the statistics (if there is a large discrepancy). Slightly rearranged UI of the Task Properties.
• The Variable Wizard improves Windows edition detection—Pro, Enterprise, Datacenter, etc.
• Ensures initial compatibility with Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.
• In most cases the Main menu option (do not stretch to full row) was not working consistently.
• Additional Task examples.
• The size of the setup package was reduced.
• More minor improvements.

Version 5.0.0

New

• Trigger Manager—provides an overview of all active (and disabled) Triggers, their activation conditions, as well as displays all upcoming Task execution schedules for the next day, week, or month.
• Email Setup Wizard—automatically pre-fills an SMTP server address, port, and connection type for popular email service providers: Outlook, Office 365, Google Workspaces, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and iCloud. Available in the Options and in the custom server settings for the Send Email Action.
• A new Task launch option to quickly start the Task from the Tray Icon. Enable it using the "Quick access from Tray Icon" option in the Task Properties.
• Text to Speech Action—automatically converts text into a voice. Uses an advanced speech TTS engine to read text out loud. Supports 35+ languages.
• Arithmetic Action—perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, and modulo operations. Every operation supports extremely large numbers (million-billion-billions and far greater) all while maintaining ultra-high precision of 50 decimal digits.
• Remove Partial Text Action—slice a piece of text from the provided text string. Remove a part of text from the beginning, middle, or end.
• Pick Item Action—select the first, last, random, or any item from a list, array, or any separated text string.
• Reverse List Action—inverse any given list. The new list contains the same elements but with the order of the elements reversed.
• Separator Action—visually separate Task workflow into multiple subtasks. Assign different color shades for each subflow.
• Universal installer—now includes both 32 and 64-bit installation packages.

Fixed

• Ensures correct memory allocation for File & Folder Watcher.
• Cloud Actions (upload, download, sync, connect, etc.) was leaking exactly 1 handle once experiencing a timeout. In extremely large (10,000+) such cases that may cause a memory exhaustion error requiring the Automation Workshop Service restart.
• When a Task was accessing network resources and when no local or domain user was present in the current machine, a new spare SYSTEM agent was started for each new Task instance.
• Queue Manager may cause a crash if left open for a very long time (month+).
• In rare cases the Split Text Action was failing if the custom separator was set to nothing.
• Task workflow editing could fail when copying Triggers between Tasks.
• Task workflow editing could fail while deleting some Unicode/Multibyte characters.
• Some drop-down lists may experience visual UI glitch if the Ampersand & character was used in a Task name.
• In some rare cases the Task Triggering Tooltip in the main status bar was not showing a correct title.

Improved

• The Add Action window features an instant type and search. Filter Actions by any keyword, keywords, or aliases. Additionally, it supports navigation with shortcut and arrow keys.
• The Actions list (and Triggers list, too) of the Task allows instant Add Action or Edit Action with an F2 keyboard shortcut.
• To make human-readable workflows, use the "Custom display name" feature. All Actions (within a Task) can be renamed.
• Slightly redesigned the Extended view UI of the Task Actions tab. Adjusted and unified the context menus both for Actions and Triggers list.
• Slightly redesigned the Task Properties window. Fixes random 1 pixel inconsistency for some drop-down lists. Task settings clarify the concurrency policy, and the Run As options explain execution scenarios.
• For some Actions and Triggers the context sensitive help was using wrong (default) text while the link itself was working fine (a correct help topic was shown).
• The Task Actions list improves UX—shows special Tab characters, simplifies the For Each Action (when using custom separator), and handles the Find & Replace Text Action perfectly (when replacing text with nothing). And the Split Text Action shows the first few token names.
• Task Scheduler UX improved—the excluded time range automatically is set to 1 hour span. In the Trigger list spare seconds are hidden.
• Cloud Triggers and Actions show "preview path" examples based on a context of selected connection type—FTP/SFTP, Amazon S3, or WebDAV.
• Connect to Amazon S3 Action now supports both Path-style and Virtual-hosted-style access.
• All Cloud Actions (using the FTP/SFTP and Amazon S3 connection) improves handling of relative path syntax. Absolute path operations are not affected.
• File inputs (Folder Watcher, all file Actions, Variable Wizard, etc.) apply optional auto-complete functionality (for the local and network resources).
• Write to File Action adds support for the Unicode encoding (choose between UTF-8 or UTF-16/UCS-2) and optional Unicode header (BOM).
• Print File Action allows adjusting delay after file printing.
• Interactive Dialog Actions—Show Message, Input Dialog, and Question Dialog—ensures the "auto-close notification" text visibility.
• Slightly adjusted a UI for some Actions—Start App, Run CMD Command, Send Email, List Files, Convert List, Split Text, Show Message, Input Dialog, and Question Dialog.
• Every Action can be adjusted to prevent default logging, by enabling the "Log only errors" option.
• Tray Icon now works consistently and is DPI aware.
• The Task Finder filtering feature enhanced with multi-keyword search capabilities.
• Minor adjustments in the Operations Manager UI. Supports keyboard shortcuts to launch all Managers—the Queue, Log, and Trigger Manager.
• Operations Manager now always reports correct (and instant) memory usage data.
• Operations Manager now works consistently and in all circumstances reports the actual Task count (ignores internal Backup or testing Tasks).
• Introduces a new Variable Wizard setting to hide "Action completion status" via the Simplified/Extended variables option.
• The Date category of the Variable Wizard instantly reflects separator changes in the Format field. Greatly improves readability and eliminates possible confusion.
• Variable Wizard—the "User Desktop folder" variable for the system folders is now preselected.
• Redesigned the global Options UI—some changes and adjustments in the Workshop, Backup, Tasks, Queue, Logs, and Email tabs.
• Set the "Default user for Automated Backups" option, to perform backup operations directly to the Network/NAS resources. Previously, backup was restricted with the SYSTEM access rights (thus, no networking capabilities).
• Unified the Main status bar UI. It now features the Service Guard. Introduces an interactive Running Task count icon.
• The Task Pane context menu simplified, new features added, and some rearranged.
• Slightly rearranged the File and View menus. Reworked the Tools menu with new Services, Resources, and Management submenus.
• Rearranged the Help menu. Added new items—automation videos, and tutorials.
• A lot of UI & UX improvements.

Changed

• All file system monitoring Triggers—File & Folder Watcher, SFTP Watcher, FTP Watcher, Amazon S3 Watcher, and WebDAV Watcher—now use the "Watch for new files" option by default, instead of the "Watch for new and existing files".
• The Show Message, Input Dialog, and Question Dialog Actions now use the "Show the dialog above all other windows" option by default. Improves UX when windows are opening behind all applications.
• Renamed some Action categories—"Loop" to "Loops", "Variable" to "Variables", and "Flow" to "Flows". Slightly changed order of categories.
• Renamed Actions—"Start Program or Application" to "Start App", and "Run DOS or CMD Command" to "Run CMD Command".
• Adjusted Action names—"Set Attributes" to "Set File Attributes", "Get Date and Time" to "Get File Date & Time", "Set Date and Time" to "Set File Date & Time", and "Find and Replace Text" to "Find & Replace Text".
• Renamed the Execute Script Action variable from "All lines" to "Whole output".
• Moved the Convert List Action to the new Lists category.
• Keyboard shortcuts changed for the Options and the Operations Manager.

Version 4.6.0

New

• New SFTP option added to support 2FA—a private key and a password authentication.

Version 4.5.1

Fixed

• The multiple lines option in Input Dialog Action was causing a default value input line to be considerably misaligned during a Task creation process.

Version 4.5.0

New

• New TLS option (Auto, SSLv3, TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2, and TLS 1.3) allows selecting how Automation Workshop and SMTP server negotiates the version of TLS or SSL to be used in secure connection when sending email. Optionally, allows ignoring any certificate errors caused when connecting to a secure SMTP server.

Fixed

• Some special Unicode and left square bracket characters may cause the wildcard matching to be inconsistent. Now, all the Triggers and Actions apply file masks correctly.
• If there were no subsequent Actions after a loop, the Loop Action may stop unexpectedly.
• In nearly all cases email sending was failing, if the server name contained most Unicode characters. By default, machine name is used for HELO / EHLO greeting when initiating client and SMTP connection.
• Very rarely, upon stopping the Service, a false crash state was encountered, leading to an unfinished stop state. False crash log entry was made.
• Ensures stable SFTP file downloads for large files.

Improved

• Every Action that displays variables & parameters in Task's Actions tab, now shows entire Unicode range and special characters.
• Calculation of negative Task execution times are no longer possible. Ensures that QPC high-resolution timestamps not yield negative time-interval measurements.
• Log Pane of Automation Workshop was unable to properly display an extremely large amount of incoming events. Now, it easily handles thousands of events per second.
• The Task renaming option in Automation Workshop Manager now works consistently.
• Simplified UX of the Zip Files Action.
• Slightly simplified and streamlined context menus.
• Updated most internal libraries.
• Optimized setup file size.
• Few more minor tweaks and improvements.

Changed

• Instead of OpenSSL libraries, Automation Workshop now uses Windows built-in cryptographic API that is secured by Windows Secure Channel (Schannel) security support provider (SSP). It provides the latest security fixes and improvements, such as TLS 1.3 to crypto API via standard Windows Updates.
• Update server now uses newer TLS version. Older Automation Workshop versions may not be able to check for the latest releases.

Version 4.1.1

Fixed

• In some cases a File & Folder Watcher Trigger was not able to access network resources due to incompletely passed security token.

Version 4.1.0

New

• A new option—Favorites for Add Actions window. Allows to organize most used Actions into favorites.
• New extended view mode in Task Action's properties. It provides more space for displaying sequence of Actions.

Improved

• For some Tasks, Remote Watchers may force skip redundant connection Actions, thus improving performance of Task execution.
• Now, when executing Task from command line, it is possible to specify one or multiple optional parameters.
• Connect to remote server Actions allow server address with or without full URI scheme.
• Connect to remote server Actions force no fingerprints for Plain connections.
• In case of SMTP server errors, IP address is logged along with an error message.
• Execute Script Action now handles Unicode PowerShell scripts exceedingly well.
• Use file content UX of Variable Wizard improved.
• Increased max length of Variable Wizard random text feature.
• Toolbar UX for Log Manager and Task Finder has been adjusted—allows selecting all or no filter buttons at all.
• Now all advanced input fields in Task Properties resize correctly.
• Many minor UI & UX improvements.

Changed

• For Each Action now has a new & default separator—Pipe or Line break. Separates text with either a pipe or a new line character, whichever comes first.

Version 4.0.0

New

• Entirely new and redesigned UI & user experience across the entire product.
• Added 4 new Triggers to monitor files & folders on remote server with the option to watch for new, existing, modified or deleted files:
  • SFTP Watcher.
  • FTP Watcher.
  • Amazon S3 Watcher.
  • WebDAV Watcher.
• New FTP & Cloud category to connect to remote servers. Also, to upload & download files, to synchronize whole directory trees, and to provide other means to manipulate remote files and directories:
  • Connect to SFTP.
  • Connect to FTP.
  • Connect to Amazon S3.
  • Connect to WebDAV.
  • Upload File.
  • Download File.
  • Move Remote File.
  • Rename Remote File.
  • Delete Remote File.
  • List Remote Files.
  • Remote File Information.
  • Synchronize Directories.
  • Create Remote Directory.
  • Remove Remote Directory.
  • Close Connection.
• Create a desktop shortcut to quickly launch necessary Tasks.
• Execute one or multiple Tasks from command line or batch files.

Fixed

• In rare cases, auto authentication of Send Email Action was not working correctly.
• Send Email Action authentication with PLAIN method now works properly.
• Built-in random number generator was error-prone in a multi-Task environment.
• When copying a Split Text Action, it may not correctly paste in its entirety within a Task.
• Compute File Checksum, Get File Information and Get File Date & Time Actions was ignoring startup folder.
• In some cases Wait, Wait for Time, and Wait for File Actions were ignoring Task log settings.

Improved

• Automation Workshop Service optimizations of memory usage and CPU scheduling.
• Increased the performance of File & Folder Watcher, especially when working with multiple include and exclude masks.
• File & Folder Watcher introduces an option to watch for "new and existing" files. Ensures continuous file monitoring during server reboots.
• File & Folder Watcher now works consistently for network shares hosted on Samba or Linux environments.
• In case when "Trigger after conditions have been met" option is selected, Triggers now report status for every monitored event until limit is reached.
• Task can now access network resources even when no local or domain user present in the current system.
• Task Errors and On error tabs has been redesigned. Functionality still can be accessed via advanced fallback options.
• When starting another Task via Task's On error or On success, as well as Action On error event, the essential Task data are passed to Variable Wizard, and can be accessed via Task parameter variables.
• Exclude tabs of the file Actions has been enhanced with a new interactive visual guide. Provides real-time preview of user selected date range filter.
• Find Text Action now can detect and extract regex groups using "Smart (capture groups) extraction" option.
• More compare options for the If Action, namely "Contain only these characters" and "Does not contain any of these characters".
• For Each Action improved with faster and more consistent behavior.
• Improved Automation Workshop Manager UI & UX—new status bar icons; slightly rearranged File and Help menu; toolbar position is correctly saved for every DPI.
• Per Task settings allows to select how much information to display in Automation Workshop Manager Log Pane, namely Show everything, Show important messages, Show only Task errors and warnings, Show nothing.
• Log Pane option to "Auto resize columns" now works consistently.
• New events for Automation Workshop Manager and Service, to facilitate auditing and debugging. Now the Service can identify more fault states, and log debug info in log file.
• Operations Manager improved with more details on ongoing processes. New Triggers tab to observe all monitoring statuses in real-time.
• Improved UI for Automation Workshop options & customize.
• Email options redesigned to bring up-front the most important email settings, and hide some specific ones.
• While editing a Task, browse dialogs can be opened with a SHIFT+F2 keyboard shortcut. Dialog window remembers last used disk location.
• Variable Wizard introduces new MAC address format, namely "Colon compact" to omit spare zero part of MAC address.
• Variable Wizard simplifies variables of all text Actions.
• Variable Wizard improves how the file and folder variables are displayed by adding backslash at the end, if necessary.
• Default return values of Variable Wizard are adjusted, namely for Compute File Checksum, Get File Information and Get File Date & Time Actions.
• If Action does not display 2^nd variable in Task's Actions tab, when comparing current value against "Is empty" or "Is not empty" condition.
• Dialog Actions do not display default variables in Task's Actions tab.
• Improved High-DPI scaling in Windows 10.
• Newer .NET framework 4.5 version.
• OpenSSL libraries updated to the most recent version.
• A lot of UI & UX improvements.

Changed

• By default, all new Tasks now use "Queue a new task instance until existing task finishes" instead of "Run task in parallel" instance setting.
• File & Folder Watcher triggers on "file size" or "file count" at startup, instead of first detected file change.
• Slightly adjusted length of delay before retrying Trigger restart upon error occurrence.
• Slightly adjusted length of delay before retrying Action upon error occurrence.
• If Action was auto detecting IP address value as a number instead of as a text.
• Split File Path Action now can split Linux & Cloud paths.
• Read from File Action now reads up to 100MB by default, instead of 10MB.
• Email options and Send Email Action by default now use SMTP port 587 instead of 25.
• Variable Wizard values are limited to 2GB in 32-bit version; 64-bit version has no any limits.
• Variable Wizard group "Automation Workshop" renamed to "Internal".
• Variable Wizard section "Read from file" renamed to "Use file content".

Version 3.2.0

Fixed

• In rare cases, For Each Action may accidentally stop the entire Task, particularly, if that loop was positioned within another loop.

Improved

• In rare cases, Task Properties may open with slight delay.

Version 3.1.0

Fixed

• In some cases, For Each Action may not finish loop, particularly, if that loop was positioned at the very end of the Task.

Improved

• Automation Workshop is now fully compatible with Windows Server 2019.
• Operations Manager via tooltip displays memory (both Total and per Task) usage in bytes.
• List Files Action now processes multiple include masks consistently and trims leading and trailing spaces.
• Improved displaying a total count of Task successful and failed executions both in Task Properties and details view.
• Simplified Queue Manager option to Remove finished Tasks from history.
• Variable Wizard now detects OS variable on Windows Server 2019.
• Improved Variable Wizard display value of system folder path variables.
• OpenSSL libraries updated to the most recent version.
• Documentation and application meta-description references now uses only HTTPS URLs.
• Simplified folder context menu of Task Pane.
• Minor tweaks in Task Finder UI.
• Minor changes in Help menu.

Changed

• Zip Files Action now defaults to Large archive support.

Version 3.0.0

New

• Email notification templates to customize email reports upon successful or failed Task execution, or Action failure.
• Added 3 new Actions to File & Folder category:
  • Compute File Checksum—calculates file checksum in most common formats, such as SHA-256, MD5, CRC32.
  • Get File Information—retrieve file size, attributes and owner.
  • Get File Date & Time—retrieve file creation, modification and last access dates. Supports milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds.
• Added 2 new Actions to Loops category:
  • For Each—parse text data element by element while processing each item in a number of consecutive Actions.
  • Loop—repeat one or multiple Actions within a loop for a specified number of times.
• Added 10 new Actions to Text category:
  • Find & Replace Text—specify text to find within a text string and what to replace it with. Supports regex.
  • Find Text—specify text to find within a text string and get information about it. Supports Regular Expressions.
  • Extract Partial Text—retrieves text part from the text string.
  • Split Text—divide text string into tokens.
  • Merge Text—combine multiple texts and variables into a single text string.
  • Trim Text—remove unnecessary characters from the text string.
  • Pad Text—add extra characters on the leading or trailing end of the text string.
  • Change Text Case—convert text capitalization scheme.
  • Get Text Length—retrieve the text length (in characters).
  • Convert List—change text string delimiters.
• Added 3 new Actions to Variables category:
  • Set Variable—create or update a variable with a specified value.
  • Increment Variable—add a number to numeric variable.
  • Decrement Variable—subtract a number from numeric variable.
• Variable Wizard introduces new Variables category to simplify and extend data exchange among Actions.

Fixed

• In specific cases, some or all Ignore error options were not working for some Actions, specifically—If, If File, If Folder, Split File Path, Go To, and Wait for File Action.
• For some Time Zones and due to Daylight Saving Time (DST), Set File Date & Time Action may be off by 1 hour.
• Rarely, Set File Date & Time Action precision was off by 100 nanoseconds.
• Ensures that Variable Wizard can always access and edit all variables regardless of their custom display size.
• Task Finder was unable to access Task Properties if Task was manually renamed with uppercase .TASK extension.
• If running Zip Files, Unzip Files or Zip Archive Information Actions using Standard user account, sometimes specific error "Class not registered" may be triggered.
• Upon startup while loading Tasks, ensures that specific error "Can not load task. Root element is missing" does not prevent further startup process.

Improved

• In specific cases (depending on Task Actions) unnecessary Service Agent was launched. Now Agent executes only if necessary.
• Show Message Action allows to specify text alignment—left, centered or right align.
• Set File Date & Time Action now supports optional advanced input method: YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS-mmmnnnn. Now supports milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds.
• Set File Date & Time Action now browses for file instead of folder.
• Variable Wizard with resizable layout—compact, wide or wider.
• General properties of Task improved. Added shortcuts for Actions and Triggers.
• Add Action windows navigation improved. Enter key expands or collapses categories.
• Improvements for Start menu of Start App Action.
• Operations Manager UI improvements.
• Event details window UI cleanup.
• Task Pane details view sorting UI fixes and improvements.
• Task Pane list view mode adjusted.
• Variable Wizard tooltip enhanced to display F2 keyboard shortcut.
• Adjusted usability of online help and other links. All external resource connections now use HTTPS (TLS) exclusively.
• OpenSSL libraries updated to the most recent version.
• Minor changes in Help menu. Provides shortcut to Privacy Policy. Ensures GDPR compliance.
• Number of performance, stability and visual optimizations.
• More Task examples provided.

Changed

• All folder Actions moved from File & Folder category to new Folder category.
• Write in Service Log Action—swapped Message and Type fields.
• Variable Wizard—Date & Time component renamed to Component.
• Minor changes in license.

Version 2.4.1

Improved

• Operations Manager now highlights values if critical, such as Service Guard errors, and disabled automatic backups.
• Default toolbar positions adjusted in Automation Workshop Manager.
• For all setup files the signature hash algorithm (Digital Signature Algorithm) now uses SHA-2 cryptographic hash function instead of SHA-1.
• Minor improvements.

Version 2.4.0

New

• Introduces Operations Manager which collects all the important data in one place, and provides summary overview on Automation Workshop status and overall performance.

Improved

• Variable Wizard correctly detects OS variable on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.
• OpenSSL and other libraries updated to most current versions.
• Minor improvements.

Version 2.3.0

New

• New Wait for File Action that waits until a file matches conditions before continuing with the next Action.
• New Wait for Time Action that pauses the Task until specified time on selected or all weekdays.

Improved

• File & Folder Watcher now allows to retrieve both new and old file name upon detecting rename operations.
• Improved PowerShell support now does not require preliminary setup by user.
• Task Properties Actions tab shows Action count if there are five or more Actions.
• Minor fixes and improvements.

Version 2.2.0

New

• Duplicate Folder Action—creates an exact copy of a folder in specified destination location.
• Move Folder Action—moves folder or folder contents from source folder to destination.
• Clear Folder Action—empties all the content of specified folder.

Improved

• Status bar now displays number of Running Tasks.
• On certain queue lengths the CPU usage is lower when Queue Manager is open.
• Action tab of Task Wizard was not showing long Action's descriptions and details.
• Includes latest OpenSSL libraries.
• Minor improvements.

Changed

• Upon execution, Task prevents usage of an empty path value in all folder Actions.
• Upon execution, Task validates path variables for invalid characters. New Event ID added.

Version 2.1.0

New

• New Split File Path Action added that divides provided path into its key elements.

Fixed

• In very rare cases (only on Windows Server 2012 R2) extra dot appeared in email.

Improved

• Task Finder now features improved Task search (via custom fields). Added trigger and filter options.
• Task Finder now displays Task logging options for every Task listed.
• Improved Task importing and exporting.
• To correctly display all Actions within a Task, Variable Wizard now also shows the Action from which it itself is opened.
• Option to Automatically resize columns in Automation Workshop Log Pane.
• Options to show or hide status bar items.
• New event for 32-bit Service running on 64-bit Windows.
• OpenSSL libraries updated to the most recent version.
• New shortcut keys for important program features (import, export, backup, etc.).
• Slightly rearranged Tools and View menu.
• Reduced setup file size.
• Minor improvements.

Version 2.0.2

Improved

• Task Finder status bar removes unnecessary flickering, and updates refresh time only upon actual Task refresh.
• Improved NTLM authentication (ensures compatibility with most Exchange servers).
• Includes latest OpenSSL libraries. Consult OpenSSL documentation for more details.
• Minor improvements in Task exporting experience.
• Minor improvements in Task examples.

Version 2.0.1

Improved

• Improved setup experience.

Version 2.0.0

New

• Introduces Task Finder which provides an overview on active and inactive Tasks, and allows quick Task location by their name, Triggers, Actions as well as execution (Run As) credentials. Allows direct access to Task Properties.
• New option for Service to use fast multi-core engine for internal data processing.
• All available Actions are categorized into 3 new sections, namely Actions, Logic (Compare, Flow, Comments) and Workshop (Tasks, Log).
• Added 4 new Comparison Actions:
  • If Action—compare variables with rich set of 28 compare features (is equal, contains, starts or ends with, and many more). Supports AND / OR additional conditions, as well as Perl-compatible regular expressions (PCRE).
  • If File Action—verify whether a specified file exists or not. Optionally, check whether file is accessible or not.
  • If Folder Action—verifies whether a specified folder exists and if it is empty or contains some files or folders.
  • Else Action—used in conjunction with either one of the If, If File or If Folder Actions to define branch of Actions that is executed when the conditions specified by associated Compare Action are not met.
• Added 2 new Flow Actions:
  • Label Action—insert labels anywhere in the sequence of Actions, to skip certain Actions or create loops.
  • Go To Action—redirect both to label or an Action within the Task workflow. A certain sequence of Actions in-between is skipped or repeated.
• Now it is possible to create a conditionally branched Action sequences. New options to move Actions into and out of scope. Multi-level depth of scopes are supported.
• Variable Wizard can access Send Email Action, to access list of actually sent attachments.
• Variable Wizard can access Queue Manager to retrieve list of running, queued and finished Tasks.

Fixed

• Rarely, zip file updates (by adding files to existing archive) was not processed completely or correctly. Now archives are updated correctly.
• In specific cases Windows Registry operations dealing with HKCU was accessing system's registry branch, instead of user's registry branch / SID.
• In rare cases, Task files were not loaded and displayed in Workshop Manager.
• Start App Action was ignoring "Treat exit codes greater than" option, if program finished after task completion. Run CMD Command was ignoring "Treat error levels greater than" option, if command finished after task completion. Now, "Continue immediately" option works correctly with exit codes and error levels.
• Some security issues regarding SSL and STARTTLS connections. Consult OpenSSL documentation for more details.

Improved

• Automation Workshop is now fully compatible with Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
• File & Folder Watcher is now more accurate, and acts consistently for all file operations.
• Logon & Logoff Trigger seamlessly passes credentials of logged in user, for Tasks that are configured to run with currently logged in user credentials.
• Task Scheduler Trigger detects if a computer time change occurred, and writes new Event to log.
• Send Email Action now works with most (including very old) SMTP server SSL implementations.
• Send Email now folds very long encoded subject lines, to be in line with the current rules for RFC.
• Send Email Content-ID of a MIME body part for HTML embedded images now uses globally unique CIDs.
• Send Email automatically adds Message-ID header for all email messages.
• To avoid confusion, Send Email option "Send email only upon attachment availability and encoding success" reworded to "Fully prepare email message before connecting to the email server".
• Play System Sound Action provides cleaner sound list selection.
• Tray Icon initialization is now faster, and provides feedback if happening longer.
• Service Agent startup is now faster and more intelligent, and provides feedback if taking long time to load.
• Greatly improved Task importing. After Task is successfully imported, it is automatically highlighted in Task Pane.
• Option to "Stop Task instance that runs longer than" now works not only between, but within most Actions.
• Workshop Manager remembers last selected Task and folder between sessions.
• Workshop Manager detail view updates successful and failed Task executions automatically, without requiring manual refresh of Task Pane.
• Workshop Manager Help menu slightly rearranged. Quick overview resources added to provide quick access to online help resources.
• Queue Manager detail column now conveniently shows Task completion date and time.
• Log Manager context menu updated, to provide access to all sorting and filtering features.
• Rearranged Add Action window. Some Actions moved into different groups—Start Task and Stop Task to "Run group"; Enable Task, Disable Task and Toggle Task to "Tasks group"; Write in Service Log to "Log group".
• Add Action window remembers two last used Actions.
• Modified shortcut keys of Task Actions tab. Context menu rearranged.
• New events added to the Service event group.
• Slight Service performance improvements.
• Improved Task execution under very low memory conditions.
• Minor memory optimizations across the board, and reduced Variable Wizard memory footprint.
• Some misspells fixed.
• More minor improvements.

Changed

• Write in Service Log always writes in log, even if logging is disabled in Task log options.
• Send Email Action now mainly focuses on email sending with UTF-8 encoding. Other character sets are obsolete, but still partially supported.
• In rare specific cases Workshop Manager was not correctly handling folders with unnecessary spaces. It is no more possible to create folders with leading and trailing spaces.

License

• Commercial license now includes free copy of Testing & development license. See license.txt for full details.
• The license allows usage of redundant run-time copy such as Fault Tolerance, and backup copies that are passive (does not execute) and are not running.

Version 1.3.1

Fixed

• Unicode names of files sent as email attachments by Send Email Action were occasionally misrepresented by some email clients.

Version 1.3.0

New

• The Execute Script Action now supports Windows PowerShell 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 versions.
• Automation Workshop is now fully compatible with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

Fixed

• In rare specific cases the File & Folder Watcher misrecognized file renaming operation.

Improved

• Drag & Drop support in the Actions tab of Task window.
• Expand feature in Action tab provides more space for easier Task designing and reviewing.
• Add Action feature now takes into consideration the current selection.
• The Service started Event now includes both Automation Workshop version and Windows version.
• Convenient keyboard shortcuts to open and navigate all Task Properties tabs (CTRL+1 … CTRL+9).
• Variable Wizard correctly detects OS variable on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
• Improved installation procedure on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
• Minor improvements.

Version 1.2.2

Fixed

• In some rare situations multiple Automation Workshop user agents were unnecessarily spawned, thus gradually decreasing available system resources.

Improved

• Better identification of the domain name and username used for running the Task in Domain environment. Now, instead of NetBIOS name, the DNS name of the Windows Domain is displayed and logged.
• Extract Zip Action is now handling tmp files consistently.
• Active control is now focused on Value name instead of Registry key in the Registry tab of Set Registry Value, Read Registry Value and Delete Registry Value Actions.
• Help menu rearranged and supplemented for easier access to relevant online help resources.
• Minor improvements.

Version 1.2.1

Fixed

• When trying to backup Automation Workshop settings manually, sometimes the automatic backup was performed.
• It was impossible to use the Browse button to specify the backup folder in Automation Workshop options.

Improved

• When Task folders and Task files are selected together, the context menu displays available choices more consistently.

Changed

• On Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 registry keys and included registry values are now copied with their security attributes and permissions.

Version 1.2.0

New

• Backup and Restore—provides features to automatically backup Tasks, settings and log files that are crucial for business process automation recovery.
• Automatic Task import feature discovers unrecognized Task files in the Task folders and automatically adds them to Automation Workshop (in disabled state).
• Import option in File menu—allows importing Task files into the selected Task folder.
• Export option in File menu—allows exporting the selected Task files into the specified folder on disk.
• Added 3 new Actions in the Compression category for efficient data compression, encryption and storage:
  • Zip Files Action—automatically compresses files and folders to Zip, Tar, Tar.gz, Tar.bz2, gz and bz2 archives.
  • Unzip Files Action—automatically uncompresses a number of archive formats.
  • Zip Archive Information Action—retrieves essential information from zip archives without unzipping them.
• Added 8 new Actions in the Registry category for automating operations with Windows registry:
  • Set Registry Value—sets or changes the specified registry value.
  • Read Registry Value—retrieves the Windows registry value data.
  • Delete Registry Value—automatically deletes the specified registry value.
  • Copy Registry Key—allows copying the specified key to another Windows registry location.
  • Create Registry Key—automatically creates a Windows registry key.
  • Remove Registry Key—automatically deletes the specified registry key.
  • Import Registry—allows importing Windows registry keys or branches from a file.
  • Export Registry—allows exporting Windows registry keys or branches to a file.

Fixed

• Sometimes, when renaming folders with similar names, Task files became non-visible in Automation Workshop Manager and, after system restart, even in Automation Workshop Service.
• Tasks were stopped upon the "Failed to assign variable (E103)" error even if they were explicitly configured to ignore the error and continue.
• False "The description cannot be found" information message was shown for Automation Workshop events in the Windows Event log.
• Bug that on excessive system load caused "Can not write to task file" error.
• Bug that caused Run Script Action to leak Windows handles.

Improved

• New event warns user that the Automation Workshop Service is running under non-service Windows account which is a non-intended behavior.
• By default, for all new Tasks, the time in Filter tabs of File Actions is rounded to whole minutes.
• Task Scheduler minor interface improvements.
• Minor improvements.

Changed

• It is no longer possible to create Tasks without names or remove Task's name when renaming.

Version 1.1.0

New

• Added 4 new Actions for easier document processing and printing, extension of the logging features as well as versatile scripting support:
  • Open Document Action automatically opens the specified file in associated application.
  • Print File Action for automatic document printing using the default system printer.
  • Write in Service Log Action adds option to log custom message, thus further extending the logging features.
  • Execute Script Action can run JScript, VBScript, PowerShell scripts and batch files.

Fixed

• Actions of the Run category were not working if they were executed from user accounts with spaces in username.
• The text consisting of 1 character was incorrectly converted from UTF-8 to UTF-16.
• The Tray Icon was not shown on older Windows machines after the restart, if they were accessed via Remote Desktop.
• The "My Tasks" folder was missing after fresh install.

Improved

• More dynamic folder path values added to the Folders variable in the System category of Variable Wizard.
• New events added to the Service event group.
• Minor improvements.

Version 1.0.2

Improved

• Layout lock feature allows disabling the resize option after setting the necessary Pane size.
• Task folder permission assignment improved to match user access more consistently.
• Minor interface and code improvements.

Version 1.0.1

Fixed

• Task folder permissions were not correct.
• Minor interface element fix.

Version 1.0.0

New

• Added new Dialog Boxes category featuring 6 Actions focused on providing user interaction capacities:
  • Show Message Action shows user a custom message.
  • Input Dialog Action requires user to input data.
  • Question Dialog Action presents user with a question requiring a Yes-No answer.
  • Open File Dialog Action requires user to specify an existent file on disk.
  • Save File Dialog Action requires user to specify a file which may currently not exist.
  • Select Folder Dialog Action asks user to indicate a particular folder.
• Added 2 new multimedia Actions:
  • Play System Sound Action plays a specified sound from Windows sound scheme.
  • Play Audio File Action plays a specified .wav file.
• Automation Workshop executables and libraries are signed with Authenticode thus ensuring their authenticity.
• Added new events to report more information in logs.
• Added example Tasks to introduce new users to Automation Workshop.

Fixed

• After Windows explorer crash or restart, the notification area icon was not shown.

Improved

• Added Start Menu button to Start App Action for easy application selection and parameter transfer from Start Menu items to Action's settings.
• When sending email with attachment, MIME type now reflects the attachment type.
• Improved status bar now shows additional information on contextually relevant and total number of Tasks.
• After system restart Windows notification area icon was not shown on some systems.
• Reset button in Task Properties now resets time dependent Triggers (particularly situations when the system time has been modified to earlier one).
• While retrieving numerous Tasks on slower computer, Queue Manager was misleadingly displaying empty list until the list was populated.
• Minor improvements.

Changed

• Changed Automation Workshop license text to clarify the terms of software use.

Version 0.9.9

New

• Automation Workshop now features notification area icon that displays current software status and allows quick access to program's features.
• List Files Action allows retrieving the list of files and folders in specified folder and pass it as a Variable Wizard value to another Action.

Fixed

• When an Action requiring desktop access was performed within a Task with SYSTEM credentials, a redundant instance of Automation Workshop agent was created.
• Start App, and Run CMD Command Actions were causing unexpected error when command line length was exceeding Windows limitations of approximately 8000 bytes.
• Index out of range error caused by editing variable values on rare occasions.
• Upon copying, a Read from File Action variable was corrupted if it contained a dot character.
• Minor bugfixes and improvements.

Changed

• By default, Start App Action is now set to wait for executed program to terminate instead of merely becoming able to receive focus or keyboard input.

Version 0.9.8

New

• Automation Workshop is now also available as 64-bit version to take full advantage of 64-bit Microsoft Windows.
• File & Folder Watcher supplemented with Smart file operation detection cooldown feature which greatly facilitates the detection of correct file operation in numerous contexts.
• Introduced Automation Workshop Service Guard that constantly monitors Automation Workshop Service for unexpected errors and automatically restarts it in case of failure.

Improved

• Variable Wizard value selection for File & Folder Watcher is expanded and made more consistent to provide easy operations with all data conceivably returned by the Trigger.
• New option added to Remove Folder Action. Now user can choose whether to delete only empty folders or all folders regardless of their contents.
• New Layout menu allows switching between Full Height Folders and Full Width Log Pane in Automation Workshop Manager window.
• Custom text and Event ID filtering option added to Log Manager.
• Each Task now permits an individual Log Manager window displaying execution data only for this Task.
• Now it is possible to maximize Log Manager and Queue Manager windows.
• Whenever possible, quote characters are automatically added in file path and file name inputs of Run CMD Command Action to ensure correct parameter specification.
• Minor improvements.

Version 0.9.7

Fixed

• Tasks from previous versions were incorrectly showing existing Task Triggers as disabled. At the same time automation processes were not affected and full Task functionality was retained.

Improved

• Added cut, copy and paste support for text that contains Variable Wizard links (variables).
• In most cases after installation, automatic check for updates option was always enabled until explicitly disabled.
• Few minor fixes.

Version 0.9.6

New

• Added User Logon & Logoff Trigger which is activated by login or logoff of a specified user into or out off the system.
• Added System Startup & Shutdown Trigger that allows to start a Task upon startup or shutdown of Microsoft Windows, Automation Workshop Manager or Automation Workshop Service.
• Added new Stop Task Action that supplements the list of already provided automatic Task management Actions.
• Date and time related variables supplemented with Adjust option that allows retrieving past and future date and time values that are relative to the current ones.
• New date variable formats (Presets category) added for convenient use with file operations and text related Actions.

Fixed

• Fixed cyclic copy bug which was proliferating file extensions upon some specific uses of Copy File Action.
• Fixed bug that caused "Failed to start Task on behalf of specified user" error event when no current user was available under Windows 7 and Server 2008.
• Automation Workshop Manager was not saving MAC address separator.
• Enter characters were occasionally lost when logging communication session with SMTP in Send Email Action.
• The amount of time (if more than one day) until the execution of a Task was not displayed in Queue Manager.
• If user was trying to stop Automation Workshop Service when Automation Workshop was executed without administrator privileges and Windows UAC was turned on, then Automation Workshop was displaying multiple registry errors in Automation Workshop Log Pane. Now, only a single warning with Event ID 1230 is shown in Log Pane, while all errors are saved into the log file and accessible in Log Manager.

Improved

• Individual Triggers can now be enabled and disabled.
• Task Scheduler and File & Folder Watcher redesigned for more consistent placement of relevant options.
• Event ID 10000 added. Shows the file system operation on which the File & Folder Watcher has been triggered.
• Event ID 2049 added. Indicates that the Task has been executed manually.
• Queue Manager is now configurable to retain finished Tasks for up to one week.
• Improved Queue Manager usability when browsing the list of queued Tasks while new Tasks are being added.
• Links to Windows applications most relevantly connected to use of Automation Workshop added to its Tools menu.
• Automation Workshop Manager now shows a warning at Automation Workshop startup if Manager and Service files come from different software versions.
• Now Automation Workshop shortcuts are compatible with Run As Administrator option.
• Passwords in registry are no longer saved in plain text.
• General tab of Task Properties improved.
• Event details are now opened when clicking on event in Log Manager.
• Log Manager toolbar now features Help button which takes user to online event knowledge base.
• New Date & Time component variable items. Now the variable covers most date and time elements conceivable.
• New Folder option added to context menu of Task folder tree pane.
• Greatly improved program setup experience.
• Many minor improvements.

Changed

• Default logging now also covers Trigger information and error events.
• Error and warning logging now also covers Trigger errors and warnings.

Version 0.9.5

New

• Actions that perform file and folder operations are no longer limited by default Windows environment / API MAX_PATH 260. Automation Workshop now supports extended Windows path up to 32,000 characters.
• Start Task Action provides an option for automatic execution of specified Tasks.
• Enable Task, Disable Task, and Toggle Task Actions allow efficient and automatic managing of Task status.
• Wait Action allows inserting custom delays between Actions.
• Comment Action lets user to insert reminders or descriptions anywhere among other Actions of the Task.
• Service uptime is now displayed in Service tab of Automation Workshop options.

Fixed

• Task Scheduler did not take into account the specification to exclude particular hours of the day.
• Some errors were not ignored by Read file Action although specified to do so in Errors tab.
• In specific cases, Tasks not executed when the maximum number of running Tasks was limited to 1.
• Send Email Action formats email message text more appropriately in some very specific cases.
• Variable Wizard now recognizes Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 and 2008 R2.
• Fixed Log Manager artifact appearing in Windows 7 when sorting log message columns.
• Log Manager now attempts to show log file even if it is corrupted and replaces damaged lines with Event ID 1209.
• When using F2 keyboard button to edit Variable Wizard values in input forms of an Action, proper setting is opened instead of general category.
• Multiple cosmetic and interface improvements and minor bugfixes.

Improved

• Considerably faster Task loading times (upon Service start-up).
• Overall Service performance improvements.
• The functionality of both Start App and Run CMD Command Actions extended by added feature to process exit codes and error levels as successful, warning and errors depending on their value.
• Both Run CMD Command and Start App Actions now can provide Variable Wizard with the actual command line used (including arguments) when executing command or program.
• Send Email Action now tries to recover from unexpected failures in communication session with SMTP server.
• When sending separate emails to multiple recipients individually, Automation Workshop can skip errors associated with non-deliverable email addresses while continuing to send to other recipients.
• Time range for Log Manager events is now shown in Log Manager window title.
• Send Email Action now features Set default server link in Server tab of Send Email Action properties which allows quick access to default SMTP server settings.
• Variable type (instead of mere [variable] tag) is shown both in Actions tab of Task Properties and in Actions category in Variable Wizard.
• Variable Wizard now supports retrieving Service uptime.
• Now it is possible to copy and paste Actions within single Task or between multiple Tasks. Variable Wizard value structure is preserved when copying Actions.
• Now it is possible to copy and paste Triggers within single Task or between multiple Tasks.
• Now it is possible to disable Actions directly in Actions tab of Task Properties by using context menu.
• Now it is possible to copy Tasks by using keyboard shortcuts CTRL+Insert, SHIFT+Delete, and SHIFT+Insert.
• Variable Wizard extended with new variables both system related and provided by Triggers and Actions.
• Variable Wizard now supports retrieving such information about the Task within which it is used as Task name, Task location within Task folder tree, Task description and default folder as well as parameters passed to the Task if Start Task Action was used to start it.
• Automation Workshop Task and log file locations are both accessible from Variable Wizard.
• Many Automation Workshop Manager interface and usability improvements.
• Better handling of very long error messages.
• Single dash MAC address format added.
• OpenSSL libraries updated to the most recent version.

Changed

• If custom header of email contains user provided Date tag, then Automation Workshop does not add current date to email header when sending email.
• Remove Folder Action now reports Event ID 53000 Deleting folder more consistently.
• User confirmation is requested when stopping Service from Automation Workshop options.

Version 0.9.4

Fixed

• When only whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, enters) were used as parameter input, its value were not preserved.
• File & Folder Watcher was crashing upon change of folder date or deletion operations.
• After rename or edit of Task Scheduler Trigger, it was not re-initiated. The problem occurred only with extensively used schedules (e.g., those that triggered Tasks once a second).
• Automation Workshop now tries to re-initiate failed Triggers automatically to verify if the initial context that lead to initiation failure has changed (such as appearance or disappearance of shares on network machines).
• Bug that caused improper Task execution in case when Automation Workshop agent was initiated before Automation Workshop Service. The problem occurred only if Fast User Switching was disabled.
• Create Folder Action was not creating folder on network share if intermediary folder was non-existent. Instead, erroneously, the intermediary folder was created on default drive.
• If there is no Computer Description set, Variable Wizard returns empty value instead of causing error.
• When sending email with non-existent attachment file specified, Automation Workshop was disconnecting from SMTP server upon operation timeout.
• If no TO recipients are specified, email header does not contain empty TO field.
• In most cases CC and BCC fields were ignored in Send Email Action.
• Single part emails in UTF-8 encoding are now sent correctly.
• Email MIME boundary now is always written in lower case.
• Sometimes emails in EML format were not sent.
• Wildcard matching algorithm in some cases (when filename was without extension) did not match files correctly.
• Minor bug fixes and tweaks.

Improved

• Read file Action now supports more Unicode encodings: UTF-8, UTF-16 big endian, UTF-32, UTF-32 big endian and, partially, UTF-7.
• Automation Workshop Manager has better responsiveness when running resource intensive Tasks.
• Refresh of Automation Workshop Manager Log Pane is more smooth when performing many operations.
• Task details were updated upon Task execution. However, updated details were not shown in Automation Workshop Manager (when using detailed view mode).
• Refresh command in Automation Workshop Manager did not resort Tasks.
• Task enable and disable operations are handled better visually. Less refreshing upon rename operations.
• Automation Workshop Log Pane shows Event ID in context menu and always leads to correct event (even if it has already disappeared from Log Pane).
• Slightly different naming scheme is applied to Task names when creating multiple copies.
• Mouse double click selects default value in Variable Wizard.
• Mouse Back button now works as Up in Automation Workshop Manager folder structure.
• Browser Back button on extended keyboards can now be used with Automation Workshop.
• Copy, paste and cut commands were not working when renaming Task in Automation Workshop Manager.
• Automation Workshop is trying to gather the information on unexpected Service crashes and log it.
• After fresh Automation Workshop installation toolbars were displayed in wrong order and positions.
• Many minor improvements.

Changed

• When no path or relative path is specified (and no startup or current folder is specified) Automation Workshop shows more relevant error message (e.g., no path specified instead of file not found).
• Copy File and Move File Actions always create a folder specified in destination (if non-existent).

Version 0.9.3

New

• Introduced Start App Action that allows automatic executing of specified app.
• Introduced Run CMD Command Action that provides an option to run command interpreter cmd.exe commands and batch files.
• Added Run As tab in Task Properties that allows choosing user accounts from which Task will be executed both when user is logged in and logged off.
• New Automation Workshop event groups introduced to reflect the functionality improvements of Service and events of new Actions.
• Default Run As user option added in Tasks tab of Automation Workshop options.

Fixed

• File & Folder Watcher does not allow monitoring unspecified folder any more.
• File & Folder Watcher was terminating with a crash if monitored resource (such as network share) was disconnected.
• Copy File Action and Move File Action failed to copy or move files, if creation of intermediate folders in network share was required or files were located in subfolders within folders that contained no files.
• It was possible to enable Task triggers by disabling or enabling the Task even if Task triggering was disabled globally.
• In specific Q-encoding cases FROM, TO, CC, REPLY-TO friendly names were formed incorrectly.
• Too much or too little of Trigger activity was logged upon specific Task logging settings.
• Automation Workshop Service events now are recorded with the same Event ID in Windows event log.
• The Trigger name was incorrectly misplaced by Task name when displaying Event 2503 error.
• Comprehensive fix of minor bugs.

Improved

• When Run as specified user is chosen in Task's Run As settings, validity of account credentials is instantly verified.
• Task Scheduler now verifies user credentials before actual Task triggering.
• Events 2050 and 2060 changed due to improvement which allows Tasks to report user credentials it is using.
• Improved responsiveness when stopping currently running Task from Queue Manager.
• Automation Workshop Service now fully complies with system shutdown routine.
• Automation Workshop Manager info messages made more concise by moving OS and Automation Workshop error codes to Log files and Event details.
• Selection stays on Task icon after it has been renamed. When Task is created, its icon is automatically selected.
• Rename File Action allows renaming files to the same name with different character case (e.g., files to Files).
• Allows renaming Task folders and Task files to the same name with different character case (e.g., FILE to File).
• Log Manager sets window title immediately upon opening.
• New icons and other cosmetic fixes better meet Windows visual appearance.
• OpenSSL and other libraries updated to most current versions.
• Vast number of performance, stability and visual optimizations.

Changed

• Console mode of Automation Workshop Service is now executed under system user account.
• Microsoft Windows 2000 is no longer supported.

Version 0.9.2

Fixed

• Registry error was displayed on some computers in specific cases upon Automation Workshop Manager startup.
• Automation Workshop Manager did not display Connected to Service message on some computers.

Improved

• On Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server Automation Workshop Manager now reconnects to Service automatically upon Service restart.
• Start and stop Service option now works in Windows with User Account Control (UAC) enabled.
• Windows icons optimized for better appearance and compatibility.
• Minor user interface tweaks.

Version 0.9.1

Fixed

• Copy File Action was not working properly on Windows 2000.
• Automation Workshop Setup installation issues on Windows 2000.
• Toolbar and interface icons contained a slight cosmetic defect on Windows 2000.

Improved

• Splash screen was displayed incorrectly on Windows with Aero theme enabled.
• Log Manager and Queue Manager status bar controls were displayed incorrectly on latest Windows versions.
• Minor user interface tweaks for better appearance.

Version 0.9.0

New

• Added installer that unpacks Automation Workshop in specified folder, installs Service, creates icons and writes initial registry values.

Version 0.8.0

Features

• Automation Workshop Manager—the main user interface that gives access to all program features.
• Automation Workshop Service—a multi-thread supporting core component of the software.
• Queue Manager—provides information on currently running Tasks.
• Log Manager—shows information on successes and failures of past Task execution.
• Variable Wizard—allows for flexible interconnection between Triggers and Actions.
• Automation Workshop events provide information on Task execution processes.
• Online help—a comprehensive help system on every feature of Automation Workshop.
• Automation Workshop options—allow configuring most relevant parameters of the software.
• File & Folder Watcher—a Trigger that executes Tasks based on changes in file system.
• Task Scheduler—a Trigger that executes Tasks in connection to specified date & time pattern.
• Send Email—a powerful Action with advanced email sending capabilities.
• File & Folder Actions—a set of Actions that can perform various operations with files and folders (e.g., copy, move, delete, rename, read, write, etc.).