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Consultant/Developer

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Across many sectors, it is very common to have use cases involving the use of File Explorer or SharePoint for :

1.  Storing/archiving of files.
2.  Downloading of attachments from browser or applications.
3.  Working across multiple user profiles and machines via file sharing services.

These use cases often require many pre/post-requisite steps to ensure that the environment is bot-friendly. Due to the repetitive nature of these steps, we have created utilities/libraries for this purpose and have saved many hours of development as well as ensure quality and consistency across all our processes.

  

Some examples of these utilities are :

1.  Checking if certain file or folder paths are rooted, and if not, to append a user profile root to the file path (useful for cases where file and folder paths provided by users may or may not be rooted and if working across multiple user profiles, etc.).
2.  Validating if the default downloads folder is empty, and if not, archive the items within into a date-time stamped folder (useful for situations where downloading of attachments from browser or applications does not have the option of specifying folder or file paths).
3.  Uploading files to SharePoint - utility works for either file or folder uploads and if upload has failed, files/folders are copied to a predefined local destination to avoid data loss + custom error message to inform user on the error (useful for any process that requires work with SharePoint).

This release contains 5 snippets:

1.  **Util\_CheckFolderStructureIsRoot** - This workflow is used to check if configuration file paths are full paths and skip, else add local user profile to the relative paths to complete the configuration values.
2.  **Util\_CheckLocalRootDirectory** - This workflow is used to check if a given folder structure exists on the user's machine. If not (i.e. on first run), bot will copy a mock directory from the source code stored in "Data\\Local Root Directory\\Data" into the desired location on the user's machine.
3.  **Util\_ClearDownloadsFolder** - This workflow checks if there are files in the default downloads folder and proceeds to delete them. This is used in tandem after Util\_ValidateDownloadsFolder, and in a Process Try Catch to reset the environment for the retry.
4.  **Util\_UploadFilesToSharePoint** - This workflow uses the CopyDirectory method to move files from inSourceFolderPath (usually "Data/Temp") and copies the directory into inTargetFolderPath (usually the bot output path).
5.  **Util\_ValidateDownloadsFolder** - This workflow checks if the default downloads folder has no files, else creates an archive folder within to move the files into that folder to avoid file name conflicts in future workflows.

These snippets are used to simplify file and folder level workflows and can be reused multiple times in a complex process.

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This workflow uses Excel Interop to save an input Excel's print area (on all sheets) as a PDF file into the same location.

  

It is recommended that the Excel be placed in the output folder path from the start, and the print area needs to be set in the input file before this workflow is invoked. This can be achieved by using a template file stored in the source code. 

  

**Arguments:**

  

1\. in\_excelFilePath - the file path of the Excel to be converted to PDF. If not all sheets are to be printed, please perform the removal of the sheets before this workflow is invoked.

2\. in\_DeleteExcelAfter - a boolean value to determine if the Excel will be deleted after the PDF is saved.

Windows-compatible project for converting Excel to PDF.

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This is a snippet to compare the schema/columns between 2 data tables. If there are any missing columns from either tables, they will be defined in an error message and the error will be thrown.

  

Two arguments are expected - in\_Table1 and in\_Table2, both of data table variable type.

A snippet to compare the schema/columns between 2 data tables. If there are any missing columns from either tables, they will be defined in an error message and the error will be thrown.

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