Automation data elements

Interrogated items and components added to automations or global contexts appear and are directly available in the Object Explorer. Sometimes, more creative and nonstandard methods are required to access elements that are not found directly from those interrogated items or added components. The two following techniques are often used to access data elements:

• Extracting a proxy from a data result on a design block
• Using a This property of an automation parameter or variable from the Object Inspector

In Pega Robot Studio™, creating proxies within automations meets the concise and legible coding standards. A proxy is an agent of a real object that provides the developer with access to methods to adjust, search, or manipulate the proxy data. It is often required to use proxies when creating automations incorporating components that contain collections of complex objects such as the PDFComponent, ExcelConnecter, ListViews, and DataTables. Note that the proxy value is not valid until the automation passes the data port where it was originally extracted.

The This property method is best used within a procedure automation that contains input parameters and allows the developer to minimize the automation design complexity by reducing the crisscrossing of execution and data links throughout an automation.

Either concept provides the same access to the data element's properties, events, and methods for use within an automation.