Code quality check in RPA Desktop Design Studio

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Code quality check in RPA Desktop Design Studio

    Code quality check in RPA Desktop Design Studio helps you proactively identify and resolve issues within an automation activity or an entire automation project. It runs automatically during project publishing and is based on predefined rules enabled from your connected RPA Hub instance. This feature aims to reduce errors and prevent potential problems that could disrupt your automation workflows.

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    Key Features

    • Integration with RPA Hub: Connect RPA Desktop Design Studio to an RPA Hub instance that has Code quality check enabled to access and apply the set of predefined rules.
    • Issue Detection and Reporting: When running a code quality check, issues are displayed in the Code Quality Check Results window with detailed entries.
    • Navigation and Highlighting: Double-clicking an issue entry highlights the affected component in the current activity or navigates you to the relevant activity where the issue exists, facilitating quick remediation.
    • Automatic Checks on Publish: Code quality checks run automatically when you publish an automation project, alerting you to any errors or warnings.
    • Configurable Publishing Restrictions: You can control whether packages with errors or warnings can be published by setting the property snrpafdn.restrictpackagebyseverity in RPA Hub.
    • Rule Management: View, filter, and manage active or inactive code quality rules by severity level in the View Rules window.

    Practical Benefits

    • Improved Automation Reliability: By identifying issues early, you can enhance the stability and performance of your automation projects.
    • Efficient Issue Resolution: The ability to navigate directly to problematic components accelerates troubleshooting and fixes.
    • Compliance and Standards: The code quality check follows compliance rules that help ensure your automation adheres to best practices.

    Next Steps for ServiceNow Customers

    • Ensure your RPA Desktop Design Studio is connected to an RPA Hub instance with Code quality check enabled.
    • Familiarize yourself with the predefined rules and their severity levels to understand the impact of reported issues.
    • Use the Code Quality Check Results window actively during development and before publishing to maintain high-quality automation projects.
    • Configure publishing restrictions as needed in RPA Hub to enforce quality standards across your automation packages.

    You can use code quality check in RPA Desktop Design Studio to proactively find the issues in an automation activity or the complete automation project. When you publish an automation project, an in-built code quality check is also performed. Code quality check enables you to reduce the number of errors and prevent potential issues that may hinder your automation.

    Code quality check overview

    Code quality check in RPA Desktop Design Studio is based on the pre-defined set of rules that are enabled from the RPA Hub instance. You must connect to the instance that has Code quality check to RPA Desktop Design Studio before you start using Code quality check. For more information on how to configure Code quality check from RPA Hub, see Code quality check in RPA Hub RPA Desktop Design Studio. For more information on the pre-defined set of rules, see Code quality rules list in RPA Hub.

    When you check an activity or the complete automation project by using Code quality check, the issue results and details are displayed as a list of entries in the Code Quality Check Results window. The following example shows the window.

    Figure 1. Code Quality Check Results window
    Code Quality Check Results window where you can see the results of the check.
    You can double-click the result entries for components in the Code Quality Check Results window for the following scenarios:
    • If an affected component is in the current activity, it’s highlighted in the current activity.
    • If the affected component is in a different activity, you can navigate to the activity. The component gets highlighted. See the following example to see the component highlight in RPA Desktop Design Studio.
    Figure 2. Component highlight in RPA Desktop Design Studio
    Component highlighted in RPA Desktop Design Studio after the result entry is double-clicked from the Code Quality Check Results window.

    Code quality check in publishing an automation project

    Code quality check is automatically performed when you publish the automation project. If your project has code quality check issues, the Code Quality Check Results window is displayed with the result entries. For more information on how to publish an automation project, see Publish an automation project in RPA Desktop Design Studio in RPA Desktop Design Studio.

    Note:
    You can publish a package with errors or a combination of errors and warnings only if the property sn_rpa_fdn.restrict_package_by_severity is set as No restriction in RPA Hub. For more information on this property, see Configure RPA Hub properties. For more information on the compliance rules that the Code Quality Check feature follows if a package is published from RPA Desktop Design Studio, see Code quality check compliance for RPA Desktop Design Studio in RPA Desktop Design Studio.

    You can view the list of active and inactive rules from the View Rules window. You can filter the rules by their severity level from this window.