Fixing the Foundations: Making Custom Workflow Analyzer Rules Usable

UiPath includes a static analysis tool—Workflow Analyzer—for checking code quality in automations. Beyond a solid set of vendor-provided rules, it supports custom rules—essential for enforcing governance standards at scale. But creating and using these rules today is fragile, undocumented, and frustrating. As a result, adoption remains low, and quality control suffers.

For Automation Program Owners and Delivery Managers

Custom automations are often small and fast-moving—but lack of support for custom rules creates real risks:

• Inconsistent quality and growing tech debt
• Manual reviews that don’t scale—or get skipped entirely due to cost constraints
• Code-quality rules driven by governance, but disconnected from developer experience

Proposal: Establish a viable strategy for custom Workflow Analyzer rules. This includes defining ownership, investing in templates and validation tools, and ensuring alignment between governance goals and developer experience.

For the Community (Developers & Partners)

Custom Workflow Analyzer rules offer real value—but most developers avoid them due to complexity and lack of support. The intent is there, but the path is broken:

• The SDK is undocumented and unsupported
• No starter kits, templates, or working examples
• Testing and deployment are unreliable and poorly explained

Call to Action: Let’s make custom rules practical. We can:

• Define and share working patterns
• Create and maintain open-source starter kits
• Build testing harnesses and validation tools
• Align on packaging and deployment conventions

With coordinated effort, we can lower the barrier to entry and build a foundation others can build on.

For UiPath (Vendor)

Custom Workflow Analyzer rules are positioned as an extensibility point for governance—but without proper support, the feature is nearly unusable in real-world delivery.

• No official documentation or SDK guidance
• No test framework, diagnostics, or validation tools
• No reliable deployment or packaging mechanism
• No visibility into rule execution or developer behavior

Message: You’ve built the extension point—now make it usable. What’s needed:

• A documented SDK with clear onboarding paths
• A reference implementation and starter template
• Diagnostics, test harnesses, and CLI support
• Stable, versioned integration points
• Visibility and feedback mechanisms for rule execution

The community is ready to build. Enterprise teams are eager to adopt. But the tooling and support must catch up to the promise.