How to get the local path of my Excel file before to launch the Robot?

Question

Hi, 
 I have a very simple robotic process that works fine. It opens and reads an Excel file stored in specific local folder and reads some cells values. The path of the Excel file is stored in an Apian Constant and I use the "Open or create Workbook" Appian service to open this file. 
 My new need would be to make the selected folder path dynamic because I need a user to be able to select a directory from an Appian Interface before to call the robotic process. 
 I've tried to use the a!fileUploadField fonction to select my Excel file, but I don't see how to get the local directory (the component gets only the filename and the new document ID). 
 Is there any way to get this local file path? 
 
 Otherwise, does a best practice could be to not use a local path, but to save the Excel file in the Appian repositiory first (the Robotic process would open the Appian document, and not the local file) ? My scenario does not need to store the Excel file in Appian, so I would prefer the 1/ solution if it is possible ? Regards

Mike Schmitt · Answer

cedric01 said: Let's say, the user want to select " c: 	emp\dir1\my file1.xlsx" 
 I think you'd have to build something manually and which makes assumptions about the local system's directory structure (as opposed to actually seeing the directory structure), since I'm not aware of any appian functionality (other than stuff that might exist strictly in the RPA space which i'm unaware of) that would give in-interface visibility over the contents of a user's filesystem.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

cedric01 said: there is a a!fileUploadField fonction which is used to upload a file to Appian from filesystem 
 AFAIK the file upload field provides no feedback to Appian about anything in a user's local system - the browser handles the actual locating of the file and by the time Appian sees anything, it's just the uploaded file itself. The internals of what the field may or may not see are unclear, but nothing is exposed to the design side that I'm aware of.

Chris · Answer

You will find that interacting with the physical filesystem is challenging at best - a!fileUploadField will not allow you to specify any physical document path. Additionally, Appian's content engines perform back-end translations on the document objects, in my experience filesystem folders are grouped by knowledge centers and document names are translated - they are stored as an ID, but not an ID you have access to such as via fn!document(doc,id) - (some hidden content engine ID translation). 
 The closest you might get to interacting with the physical drive is with the Filesystem Utilities plugin.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

when you say "local", do you actually mean within the Appian filesystem? because it almost sounds like you mean like the windows filesystem path or something, in which case all bets are off (barring the use of some super-specialized plug-in or something). 
 If you're talking about Appian folders, we have pretty high flexibility, up to and including building our own little folder explorer tools (which i've done here or there as needed). Firstly, if you have a valid file ID, then by virtue of the document() function you also have its folder ID. And then with that folder ID and the folder() function, you have the parent folder ID, and so-on all the way up to the very root directory. I'm not really clear what exactly you require here, though.

How to get the local path of my Excel file before to launch the Robot?

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