Automation Browser - sometimes jumps out of focus

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Posted on by DamoBird365

8,942 Microsoft Employee

Hi again,

Another observation and I hope the community can help me, I have noticed that on random occasions the same automation will fail with unable to click button and if I run the process in attended mode, the Automation Browser will load, begin clicking and then the icon with start to flash in the task bar. If I am quick enough to click on the taskbar icon, the flow will resume but this isn't always required, in fact most of the time the process runs as expected I thought I was having problems with button clicks but I wonder if somehow, the application is loosing focus and what really jumps out at me during testing is the (sometimes) flashing taskbar icon.

Anyone got any experience of this and how it might be overcome? I am yet to realize if it is totally random or if it's always the same action, but I know it doesn't happen all the time.

Damien

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Power Automate Desktop

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NikosMoutzou Microsoft Employee on at

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Hello @DamoBird365 !
This is strange behavior but you could use action 'Focus window', of the 'UI automation' module, for focusing on the Automation browser window and perform the necessary actions.

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DamoBird365 8,942 Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @NikosMoutzou

Would you propose I focus before each UI button press?
Focus Window
Press Button
Focus Window
Press Button
Focus Window
Press Button
Focus Window
Press Button

Or can you propose an error handling type scenario where a timeout occurs? How would I re-focus and try the button press again? I would really appreciate an example error handling step(s) for that type of scenario.

Damien

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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If it is always the same window, you could handle through an error.

Put all the Press Buttons in an Error Block, and send the Error Block to your Error Subflow which only has 1 command which is to Focus Window. After "Go to Error Subflow" you should have an option to "Repeat Action" so it will try to "Press Button" again where it left off.

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DamoBird365 8,942 Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @MichaelAnnis

That is a good description of what I can do!

I have tried and tested this and can now recover.

My proof of concept flow simply tries to press the view button on notepad, but if it times out, if runs the sub flow to call notepad and then repeats the failed action.

This is the use case I am looking for to bring my RPA to the next level of error handling. Thanks

Damien

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DamoBird365 8,942 Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @MichaelAnnis / @NikosMoutzou

I have implemented the solution I detailed above but I wanted to share my observations and look for some more advice if possible? The RPA will log in to a site via the Automation Browser, click on Web Elements and then Desktop Elements (as they are easier to catch) but when the RPA switches from Web to Desktop, the taskbar icon begins to flash and the first "press button in window" fails (note sometimes and not always!). Using the error block I can now recover, and I have tried to click on window, focus on window, maixmise window, all without success. The thing that worked for me was capturing the Automation Browser Icon on the taskbar and simply clicking on it. This stops the icon from flashing and then results in the button presses picking up where it got stuck.

It's great that the error block recovers from the scenario but I would like to understand why the Automation Browser goes into a state where its icon on the taskbar flashes and the PAD Flow is unable to click on Window Buttons.

Damien

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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It is possible that the UI elements change when it is in a "warning" situation vs a stable one. I have ran into something similar where my Excel Window should be "Title.xlsx - Excel"; however, during the process, I save the workbook, and now, the window title is "Title.xlsx - Saved - Excel" and none of my UI elements work. If you have the time, I would capture the Window UI elements both with and without the warning, and compare them side-by-side. In my previous example, I simply unchecked "Name" from the Window UI element selectors, and it simply looked for the only open Excel window, which was good enough for that flow, so I didn't run into that problem anymore.

Other fixes can be changing the selector to "Contains" instead of "Exact Match". So, in my example above, I could have simply changed the name selector to "Contains" "Title", and it would have worked for both the original and saved versions.

Hope this helps.

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