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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Manually Change UI Ele...
Power Automate
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Manually Change UI Element Parent

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Posted on by 12

So I'm running into the following scenario an it becoming a major hinderance. 

Take the following scenario: 
I want to make a flow that when activated will look at the current foreground chrome window and get elements from it's webpage like say the title of a youtube video in the active window. 

So I select the chrome window and the h1 title for the youtube video. 

In this case it creates a very specific Top level core selector that includes the title of the tab the selector was grabbed from. 

MatteCrystal_0-1615339513590.png

Now I already know how to make the parent selector generic so that it only looks to detect if the window is a google chrome process. 

MatteCrystal_1-1615339579394.png

However, the parent selector still has the specific tab name as it's name. so I rename it to just be google chrome. 

MatteCrystal_2-1615339658470.png

However, this is where I start to run into issues. Lets say I want to add a new selector to get the youtube video description. Well I hit get selector and select the description and it will make a brand new parent and sub element selector again where the parent has the google tab title in it's name. 


The elements I'm getting are generic and should work with all youtube pages so I want this new description selector to be placed under the Google Chrome parent element. But I can't seem to move the sub elements to a new parent element. Nor can I manually create a new selector that is automatically placed under my renamed Google Chrome Parent Selector.

To make matters worse lets say I make the entire macro in one day using that specific tab selector name that was auto generated based on current tab title. Well if I come back months or years later to edit this macro I will have to find the exact webpage I made the original macro on otherwise it will create a new parent. 

So how can I move sub elements to a different parent or manually tell PAD to add my selectors under a specific parent when selecting them? 


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  • fraenK Profile Picture
    2,125 on at

    You're right, managing UI element selectors is a pain in the ass.

    The top level name doesn't really matter but if you really want to change it, then you can manually edit the JSON file "controlRepo.appmask" under %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Power Automate Desktop\Console\Workspace\YourFlowID2 by moving around array items under "Selectors".

  • bernabasket Profile Picture
    74 on at

    Hi everyone,

    Any news on this? Might this be a voting idea?

    When you starting to get bigger PAD flows, it would be good to rename parent UI Screen and still be able to add new elements if necessary to that same parent. Otherwise it becomes a real mess 😭

     

    @fraenK , I've tried to locate JSON file but apparently the version I'm seeing in File Explorer is not the most recent (i.e. I've saved a PAD flow, let's say, at 10h05 and the date/time of the last modified file in File Explorer doesn't match)

  • rmortier Profile Picture
    103 on at

    I haven't tried the JSON file yet but I'm running into this exact issue as well. It doesn't really break anything, it's just a huge annoyance. Hoping this is addressed in future updates.

     

    Edit: @fraenK that folder is empty for me, even after saving the flow.

     

    rmortier_0-1658341879356.png

     

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