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Problem: old UI-elements being used

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Posted on by RobinA

Hi,

Update: I managed to get this to work by manually moving mouse, but when running the flow again, even after changing the desktop resolution to the same resolution as when the flow was created (1920 x 1080, and now scaling etc), the mouse pointer is still off when it moves (about a 200 px X-axis and 100 px Y-axis). Does anyone have any good explanation for this? To me this doesn't make sense.

I have a very repetitive task that I would like to create a flow for that I can re-use.

What is it? It's a UI flow that runs, goes into a specific web-url, changes a bunch of settings and then finishes.
This is useful because this is a learning management system and the flow goes into a course, presses some settings, types in text and this can (at least in theory) be used on any course as long as I give the url to the settings page and start from there.

The problem: when I enter a different course URL than the one i used to record the flow, the flow stops already at the first "Click UI-element". When I investigate, I can see that the name from UI-elements are from the original I used to record.

Here in the settings you can see that the "Window 'Test course'...." is the one I want to use that has a completely different name.

How do I fix this so? Any ideas?

Really appreciate the help

Best regards,
Robin

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Power Automate Desktop

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mattias1172 on at

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You may need to change the selectors for the page in the advanced screen. Click on the UI Elements link on the far right side, find the element, click the ... and click edit, click edit again, and check the selectors. It sounds like the element names between each course may be different.

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RobinA 40 on at

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Hi!

Thanks so much for explaining this, I didn't know that you could change these. The problem is, however, that this is the kind of process you do once (settings for each course) and then you're done. Am I understanding this right that UI-automations (at least in my case) will be hard to re-use?

I managed to find something that works though. That's making the mouse go to pixel X, left klick, send keys from the keyboard etc. The problem with this solution however, is that it tied to the resolution to the screen and might behave differently on different setups.

May I ask how you would go about this?

Regards,
Robin

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mattias1172 on at

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PAD flows are really good at doing repetitive tasks. When you start to add inconsistency or change, that's when it gets less reliable and more difficult.

In your case, the way the website is coded adds this change by the backend data changing between each course. PAD is not great at handling this automatically.

Moving the mouse and sending a click can temporarily solve this as you have seen, but should a ui element be moved on the screen or the resolution change, the flow will likely fail. There isn't much you can do about the website changing. For the resolution, you can refer to this document to force set the resolution: Set screen resolution on unattended mode - Power Automate | Microsoft Docs

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ryule 929 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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You might also try using an image instead of Pixel.
I've found using the Advanced algorithm with a tolerance of 15 has been reliable across resolution changes.

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VJR 7,635 on at

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Haven't tried this but there is also an action called as "Set screen resolution".

Maybe you can first set the desired resolution at the beginning of the flow.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-in/power-automate/desktop-flows/actions-reference/workstation#setscreenresolution

And another feature related to resolution looks to be in Aug 2022.

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RobinA 40 on at

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I truly appreciate your feedback, help and explanation as I'm learning how to use PAD.

This explains this well. Thank you so much.

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RobinA 40 on at

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Image? I have not come across this option. Would you mind linking it?

Robin

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RobinA 40 on at

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This is a great idea, and it should make the flow more consistent. I mean, if the two screens support 1980 x 1080, and if the flow always sets screen resolution to 1980 x 1080 when running, then the "move mouse to x, y pxl" should work every time?

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RobinA 40 on at

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Hi again,

I tried this, but the mouse is still off even when using the same resolution as when the original flow was created. I updated my post with this information if you would like to have a look.

Regards
Robin

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ryule 929 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Within that, you can "send click" and change different settings on how it finds the images (yellow highlights above). I've also found that you need to add a 3-5 seconds of wait time right before this step.

And for the record, I have not had success using the set screen resolution step on unattended bots.

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