I am currently working on a UiPath automation workflow that interacts with Power BI Desktop. The goal of the workflow is as follows:
Open Power BI Desktop application.
Open a specific .pbix report.
Click on External Tools in the menu bar.
From the available options, click to open Tabular Editor.
Once Tabular Editor is open, paste a predefined DAX script.
Navigate to the Query menu and execute the script.
The challenge I am facing is with selector stability – I am finding it very difficult to lock onto the required UI elements reliably, especially once Tabular Editor is launched. The automation frequently fails at this stage because the selectors are not being consistently recognized.
Has anyone successfully automated Tabular Editor (opened from Power BI Desktop) using UiPath? If so, could you please share any tips or best practices for:
Identifying stable selectors for Tabular Editor (which appears to be a .NET/WPF application).
Ensuring that the DAX script can be pasted and executed without selector failures.
Any alternative approaches (e.g., using keyboard shortcuts, APIs, or other workarounds) to achieve the same result.
I am open to suggestions, including the use of UI Automation, image-based automation, or keyboard shortcuts, if they prove more reliable.
I believe you’re using Modern activities. If the Strict and Fuzzy selectors are unstable, you can try enabling the Semantic Selector.
With Semantic Selectors, you provide a short prompt describing the target element. After indicating the element and enabling the Semantic Selector, UiPath can automatically generate the prompt for you. You can fine-tune the prompt.
At runtime, if the Strict selector fails, UiPath can fall back to the Semantic Selector, making the automation more resilient to UI changes.
first thing idx is unreliable that too 93..better open ui explorer and find more reliable attributes
use the right side top and center top panels to check multiple options…no number use attributes containing details about the element or window..those would be more stable
Alternately power BI allows you to save your query so you can try that as well instead of everytime pasting the query
The first thing I noticed is that the selector is using an idx attribute (idx='93'). These index values are usually not reliable because they can change whenever the UI layout changes.
I would recommend opening UI Explorer and looking for more stable attributes instead of relying on idx. Try to use attributes that describe the element itself (such as name, automation ID, title, or other meaningful properties) rather than positional values.
You can also test it using Get Attribute / Get Text to verify whether UiPath can identify the element reliably.
