I’ve built an attended automation flow that takes a user-uploaded CSV file and inputs the data into a website hosted on our internal network. The automation runs on the user’s local machine, but the challenge is that the user needs to continue working uninterrupted while the flow runs in the background.
I’ve experimented with the WebDriver protocol, which initially worked but later became unstable and unreliable. I also tried using Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode, but it failed to open properly and didn’t function as expected.
The flow contains a lot of “Click” and “Type Into” activities, which I know can lead to issues because is an UI activity, but I’ve attempted to switch them to simulate click or type into (just changing input mode), but unfortunately, that didn’t resolve the problem either.
I’ll be attaching the list of packages I’m using and an overview of the flow to provide more context.
If this is a known limitation, could anyone suggest an alternative approach—or perhaps another tool or vendor—that could help me achieve this goal without interrupting the user?
As per my knowledge,
UiPath cannot run UI automation fully in the background because it needs screen focus. You can try using a background process for non-UI tasks. If the website has an API, use API calls instead of UI automation. Using browser extensions for Chrome or Edge can improve stability.
Running the browser in headless mode may also help if the site supports it. If possible, move the automation to an unattended robot on a virtual machine to avoid user interruption.
You should have the attended automation just be the upload file step. Its only action should be to copy the file to a folder and then create a queue item referencing the file. Then an unattended automation should pick up the queue item and do the “input the data into a website” part. In fact there really isn’t a reason for the attended automation. The user could just copy the file to a folder, and the automation could be designed to look for and process any files in that folder.
