Need help with the UI selector

Help Activities
, , ,
1

Hi,
Below is my activity, i have 100 unique accounts i need the bot to click download, download button next to the month,
For the first 10 bills are correctly click and download but subsequent bills it just repeating the last bills. I am not sure whats wrong… Anyone can help pls?

image

UI selector for dates
image

UI selector for click download button

image
image665×559 15.2 KB

2

Hi,

idx numbers are usually very unreliable as a selector. Also, if you want to use Element Exists you should check the output-boolean in an If-activity and respond accordingly.

Here is my tip for the download buttons: Examine the selector of the download button with UI-Explorer Tool (in Design Tab of Studio). Check if you can add any identifying elements (e.g. date attribute) to the selector and copy that to your activity selector.

You can also try using the date element as an anchor (find element activity works well) in an anchor base activity and then click on the corresponding download button.

Happy automating
Lukas

3

Hi @lukasziebold , sorry, i am new to RPA, don’t quite understand. How to do this part “Check if you can add any identifying elements (e.g. date attribute) to the selector and copy that to your activity selector.”?

Here is my UI selector for both, how do i know which 1 i need to select?
For Dates

image
image1596×667 37.5 KB

For Click button

image
image1559×669 40.7 KB

4

No worries, we were all new to RPA at some point. You did well.

In the UI Explorer sometimes you get identifying elements in the unselected items (maybe rowIndex is the same as in the date etc.) and you can just select them from there. Practice makes perfect.

Unfortunately your button doesn’t seem to have any identifying elements. Have you tried an anchor base?

5

Do u mean anchor base activity ? Or the anchor inside the UI selector?

image
image810×198 11.5 KB

6

I mean the anchor base activity, but it doesn’t hurt to examine it with the UI Explorer first.

Working on tricky UI usually involves lots of examining selectors, testing out different methods, trial and error. You’ll get a feeling what works best for which application or website and how to apply different methods of UiAutomation.

7

I have tried using anchor base activity… But the bot keep searching and search the records without clicking the download button… I also tried different UI elements inside the selectors but it can’t work or unreliable.

image
image932×239 9.25 KB

8

Ok, what else, what else?

First - are you using the Modern Design Experience? There are some more tricks for UiAutomation in the newer versions.

Second - have you examined the property explorer in UI Explorer? I solved issues like this in the past by getting all elements in a table with Find Children activity, then looping through these elements and checking attributes with one or more Get Attribute activities. If you find the right one, you can click it.

Third - any luck with keystrokes or hotkeys? Sometimes you can click the field you know and then press TAB to get to your desired element.

Fourth - you can try cheating by indicating the label in the click activity, then using an offset to actually click the button next to the label (not recommended, as different screen resolutions or any application update can mess up your work)

Fifth - if you find the anchor (label), you could keep trying to hit the button. Try around with different selector variations. You can also try to use OCR clicks with an anchor.