UI Automation Pauses at selected steps

Help Robot
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1

Hi Everyone,

I created my first automation where i need to perform some steps in Navision. I noticed the following few quirks about the automation which i am wondering if anyone has any advice on how to iron them out.

  1. Robot pauses at certain steps (10-15 second) before continuing. This happens without any delay before/after setting, Wait for Ready is at None. It happens especially on fields that have been added by the robot(i.e. search filter, where robot click on add row first, before keying into the search filter fields)

  2. Robot intermittently throws “SelectorNotFoundException”. I’ve checked and used Dynamic Selector, Not used AAName or IDx, and the automation can run smoothly for 10-12 times and than suddenly throws that exception. Whats even more strange is that i use the try catch and a loop to try to run that same steps again and it works. It’s stange too is that when I run on debug mode to get to that error step and stop the automation, selecting the UIExplorer on that Navision windows does not let me select anything in the windows( the whole window is green highlighted)

Anyone has any idea or experience with this?

Thank you very much.

regards
wilson

2

Anyone?

3

which version of studio are you using ? have you tried with modern activities ? Modern Design Experience

4

Hi Wei Wang,

I’m using 2021.4 with modern activities.

5

Hi

Pls try upgrading your UIAutomation package in MANAGE PACKAGES under Design tab and give a try

Cheers @wilson_cheng

6

Hi Wilson,

  1. Is this consistent ? If so, it seems the robot is taking a while to identify/validate the target, u may want to change your selector
  2. when the whole window turns green, then what would u do to bring it back ? restart Navision ?
7

Hi Wei Wang,

  1. its consistant, but i’m not sure what can be changed in the selector to improve speed. Is there any documentation on this?
  2. Yes. I will restart Navision, and the field/button is identified correctly. The automation follows a series of steps. so repeating 20-30 times , this issue will appear. Currently, my automation will stop instead of closing/kill Navision as I will need to manually purge the data that was uploaded. I’m considering try/catch each set of UI automation so that it can perform the purge when the automation fails but if we can get the selector stablised, we can avoid this.
8

HI Palanyappan,

I checked and noted that the UIAutomation package is at V21.4.4. is there anything later than this?

Thank you very much.

9

That’s the latest one
@wilson_cheng

10

Hi Wilson,

  1. there are a few ways to tweak selectors, pls refer to Selectors with Wildcards Dynamic Selectors Fuzzy Search . Also you may want to manually click/type, and use UI explorer to inspect in between steps
  2. I would suspect it’s a Navision issue, and you could implement the try catch to handle it
11

Hi Wei Wang,

I can understand that using fuzzy selectors or Dynamic selectors will help to improve the accuracy of getting the UI Element, but I’m not sure how does that help to improve speed (No Pause when element is at screen)

An example of the selector is as such:
“”

The title is static and the names are static too. It should be able to detect without any delay/minimum delay (WaitforReady is at interactive) but at the moment , The wait at this step is about 15-20 seconds. the cumulative effect on this is quite significant.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thank you very much.