Web page input box - Visibility = 3

v20.10.4 - Using UI Explorer, looking at an input box on a web page - on one computer the input box “Visibility” property = 0, and on another computer, the exact same web page, the same input box “Visibility” property = 3. All other properties are identical.

  • Why the difference?
  • What does Visibility = 3 indicate? I can only find references to 0 or 1.

Thanks,
Mark

If you look at the documentation page for UiExplorer, it states that they are properties of the control captured by the Explorer that do not appear in the selector and cannot be changed.

So, I don’t know how this would directly impact your the automation unless the visibility attribute has a direct influence on how the Robot finds a control on one machine (where visibility =1 ) and the other machine (where visibility=3)

For example, this is a theoretical assumption: Visibility = 1 might indicate a window that may be below or above another window depending on how the order of visibility is decided when there are many visible/invisible windows opened on a computer.

But I’m still trying to understand, how you plan to use this in your automation.

thanks

Andy, I guess a bit of context would be helpful :slight_smile: I have a process in Production for about 6 months, running every 30 minutes; no problem. Until 2 weeks ago, then it started failing. But it only fails when running in Prod environment, in unattended mode.

I debugged it and tracked the problem to a specific internal web page, and found that I could fix it by changing some properties (Click Before Typing, Simulate Click, etc.). But I still don’t know why it behaves differently on one bot than it does on the other. So I was using UIExplorer to do a thorough comparison of the web page on both computers, and everything was identical except for the “Visibility” property. So I was just trying to understand the property and wondered if it could possibly be the root of the problem.

Thanks,
Mark

Understood. You are correct to use background processing such as SendWindowsMessage or SimulateClick to make your automation run behind locked screens.

It is obvious that there are fundamental (and below the surface, unseen) differences between your screen and the PROD environment. And thank goodness that the visibility is not a direct player in the selector. One can only imagine what would happen if this was the case.

One way to check for this consistency is to run a pilot test between the two environments, but for an entirely different application. Do the comparisons still show visibility=3 on PROD?

Also, on the Orchestrator, I think there are Robot settings that you can tune. Something we haven’t had the need to change, but this could be one place to check if it minimizes failures (or has and effect on visibility?).

Are you positive that 2 weeks ago something did not cause the selectors on your UI screens to change leading to the failure? We have been subject to code hypnosis ourselves and it was painful!

A year or so ago one of our ServiceNow selectors began failing on PROD. On the UI, all report columns were intact and our SNOW team had not changed anything. After much head scratching, we found that I, or someone else had unintentionally ordered the Report by Descending on the very column the Robot was using in a Find Element activity *selector.

On Dev the column was set to ascending so tests showed the selector was pristine, but on Prod, it just kept failing! It so happens that when ordered by descending, the CSS class name of the column had changed leading to the abrupt failure! Once we put in a wildcard on the CSS Class, the problem went away.*

It depends on what kind of webpage also any other icon is added even two different webpage
For example each icon got their index, if there are two more icon is added the index will add 2.

Solution is don’t use those index or int to locate the button or element, otherwise you have to also put some logic thinking on it.

Thanks Raymond, but the property in question is “Visibility” not “Index”. However your point is a good one which I will keep in mind for the future.

Thanks Andy. UIPath support directed me to change a few of those robot settings (screen resolution, etc.) but it did not have any noticeable affect and did not change the Visibility value. I’ll return to this investigation when time permits. Many thanks for your thoughtful input. Rgds, Mark

1 Like