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UI Automation Activities

Last updated Oct 28, 2024

v24.10

v24.10.7

Release date: October 21, 2024

Improvements

Added full Computer Vision support for the Table Extraction wizard in Studio Web, similar to the desktop version.

Expressions are now allowed for the Action property of the Check/Uncheck activity both in Windows and cross-platform projects.

v24.10.6

Release date: October 21, 2024

UI Automation Modern

Added the AI-Enhanced mode option for the Close Popup activity. This option can leverage AI to close the pop-up if the toggle button is enabled. When the toggle button is enabled, each close action via AI consumes one AI unit.

The Indicate on screen option is now available for the Use Application/Browser activity in cross-platform projects to enable the selection of desktop applications. If the Enable Java automation (preview) project setting (Project Settings > UI Automation > Generic) is set to False, you can indicate only Chrome browser windows. If set to True, you can also indicate Java applications.

For desktop applications, added the Match exact title property for the Use Application/Browser activity in cross-platform projects.

The Pause selection button in the Selection Options helper can now be used both for time-based selection pauses and Pause/Resume functionality with no timeouts.

The Table Extraction wizard is now available in coded workflows.

In Windows projects, when a Modern activity is added in the Designer panel, the scope is now automatically included. This applies to activities which require a Use Application/Browser scope activity and do not use the new activity card design.

The App/Web Recorder is now supported in coded workflows, allowing you to generate code automation.

Added support in both the Classic and Modern Inject JS Script activity for async scripts. Also, the activity is now available in coded workflows.

Object Repository

When Enforce Object Repository setting is set to Yes in Studio > Settings > Design > Design style, a banner is displayed in the application card to remind you that you can solve at once all validation errors related to UI elements not being synchronized to Object Repository by using the Synchronize Object Repository tool. The tool also synchronizes linked objects it they are no longer in sync with Object Repository.

Object Repository is now enforced for new projects. The new project setting, Automatically add UI elements to Object Repository (Project Settings > UI Automation Modern > Generic), is set to True by default for new Windows and cross-platform projects created with UI Automation Activities version 24.10.6 or higher as a dependency.

The Scan Wizard in Capture All for Object Repository has a new option for capturing text elements.

Improved Capture all elements window positioning to avoid overlapping with elements on the screen. If the window overlaps the elements, it is now hidden for the duration of the extraction.

UI Automation Classic

The UI-PRR-001 Workflow Analyzer rule now considers the SimulateClick and SendWindowMessages project settings (Project Settings > UI Automation Classic > Mouse Events), showing a workflow validation warning if both projects settings, or none, have the same value.

Trigger-based attended automation

Added support for monitoring the chrome.webRequest events:

Web request: Before redirect
Web request: Before request
Web request: Before send HTTP headers
Web request: Completed
Web request: Error occurred
Web request: HTTP headers received
Web request: Response started
Web request: Send HTTP headers

These events are available in the Event type drop-down list from in the Application Event Trigger activity for webpages identified by <html> selectors.

Semantic activities

Added the Enable validation option for the Fill Form and Set Value activities. If the option is enabled and the verification fails at runtime, an exception is thrown. This is useful for slow or unresponsive applications or any other execution related issues. The option is available in coded workflows as well.

The Fill Form activity now supports unstructured data as input.

Implemented semantic matching in the Set Value activity for radio groups and drop-downs.

Computer Vision

In pure Computer Vision scenarios such as remote desktop environments where there is no available remote runtime and therefore no access to selectors, Table Extraction mirrors the Driver functionality. It outputs checked or unchecked strings that correspond to the state of radio buttons or checkboxes.

Optimized variable and argument evaluation to reduce duplicate requests. Previously requests were made both to the Computer Vision endpoint and the UiPath Screen OCR endpoint. Now, if variables and arguments point to the Computer Vision endpoint, a single request is made. However, if the endpoint is not in the domain, a request is made to the UiPath Screen OCR endpoint as well.

When you browse to the Computer Vision endpoint, the model version is now displayed.

SAP

Added support to Extract Table Data and Expand Tree activities for SAP Fiori user interface.

All SAP activities are now compatible with UI Automation Modern, except for SAP Session Attributes Change Trigger.

Discontinued support for outdated Internet Explorer used for automating SAP web interfaces.

Browser extensions

The Extension for Safari is now generally available.

Remote Automation Support

We have introduced UiPath Remote Runtime compatibility for Amazon WorkSpaces using the PCoIP (PC over IP) protocol. This includes a newly developed Extension for Amazon WorkSpaces and an updated UiPath Remote Runtime that facilitates communication with the new extension.

macOS UI Automation

macOS UI Automation is now available in preview for desktop applications. In addition to Chrome browser support, you can now also automate Safari browser windows and Java desktop applications (the new Enable Java automation (preview) project setting needs to be set to True).

Bug fixes

Selecting a single table item triggered the entire DOM-Tree (180K rows) to load as a selector, causing the software to crash.
Indicating the same object in the App/Web Recorder throws an error message stating the screenshot is being used by another program.
Starting a new Firefox instance in Private browsing mode when having a Firefox instance already running causes the process to throw a Could not open target application runtime error.
When trying to indicate the UI elements of a Java dialog displayed by a Java application in an Edge extension, the Java dialog would close.
The Click offset property, listed under the Target property of Modern activities, is now enabled and can be configured from the Properties panel.
When extracting a Computer Vision table with the Table is scrollable option enabled in the Table Extraction wizard, this previously initiated a scroll by using the selected input method from the Use Application/Browser activity. The scroll is now executed using the Hardware Events input method.
The Get Attribute activity allowed you to indicate a Computer Vision-only target, but provided attributes from the WND selector even in a Remote Desktop with no UiPath Remote Runtime installed. Now, only Computer Vision checkboxes and Computer Vision radio buttons can be indicated from this activity when selectors are not available.
When using only Computer Vision as a targeting method in Unified Target, the auto-anchor could only be a Computer Vision element. Now, the auto-anchor uses selector information as well, if available.
Due to faulty text extraction, Verify Execution failed for the Type Into activity when the target is found at runtime using Computer Vision or Image targeting methods.

Known issues

The Use Application/Browser scope activity is not automatically added for these activities:

Check/Uncheck
Drag and Drop
Extract Table Data
For Each UI Element
Get URL
Inject Js Script

v24.10.5

Release date: October 21, 2024

UiPath Clipboard AI

Added support for Clipboard AI 2024.10.5.

v24.10.3

Release date: August 12, 2024

Scaffold your UI Automation

When Allow Autopilot is set to No in the Automation Ops policy for Studio Web, the Generate UI Automation activities using Autopilot icon from the top right corner of the informative screenshot box changes to Scaffold your UI Automation using the Recorder.

v24.10.2

Release date: July 16, 2024

Controlling Autopilot capabilities

Note:

Erratum - added August 12, 2024

The second option, adding a AI Trust Layer policy and disabling the Enable calls to third party AI models through AI Trust Layer toggle button, does not restrict you at the moment from generating activities using the Autopilot Recorder for UI Automation.

Autopilot is enabled by default for all users.

You can disable Autopilot capabilities via Automation Ops governance policies in two ways:

By adding a Studio Web policy and setting the Allow Autopilot option to No.
By adding a AI Trust Layer policy and disabling the Enable calls to third party AI models through AI Trust Layer toggle button.

When either one of these options is disabled, you can still use the Autopilot Recorder for UI Automation, but you cannot generate activities via text prompts, you can just manually add activities in the Recorder.

v24.10.1

Release date: July 1, 2024

Autopilot Recorder for UI Automation

We are excited to introduce our latest feature, the Autopilot Recorder for UI Automation. This AI-powered tool is available in Studio Web and allows you to build UI Automation sequences and populate them into your canvas. You can generate activities via a natural language prompt or manually add them in the Recorder.

The Recorder allows you to navigate through the application you want to automate using the Test and Continue 'prompt' buttons. The Test button executes all current activities you have generated or built, transitioning you to the next application state. If your prompt is not fully covered, the Continue 'prompt' generates the necessary activities to complete it. Working together, these two buttons enable a seamless progression through your process of scaffolding UI Automation sequences.

For more details about the Recorder, refer to the Autopilot Recorder for UI Automation page.

For an extensive overview of the Autopilot initiative, check out the Autopilot guide.

v24.10.0

Release date: July 1, 2024

General improvements

Added custom support for BasicTreeTable and JxTreeTable Java controls.
ClosePopup, SetRuntimeBrowser, and SetValue activities can now be used from coded workflows.
To enhance security, the output .xaml file does not include the FriendlyName property anymore.
Added support in the Extract Table Data activity for DevExpress grid.
The UI-USG-011 Workflow Analyzer rule now ignores selectors with idx=* because this is a valid case used in non-greedy search.

UI Automation Modern

When running in Attended mode or debugging in Studio, if the execution stops due to a UI element not being found, a dialog box is displayed on the screen. Previously, only the error message was shown. Currently, several options in the dialog box allow you to decide what to do next. This functionality can be enabled via the Ask user on runtime error project setting (UI Automation Modern > Generic). In Debug mode, you can Save the changes when the execution ends, so that the next workflow run starts directly with the correct selector. In addition to the Retry, Ignore, and Continue options, you also have the option to Indicate the element. This particular option is available only for the following activities:

Check/Uncheck
Check Element
Click
Get Attribute
Get Text
Highlight
Hover
Inject Js Script
Keyboard Shortcuts
Select Item
Set Text
Take Screenshot
Type Into
Use Application/Browser

The new Set Runtime Browser activity allows you to easily configure the browser type used throughout your automation executions. The selection remains effective until the execution ends unless overwritten by another Set Runtime Browser activity. This enhancement simplifies the process of running automations across different browsers, minimizing the need to manually configure selectors and to duplicate testing code. The activity is available in both Windows and cross-platform projects.

The new Close Popup activity is designed to address automation disruptions from unexpected pop-ups. This AI-based activity efficiently closes any detected pop-ups, whether they are native, alerts, found on a browser page, or within a desktop application by semantically matching the labels configured for possible close buttons. The activity is available in both Windows and cross-platform projects.

The Inject Js Script activity is now supported in cross-platform workflows. Additionally, this activity can now leverage the power of UI Automation Modern to identify targets through Unified Target and use stored elements from Object Repository.

For new projects, verify execution is enabled by default for Click, Hover, Keyboard Shortcuts, and Type Into activities. This can be disabled for the Type Into activity by setting the Always auto-verify typed text project setting (UI Automation Modern > Verify execution) to False. For the Click, Hover, and Keyboard Shortcuts activities, you need to disable the Display verification for Click, Hover, Keyboard Shortcuts activities project setting.

The Check App State activity now allows you to select the Indicate in any app option while inside a Use Application/Browser activity, avoiding the need for a new application card when checking the application states for windows or elements outside the scope of the current application card.

Exposed the Arguments property in the Use Application/Browser activity for cross-platform projects. The property was already available for Windows projects.

You now have better control over the target URL in the Use Browser activity in cross-platform projects by being able to open the URL from within the activity itself. If the URL is already open, you can bring it into focus or open it again in a new tab.

The following Workflow Analyzer rules, previously exclusive to Classic activities, now apply to Modern activities as well:

UI-ANA-016
UI-ANA-017
UI-DBP-013
UI-PRR-004
UI-REL-001
UI-SEC-004
UI-USG-011

To help you address the matching issue in the event of a target search failure with fuzzy selector enabled as a targeting method, a warning message highlighting the closest matches is displayed on the screen. The closest matches are not listed if you altered the default selector by adding or removing selector nodes or if the search failed because of multiple matches.

Added a Do not show again checkbox in the Target application could not be identified dialog box. When selected, if the application is not in the correct state and you want to edit the target, the dialog box is no longer displayed and you are taken directly to the selection screen.

Optimized the overlapping behavior for targets and anchors by narrowing the rectangle border and positioning the labels where they can be clearly seen.

Duplicate targets are now displayed in the selection screen on demand. To check/hide duplicate targets, select the Show/Hide duplicates toggle button.

Enhanced the App/Web Recorder functionality by customizing available activities based on element types. Now, different activities appear when indicating elements, making it faster to find and select relevant actions. The following activities are available:

Default to all elements:
- Click
- Take Screenshot
- Highlight
For labels:
- Get text
For editable text boxes:
- Get text
- Type into
For drop-downs and list boxes:
- Select item
- Get text
For buttons:
- Click
- Get text

You can now check the current value of a variable in the selection screen without having to access the variable context menu. To do so, simply hover over the variable from the selector tag and the value is displayed as a tooltip.

Added the Launch Application option in Table Extraction wizard when editing in offline mode.

Trigger-based attended automation

Added in the Application Event Trigger activity two new types of events that can be monitored for WND, CTRL, and UIA UI elements: Click and the Key pressed. Until now, the Click and the Key pressed events could be monitored separately by using the Click Event Trigger or the Keypress Event Trigger activity, respectively.

Enhanced support to include monitoring of Edge IE Mode native events, primarily assisting legacy applications that can only run on Internet Explorer. All existing web events for WEBCTRL elements are now also supported on browser pages utilizing Edge IE Mode via the Application Event Trigger activity.

Building upon the functionality of automating standalone applications with native embedded browsers such as Slack, Discord, or Electron, we have incorporated support for native monitoring inside managed embedded browsers, such as CefSharp, in this release.

The support for monitoring the Text selection changed event was added for application built on the Microsoft UI Automation framework, such as Word, Outlook, Excel, or OneNote.

Added HTML native monitoring support for web pages with active CSP loaded using WebView2 or Qt WebView widgets embedded in native applications. The Enable WebView2 Native Automation project setting needs to be set to True.

Added several HTML window events for a web page identified via <html> + <webctrl> selectors:

Tab navigation started
Tab navigation completed
Window focus changed
Window bounds changed
Window created
Window removed

Semantic activities

Experience the simplicity and effectiveness of form automation with our most recent Semantic activities, available both in Windows and cross-platform projects.

The Extract Form Data activity is designed with form data in mind. It creates custom type objects that are ideal tokens for passing structured data along your automation pipeline. These custom type objects can also be used in the Fill Form or Set Value activities or for populating data entities.

The Fill Form activity can use as input any structured data object: DocumentData, Dictionary, DataEntity, DataRow, DataTable, JSON file, even custom types, like those produced as output by the Extract Form Data activity. The data schema is automatically extracted at runtime and AI semantically matched with the destination form fields, which is then inputted into the corresponding form. You just need to indicate a data source and the destination form is automatically picked up from the Use Application/Browser activity.

The Set Value activity is a simplified version of the Fill Form activity, focusing on just one UI element. This activity simplifies the process of data entry. Regardless of the form element, whether it is a text box, a drop-down, a checkbox, a radio button, and so forth, this activity adapts to the element type, enhancing your form automation process. It can even deal with date pickers and groups of radio buttons.

Computer Vision

Computer Vision has successfully transitioned into cross-platform projects and it is now fully available in Unified Target. This represents a significant step forward as it allows you to automate scenarios without selectors, not just in Windows-based projects, but also in Studio Desktop cross-platform projects and in Studio Web.

This release introduces our new Vision Transformer AI model. Due to the new Vision Transformer architecture, UI elements detection in Computer Vision-based automations is faster and more precise across the board. This leads to less errors and speeds up your automation workflows. It particularly brings noticeable improvements in table detection, supporting various table structures and sizes. Due to higher GPU requirements, this model is available only on the UiPath Cloud Server.

Added full Computer Vision support to the Select Item activity, enabling not only the scenario of pure Computer Vision, but also the hybrid scenario of selector and Computer Vision. When selectors are not available (a pure Computer Vision scenario), the activity now replicates the functionality of the CV Dropdown Select activity. When selectors are available (a hybrid scenario), but fail during runtime, Computer Vision triggers a self-healing process, performing a new selector search based on Computer Vision information. This is then used for execution. Furthermore, a warning message with detailed information about the problematic selector and the self-healing outcome is displayed in the logs, empowering you to fix automation issues using newly discovered selectors.

The Get Attribute activity now also supports radio button targets, not also checkboxes. This is done by using a new attribute, checked, which returns a Boolean value (True or False) according to the Computer Vision AI model detection.

You can define a custom point where the scroll event is sent to the target element. Before, the scroll event was sent in the middle of the target element. Now, this can be done by using the run-time auto-scrolling feature in the Computer Vision activities via the Scroll Offset property in the CV Screen Scope activity and, when extracting scrollable tables or scrollable text, by using the Content Scroll Offset property in the CV Extract Table and CV Get Text activities.

When the Fuzzy selector targeting method fails to find an auto-anchor, Computer Vision will now step in and provide an auto-anchor generated by the AI model.

To switch from the default UiPath Screen OCR engine to the UiPath Extended Languages OCR engine in the Use Browser/Application and CV Screen Scope activities, you must provide the Computer Vision API key. This can be done either in the ApiKey property, at activity level, or under Project Settings > OCR > UiPath Extended Languages OCR > ApiKey.

For traceability and debugging speed purposes for Computer Vision runtime analysis, DesignTime ScreenId is now sent in the header of the HTTP request.

SAP

A new project setting is available in Studio: Project Settings > UI Automation Classic > SAP > Enable SAP monitoring. This setting allows linking executed transactions and test cases. When Enable SAP monitoring is set to True, information about the executed transactions and their dependencies are collected at runtime and sent to Test Manager. This setting is currently relevant only for Test Automation projects in Studio. Support for other project types will be added in a future release.

We added support for a new SAP WebGUI element: SAP Statusbar. You can now use the SAP Read Statusbar activity to extract the message type and text from the SAP Statusbar.

Browser extensions

In response to Google’s timeline for Chrome Manifest V2 (MV2) deprecation starting from June 2024, the existing Studio Web extensions for Chrome and Edge have been updated to be fully compatible with Manifest V3, while retaining the same extension IDs for both browsers. No action is required to receive the new MV3 extensions, which will be automatically updated when you reopen the browser.

If you upgrade to the 24.10 extensions for Chrome and Edge, you no longer need to manually set the DeveloperToolsAvailability policy value to 1 when installing extensions from Group Policy.

Safari UI automation support is now available in preview. The new UiPath Extension for Safari allows you to design UI automations in Studio Web using Safari on macOS and to execute browser automations in Safari through the UiPath Assistant and Robot on macOS.

Object Repository

We've made substantial improvements to our Object Repository, adding functionality for previous unsupported scenarios. The following paragraphs provide a comprehensive rundown of each improvement.

Support for Object Repository, previously exclusive to Windows, has now been expanded to include cross-platform in Studio Desktop. Being able to also create and reuse UI objects in cross-platform type projects allows for a faster automation development process, lower maintenance costs, and easier adjustments for automations impacted by changes in the selector structure of application or UI elements.

Leveraging the power of Clipboard AI's advanced UI extraction engine that merges Computer Vision and DOM extractor, the Capture All functionality is now able to capture all elements in a web page, including scrollable content and hyperlinks. Having relied prior to this solely on the Computer Vision model for element detection, it could extract only the visible elements. Now, with the addition of the DOM extractor, it can extract all elements, not just the visible ones, allowing them to be added to the Object Repository library.

You can now highlight an extracted element while maintaining the current selection in the Capture Elements window using the Highlight icon.

Simplified the user experience for creating, integrating, and editing screens, nodes, and applications within Object Repository, ensuring a more efficient process from start to finish. Before, the process required you to manually navigate through numerous confirmation screens. Now, Object Repository automatically assigns your new object to the appropriate application or screen. If there are any missing parent objects, Object Repository creates them automatically.

In case you already created an automation without Object Repository and you want to add the activities and targets to an Object Repository library, you can use the new Synchronize Object Repository wizard. This synchronizes all the UI interacting activities and creates an application with its name, a screen with its name, and the corresponding UI elements into the local repository. In the past, you would have to manually add each application, screen and element to the Object Repository. Now, the entire project is added to the Object Repository local library at once. This is available both for Modern and Classic activities. For Classic activities, only the targets that are using full selectors are added, while those with partial selectors are not. Moreover, you can now include an existing library and the matching objects that you indicate are going to be synced automatically.

When an activity is linked to Object Repository, edits made to a local object in the target properties panel now automatically propagate to the corresponding descriptor in Object Repository, removing the need for manual synchronization.

Target properties of activities linked to read-only objects are automatically disabled. Before, these target properties would stay active in the properties panel, potentially leading to confusion. Now, if you want to edit the target properties, you have the option to unlink the object and make local edits. However, it should be noted that these changes do not propagate to the actual descriptor in Object Repository.

We've standardized the burger menu of UI Automation activities, aligning the options of activities which have targets linked to a local Object Repository with the options of regular activities. Previously, certain options, such as Indicate target on screen or Edit target, were unavailable for Object Repository-linked activities. We've also standardized the indicate functionality for Use Application/Browser activities when Object Repository is either enforced or non-enforced.

Added support for editing the UI element of the Extract Table Data activity when synchronized with Object Repository.

Bug fixes

UI Explorer failed to validate selectors for SAP Interaction Center when attempting to bypass the use of iframe.
Unexpected behavior of terminal Java application when run with a 32-bit executable; now works smoothly with both 32-bit and 64-bit executables.
When navigating to the second page of a Kendo Angular table, the Extract Table Data activity did not successfully scrape the data.
Fixed a Java application pop-up issue occurring starting with package version 21.10.6 that affected design time experience.
The OCR for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean was not working as a custom OCR in the Use Application/Browser activity when the project name contained Japanese characters.
A Value cannot be null exception was thrown when removing the OCR engine activity from the CV Screen Scope after having indicated a target.
A There is no row at position 0 exception was thrown when removing the OCR engine activity from the CV Screen Scope and the action of hovering over table cells persisted.
Elements on web pages that were recognized by the selector widget were not preserved upon saving and closing the selector.
Unable to interact with embedded web widgets in applications that host web controls in multiple top-level windows.
When a Click activity was cancelled in a parallel sequence, the Try Catch activity failed to catch the exceptions thrown.
Extracting large table data from static HTML pages was causing errors and slowing down all supported browsers. This fix doesn’t cover Internet Explorer.
Previously, the Get From Clipboard activity might not fetch the most recent value from the clipboard.
The Type Into activity would ignore the text inserted before special characters when the Input mode property was set to Simulate.
The Select Item activity and the SAP-specific Select Menu Item activity were failing when the selected item contained text with wildcards.
Indicating lines in a notepad application would fail.
When using Foxit reader, a few issues were encountered. The Extract Table Data activity could not extract Chinese characters from scanned PDF files. Additionally, UI Explorer could not trigger document accessibility. Furthermore, even though running an automation in attended mode functioned correctly, searching for the application during unattended mode failed.
When indicating the document name from the ribbon of an open Word document stored on shared drives, such as SharePoint, you would encounter an invalid selector error.
HTML elements in nested iframes on Salesforce did not auto-scroll into view when a mouse input is sent via Hardware Events.
In some cases, UiPath Remote Runtime takes longer to return Get Text results from a remote machine. As a workaround, set Windows attach mode to Single window instead of Application instance in the Use Application/Browser activity. Note that the Single window option cannot interact with new application windows or pop-ups. Use a new Application/Browser activity for these interactions.
When upgraded from Windows - Legacy to Windows projects, the Extract Table Data activity could not extract column values due to incorrect selector generation.
Upon downloading the latest WebDriver version, the Open Browser activity stored it in the WebDriverExe folder, but still referenced the previous version instead of applying the current one. An incompatibility error message would appear when trying to open browsers.
When adding the On Element Appear, On Element Vanish, On Image Appear, and On Image Vanish classic activities to the designer panel, you would get validation warnings.

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