OUT OF SUPPORT

v20.10

v20.10.15

Release date: 5 October 2023

Bug fixes

• Fixed the broken Active Accessibility support for web pages containing IFrame elements or PDFs in Chrome and Edge version 117, which caused <ctrl /> selectors to fail.
  Also added the option to pass extra command-line arguments to the browser opened using the Open Browser / Use Browser activities. This can be done by setting the appropriate environment variable using the Set Environment Variable activity:

  • UIPATH_EXTRA_CMD_ARGS_CHROME
  • UIPATH_EXTRA_CMD_ARGS_EDGE
  • UIPATH_EXTRA_CMD_ARGS_FIREFOX

v20.10.14

Release date: 8 June 2023

Bug fixes

The latest Chrome and Edge updates to version 114 introduced a breaking change to the way support for Active Accessibility is enabled. This caused automation processes to fail when trying to interact with browser screens such as the Print popup or PDF viewer.

v20.10.13

Release date: 7 December 2022

Improvements

UI Automation Classic

The visibleInnerText attribute is now available in the Selector Attributes panel from UI Explorer.

Bug fixes

• The internal timeout for the Open Browser activity has been increased from 20 seconds to 60 seconds. Additionally, you can configure this timeout value through the UIPATH_OPEN_BROWSER_TIMEOUT_SECONDS environment variable.

v20.10.12

Release date: 3 August 2022

Bug fixes

• Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (msdrc.exe) was not supported by UI Automation. The new process name associated with Azure Windows Virtual Desktop has been added, and is now supported.
• When automating Microsoft Edge in IE Mode, selector validation failed due to mismatched URL encoding between Edge and IE.
• When using the Type Into activity with the Simulate Type input method, the number 8 could not be typed in certain applications.

v20.10.11

Release date: 25 November 2021

Bug fixes

• To clear the text from web pages elements, you can use again empty strings with the Set Text activity, just like in UI Automation v18.4.

v20.10.10

Release date: 2 June 2021

Bug fixes

• Java Bridge could not be installed from UiExplorer.
• The On Image Appear activity displayed a corrupted screenshot when indicating the target for the first time.
• Fixed performance issues with the Get Attribute, Get Position, Get Text, Text Exists, OCR Text Exists activities.
• Fixed an issue that caused certain webpages in Chrome to freeze the entire OS when indicating with an Use Application/Browser activity.
• When using the Call Transaction and SAP Login activities running XenApp in an App-V container, the Enter key was not performed.
• SAPGUI scripting did not work for automating SAP Logon applications published as App-V.
• The Click activity stopped working when a window froze in the foreground during runtime.
• After indicating an element or an Anchor, UiExplorer was unable to return to the foreground.
• When using the Indicate Element and Repair features, multiple Selector Editor windows were opened.

v20.10.9

Release date: 8 February 2021

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue which caused the Selection Screen Helper to remain visible on Windows 7 machines after indicating an UI element.
• The Use Application/Browser activity was unable to target Adobe Acrobat even though it was open.

v20.10.8

Release date: 14 December 2020

Bug fixes

• When automating an app that had multiple window instances, inside a Use Application/Browser container with Attach Mode set to Application Instance, manually modifying the selector of a Click activity to an inexistent one caused the entire target application to be targeted instead of the initial element. This happened only when the Selector check box was selected.

v20.10.7

Release date: 10 December 2020

Improvements

The Double Click action has been added to the Action Picker menu in the Recorder.

The window selector is now shown when editing a descriptor in offline mode.

Bug fixes

• The Extract Table Data activity can now be used with the Object Repository feature in Studio.
• Fixed an issue that caused wrong files to be invoked by the Invoke Process activity.
• JavaState attribute matching was not correctly performed.
• Fixed an issue that caused Type Into with SimulateType to fail when used with Lawson in Chrome.
• The Click Image activity did not use the values that were set in the Timeout and WaitForReady property fields.
• A Null Pointer exception was triggered when retrieving text from an NRichLabel in Nexaweb environments.

Known issues

• Installing the UiPath extensions for Chrome and Edge Chromium using UiPathStudio.msi fails if either of the browsers is running during the installation. You are now prompted to close your browser before installing them.

v20.10.6

Release date: 20 October 2020

Bug fixes

• The Table Cell Scope activity was displayed when Modern experience was selected in both Studio and StudioX, even though it was not compatible with them.

v20.10.5

Release date: 12 October 2020

Improvements

Unifying UI Automation and UI Automation Next

The UI Automation and UI Automation Next activity packages have been unified under the UI Automation v20.10.5 activity package, containing the best of both worlds, now taking advantage of the new Unified Target technology, which brings all of the targeting methods together, making all your automation endeavors much easier.

Also, some activities have been reworked to support the Unified Target technology. Don't worry, though, we haven't removed their old counterparts from the package, you can simply opt whether to use them or not by selecting the Classic Modern experience from the Design tab in Studio Backstage Settings.

Choosing the Modern experience also grants you access to the new App/Web Recorder, which is a single recorder to rule them all, replacing all previous UI Automation recorders with a new, anchor-based, multi-technology element identification system that makes recording your actions considerably easier and faster.

You can install the unified UI Automation activity package even on Studio v2020.4.1 or lower. Doing this displays all the classic and modern activities in the Activities pane. Please note, however, that wizards that require newer Studio/Robot versions than 2020.4.1 are not available in older versions.

Note: Improvements performed on the UI Automation Next package between v20.4.3 and v20.10.5 are listed in their own subchapter below, for increased clarity.

Desktop Triggers

Trigger Scope Activity

We have developed a completely new scope activity for triggers, called Trigger Scope. This activity can be found in the System activity package v20.10.1 but is usable with all the triggers present in both UI Automation and System activity packages. It offers the required arguments to work with the trigger out of the box, like trigger name and type or its source event. Moreover, it can treat the incoming events sequentially or concurrently while it can exit after one execution.

New Triggers and UI Redesign

In this regard, we have added several new trigger activities, and redesigned some of the existing triggers, moving the most used properties at hand. The new activities are:

• Element Attribute Change Trigger
• Element State Change Trigger

Triggers SDK

Most importantly, we have democratized trigger development. We provide a trigger SDK for everyone to use and develop custom triggers, just like you do with custom activities. You can read more about this here.

Workflow Analyzer Rules

Two new Workflow Analyzer rules have been added, as follows:

• Forbidden Variables Usage In Selectors enables you to scan for all UI Automation activities that use variables in selectors, thus removing any risks of using non-compliant selectors in your automation processes.
• Insecure Password Use checks if any Type Into activities used in your workflow use plain text to type passwords instead of SecureString variables.

Computer Vision

This release brings an update to the user experience offered by the CV activities by modifying the way screens you are working with are cached. The new cache strategy saves all of the screens you are working on within the CV Screen Scope activity and allows you to perform actions on them at design time in an easier fashion.

UI Automation Next

Take Screenshot - This new activity enables you to take a screenshot of a specified UI element and save it as an image file.

You can now place Use Application/Browser activities one inside another. This gives you more flexibility when designing automations that work with multiple applications.

A new option named Configure every step is available in the App/Web Recorder. When it is enabled, the following changes occur before a step is recorded:

• Target selection is no longer made automatically after you click the UI element to interact with. You can add or remove anchors, remove and add the target again after indicating it, and confirm the selection.
• When adding the Get Text action, you are prompted to save the value.

The App/Web Recorder now remembers the last position where you moved it on the screen. When you close it and launch it again, the Recorder opens in the same position where you last left it.

New activities

The new Modify Text activity updates a specified text by using methods such as find and replace, trim, or concatenation, offering you multiple new ways to manipulate any text files you might need to.

The new Table Cell Scope activity enables you to attach to an existing Table UI element and perform multiple actions within it. This activity is specifically tailored for SAP WinGUI automation.

The new CV Extract Table activity enables you to retrieve any visible table by using Computer Vision and storing it into a DataTable variable for further use.

To increase support in dealing with troublesome UIs of WPF and WInForms Windows applications, we have created the new Inject .NET Code activity, which enables you to inject .NET code in any target application.

Other improvements

Improved the message displayed for the Type Into activity if the EmptyField field is not filled in.

We’re extending the capabilities for creating automation projects for SAP. As such, this release, will make it possible and easy to automate SAP FIORI by building selectors out-of-the-box.

The CV Get Text activity now also has the RefreshBefore check box, which, when selected, enables you to scan again using the Computer Vision neural network for any changes since the first CV Screen Scope scan.

We have now added support for User Events monitoring for Citrix desktops and apps, as well as automations over RDP.

The GetProcessNameByPid and GetWindowProcessName attributes now return a lowercase value instead of the raw process name, which had to be converted to lowercase.

The Google Cloud Vision OCR activity received a new option, named DetectionMode.

Improved the behavior of the Type Into activity when it was used on Outlook Web in Internet Explorer and Chrome. The ClickBeforeType property had to be set to true for all input methods, while the <idx> attribute with a large value was unreliable.

The default value for the SAP Logon activity is now retrieved from the corresponding registry entry.

Selectors generated for SAP table columns now return the column name as the default value instead of the column number. As such, the selector is now generated with the <colTooltip> attribute to indicate the column name.

It’s now possible for the Click activity to interact with JSpinner arrow elements in Java applications.

Selectors for Java applications now support the <cls> attribute.

Breaking changes

• A fix for the Take Screenshot activity causes all exceptions in the activity to be handled differently. Before the fix, any exception simply caused the screenshot to be returned as null, but now, the exception is thrown normally, stopping workflow execution. This can cause breaking changes in already existing workflows.
• A fix for the Click before typing property in Java applications causes the cursor to be placed after the existing text instead of at the beginning of the existing text when a Type Into activity with Activate selected and Click before typing set to Single or Double is used in a Java application.
• On rare occasions, target and anchor pairs created in version 2020.4.x may fail to identify the correct element in this version. To fix this issue, select the anchor again or add another anchor for the target.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Attach Window activity which did not properly function on Java applications when the process was started from Orchestrator. The issue occurred after a Windows update was performed. Please note that you are not prompted to install the extension for Java if the awt.dll file is not loaded in the target Java application. This is done to prevent the installation pop-up from showing up when applications cannot be automated through Java selectors. You can read more about the extension for Java on this page.
• Improved the selector generation for the Microsoft Teams application by fixing the <cls> tag which was incorrectly generated.
• The Key press trigger activity would fail to detect an element if its selector contained the <idx> attribute.
• In some cases, a dropdown or context menu would disappear right before the Click or Hover activities could interact with them. This has now been fixed.
• The Key press trigger activity did not function correctly when used on SAP WinGUI elements.
• We fixed an issue in the App/Web Recorder that sometimes made the Choose action hover menu difficult to click.
• When Acrobat Reader DC is the target application for a Use Application/Browser activity which has the Open property set to Always, an error no longer occurs if Acrobat is already open. The activity now attaches to the existing Acrobat window. For example, if a PDF file path is provided as an argument, the file is opened in a new tab in the existing Acrobat Reader DC window.

Known issues

• The Object Repository does not currently support the Extract Table Data activity.
• Some C# expressions might not work when used with the OCR engine in a CV Screen Scope activity. A workaround for this issue is using an Assign activity before the CV Screen Scope activity to run the expression.
• The Invoke Workflow File activity is unable to open the correct file at runtime when a previous activity alters the target directory.
• When automating an app that has multiple window instances, inside an Use Application/Browser container with Attach Mode set to Application Instance, manually modifying the selector of a Click activity to an inexistent one causes the entire target application to be targeted instead of the initial element. This happens only when the Selector check box is selected.