OUT OF SUPPORT

v21.4

v21.4.4

Release date: June 2, 2021

Bug fixes

• Java Bridge could not be installed from UI Explorer.
• Fixed performance issues with the Get Attribute, Get Position, Get Text, Text Exists, OCR Text Exists activities.
• 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.

v21.4.3

Release date: April 26, 2021

UI Automation Modern

The Extract Table Data activity has been revamped, containing several new properties, as well as a new wizard that helps guide you through the data extraction process. This whole feature can also be used from the new Table Extraction recorder, which appears in the Ribbon if you have selected the Modern Experience. Structured data has never been easier to extract, thanks to the multitude of new features that this release brings!

The new Verify Execution feature allows you to ensure that the action (a Click or Type, for example) was correctly executed at runtime – that it had the expected outcome. This feature can be configured from the following activities and from Project Settings:

• Click
• Type Into
• Hover

The Use Application/Browser activity has a new property field, Incognito/private window, which enables you to open the browser session in incognito or private mode.

The new multi-selector search is now used for all searches, both at run time and design time. This works under the hood, so it won’t impact your experience with the product, but simply yield better results overall.

You can now define an area you want to automate by dragging when using the App/Web Recorder feature, thus enabling you to use Image automation in your workflows.

Check:text was a hidden feature of the Fuzzy Selector, that enabled you to easily target elements that contained text. In a way, it is similar to the older Click Text activity. Now, upgraded to be a part of the Modern experience, this feature can be found under the Fuzzy Selector, in the Selection Screen, and by using it you can now select how you want text to be processed from while Indicating your target, with support for wildcards and variables.

To increase usability and customizability, certain settings, such as the timer set for Pause (F2) when indicating an element on screen, now persist per machine, across sessions.

You can now indicate dynamic targets, which are no longer dependent on their text labels. This enables you to work with elements that have dynamic text labels, or with specific elements in search lists, in regard to their position in the search rather than their text labels. This is done by harnessing the power of the Fuzzy Selector, which can now also use wildcards for extra fuzziness.

The new Get URL activity enables you to retrieve the URL of a web page and reuse it in your automation, thus making web automation much easier.

Targets that are no longer available, such as apps that are closed, can now be edited in Offline Mode, so you don’t need to pass through the entire process of bringing up the same window again to edit a single character in your selector.

The Check App State activity can now also be used outside the Use Application/Browser activity for situations such as connecting to a VPN, or starting a Virtual Machine.

The App/Web Recorder can now be used with any app on you machine, without the need for switching between apps. We have adapted the recorder to your needs, and it can now automatically determine the fact that you are indicating actions in a different app and behave accordingly, automatically recording your steps.

To make your automation life easier, indicating certain types of apps with the Use Application/Browser now autofills the Arguments property, making it easier to use Java apps, PDFs, Office apps, or Windows apps.

You can now use variables and arguments directly in the Selection Options screen when editing the Selector and Fuzzy Selector.

The Click and Hover activities now have the CursorMotionType property, which enables you to select the type of motion you want the mouse to use while performing the action, be it Instant or Smooth.

Wildcards are now supported in the Item field of the Select Item activity. Also, a new property field has been added to this activity, AlterIfDisabled, which performs the selection action even if the target element is disabled.

Due to the fact that some actions, such as Double-Click failed when performed with the Simulate method, they are now performed with the Hardware Events method by default, thus avoiding the situation when the workflow fails silently.

The Extract Structured Data activity now supports integration with the Object Repository.

The Enforce Element Visibility check box has been implemented in the Selection Options window, enabling users to work exclusively with visible UI elements.

The App/Web Recorder now supports using modifier keys when recording actions.

The Wait for ready property has been renamed to Wait for page load in all of the Modern UI Automation activities, better reflecting its purpose.

UI Automation Classic

The Start Process activity can now open files with all extension types, such as .doc, .xls, .png, .pdf, etc.

The Click and Hover activities now have the CursorMotionType property, which enables you to select the type of motion you want the mouse to use while performing the action, be it Instant or Smooth.

Wildcards are now supported in the Item field of the Select Item activity. Also, a new property field has been added to this activity, AlterIfDisabled, which performs the selection action even if the target element is disabled.

The Table Cell Scope activity has a new property field, Table Row Index, which displays the index of the found row, and is useful in cases of tables that have the first empty row.

Java Native Scraping now retrieves the bounds of words when the Get Words Info check box is selected.

The Attach Browser activity has a new option in the BrowserType property, suitable for other Chromium-based browsers.

Support has been added for websites that use Shadow DOM for their UI elements. These pages can now be automated using Google Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

When using variables in selectors, changes made in the Variables Panel now also take effect in the selectors. Please note that this does only apply to variables that are modified after upgrading to this version of the UI Automation package, so this does not cause a breaking change in older workflows.

The Key drop-down in the body of the Send Hotkey activity now supports auto-searching hotkeys in the list when it is expanded.

SAP

UiPath Studio supports now the latest version of SAP WinGUI 7.70 with all new features such as a new visual theme, Quartz, support for alternative browser control (Microsoft Edge), as well as multi-monitor scaling support.

Data scraping and Screen scraping are supported for data extraction for SAP ALV Tables. One or multiple tables on the SAP screen can be extracted.

The Table Cell Scope activity can be now used for SAP FIORI table automation.

Computer Vision

The CV Click, CV Hover, and CV Check activities now have the CursorMotionType property, which enables you to select the type of motion you want the mouse to use while performing the action, be it Instant or Smooth.

The Computer Vision activities now support using only OCR, if you configure them as such, ensuring an overall better user experience.

A better Change Detection mechanism has been implemented in the Computer Vision activities, minimizing the number of full CV analyses required and optimizing the process.

The CV Get Text activity now displays a text result preview in the designer, displaying the text that is going to be extracted.

UI Explorer

UI Explorer has a new feature that delays restoring the UI Explorer window until after the selector data is loaded. This is meant to be used with UI elements that auto-close on losing focus.

Breaking changes

• The Expected Text subfield of the Verify execution property field’s functionality has been modified and is no longer compatible with automation projects built with UI Automation v21.2.0-preview, causing a breaking change.
• The Timeout property in the Element Exists activity can now be configured from the Project Settings in Studio.
• Using Click with Simulate Click on a Java application that does not support that capability did not work, but no error was thrown and the workflow continued execution. The same scenario now throws an error and may cause breaking changes in workflows that used it.
• In a Java application, using the Click activity with Hardware Events on UI elements from a tab different than the one in focus now throws the correct exception. Please note that this may break old workflows.
• Deprecated the Microsoft Project Oxford Online OCR engine. The following exception is thrown at runtime: Microsoft Project Oxford has been completely retired. Please switch to a different OCR engine.

End of Support for Microsoft Edge Legacy

• Starting with v21.10, the UI Automation activities package will no longer support the Microsoft Edge Legacy browser, so the extension for Microsoft Edge Legacy will no longer work.

Bug fixes

• When the URL property field in the Use Application/Browser contained a string variable with an URL, clicking the button in the body of the activity that opened a new browser session with the specified settings did nothing.
• The Select Item activity did not work with combo and list boxes in Java applications.
• Fixed an issue which caused exceptions to be handled improperly when using Parallel activities.
• The type initializer for Emgu.CV.CvInvoke threw an exception when using Image or Computer Vision activities.
• The Text Exists activity always returned True when used inside a Parallel activity and the Parallel property was selected.
• UI Explorer failed to load selectors in certain situations on Internet Explorer. The implementation of the window restore delay feature in UI Explorer has helped avert this issue.
• Screen Scraping an image through a While loop failed in certain situations.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Executor to crash when working with a Java Application.
• The Block User Input activity was unblocked when using only the Alt key.
• An exception was thrown when using a library containing the Set To Clipboard activity that set an empty string.
• When using the Selector Editor, removing ”app=” from a selector did not invalidate it.
• When Data Scraping on certain data tables, the preview window did not display Col. A.
• Indicating a PDF in Internet Explorer with a Use Application/Browser activity caused a freeze.
• The Hide Window activity is now hidden from StudioX.
• Chrome popups were not detected when using Remote Desktop Protocol connections.
• Certain webpages in Chrome froze the system when indicating with an Use Application/Browser activity.
• Indicating a Chrome or Internet Explorer page with a Use Application/Browser activity in poor network conditions caused a freeze.
• When using Type Into with Hardware Events, letters were duplicated in the typed text on a specific web page.
• When using Click with the Simulate method on elements from Java applications, the action was reported as succeeded, even if the action was not supported by the target element. Now, attempting to click with the Simulate method on an element that does not support the action (such as panels), a more descriptive errors displayed.
• Fixed an issue that caused UI Automation to be unable to detect Citrix Apps when used in 64-bit mode.
• Enter key did not confirm selection when used to map elements in Object Repository with Configure Each Element on.
• In certain situations, when using the Use Application/Browser activity with the Minimize activity would automatically restore the minimized window when performing actions on it.
• When using Check App State on an invalid UI element, the returned element was not null.
• When using the Take Screenshot activity with the Object Repository, the FileName was empty.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Use Application/Browser activity to have the Attach mode property set to Process Name instead of Application Instance when created from the Object Repository.
• Fixed an issue which caused the NewSession property in the Open Browser activity to behave incorrectly.
• The Edge extension could not be installed via policy for offline users that were not connected to Active Directory, and the policy was blocked, causing the SetupExtensions tool to erroneously inform the user that the extension was successfully installed.
• The Help button in the Preview Data section of the Data Scraping wizard did not lead to the correctly localized page.
• Using UI Automation Next activities with apps or browsers that had overlays behaved incorrectly.
• The Callout activity did not correctly consider the DPI of the machine it was running on.
• When editing the Target.Clipping Region property in the Properties Panel in any of the activities that use it, changes were not saved.
• Indicating the Address bar and certain toolbar elements UI elements in Chrome or Firefox did not work as intended.
• When running an automation process in a loop, the Open Browser activity threw an exception.
• The aaname html attribute retrieved the text from all the children of an indicated node. Now, only the text from the indicated note is retrieved. This rule does not apply for the following HTML node types: input, img, button, textarea, area, a, select, table. The Get Text activity still retrieves the text content of the entire subtree of the indicated node, which is the recommended way to capture the value of an element.
• Anchors can now be indicated from the Selection Screen when working with UI elements in Image Selection mode.
• When automating Java applications, the state of check boxes could not be recognized.
• Fixed an issue which caused drop-down menus to be untargetable in certain webpages.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Selection Options window to have long delay times when indicating certain elements in Edge and Internet Explorer.
• The Find Children activity no longer throws a SelectorNotFoundException error when used with a valid selector but with a filter condition that causes all the elements to be filtered, and instead returns an empty list in such cases.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Attach Browser and Attach Window activities to display selectors that used variables incorrectly.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Chrome extension to not work properly after upgrading from Studio v2020.10 to Studio v2021.4 under the same user, if installed from the Tools section in Studio without elevated rights.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Chorme extension to not work properly after upgrading from Studio v2020.10 to Studio v2021.4, if installed from the Tools section in Studio with elevated rights.
• The Element Exists activity threw an error when used with Internet Explorer, with an UI Automation version newer than v19.4.2.

Known issues

• The Firefox, RDP, Citrix and VMWare extensions installed via the Tools section in Studio with Studio 20.10 do not work any longer when upgrading visually to Studio 2021.4, for the same user that initially made the installation.
• The Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Citrix, RDP, and VMWare extensions installed via the Tools section in Studio with Studio 2020.10 do not work any longer when upgrading silently to Studio 2021.4, or when using a different user than the one who initially installed Studio.