Windows activities

The following activities group contains 2 set of activities:

  1. Activities that can recorded and can be used to simulate users actions like click, send keys or get content of a panel
  2. Windows activities like Copy, Paste, Cut, Start Process or invoke power shell.

The first set of activities can be recoded by either starting the recording and performing the actions in windows that we want to record or by dropping the activities from toolbox and recording the element for which we want to perform the action. For instance, if we want to simulate a mouse click, we can drop the Mouse activity from tool box and record the element on which this mouse click action should be performed.

note

Most of the properties on this activity can be set using an expression. That is why when we set a string value, we must put that string value under "".

The following properties are common to all the activities that can be recorded:

Filter Properties#

  1. Absolute X position The absolute X cursor position of the element at the time of recording.
  2. Absolute Y position The absolute Y cursor position of the element at the time of recording.
  3. Can Start Process If Not Found When checked, the activity will start the process for this element if the element is not found. For instance, if the element is a button within the Microsoft Windows Calculator program, and Windows Calculator is not found, the Microsoft Windows Calculator will be is started.
  4. CV threshold Computer vision threshold when finding an element by its image taken at recording. It used when computer vision is activated to search for an element by its corresponding image.
  5. Element details The details to find the input element to focus. This may be the automation id, class name, name.
  6. Element Index The index of the element, when there are multiple elements visible. It can be displayed using highlight button.
  7. Path to element This is the xml document representing the path from desktop to the window containing the input. It is used to find the window that contains th element for which we need to trigger the mouse event.
  8. Stop Id preprocessing The windows elements id sometime contain numbers, but most of the time these numbers are only at runtime. For some specific cases we need these numbers to be interpreted as they are.
  9. Use CV Use computer vision to find an element on the screen(s).
  10. Use Relative position Use element relative position to its corresponding window when it cannot be found by its properties.

General Properties#

  1. Date and time of recording The date and time when the element was recorded (Readonly).
  2. Delay to start in ms The time to wait in milliseconds before starting to look for the element. This is used for some activities to wait for the element to become available.
  3. Description The activity description.
  4. Disable Activity Disables this activity. This means that no action will be performed for this activity. It is useful when implementing to disable some workflow activities and check the result.
  5. Ignore Errors Ignore errors if the current activity is failing and continues with the next activity. Even if the workflow continues to execute, we still report the activities in the log, console or error window.
  6. Number of Attempts Represents the number of attempts to find the element. If it is not set, we will try only once unless this is the first desktop activity, or it is the first activity(window) of a new process in which case we retry 3 times. We retry 4 times for new windows because the corresponding application might take some time to start the window. For instance, when starting notepad, it might take the operating system few seconds to display the window. After each retry, we wait retry index * 1 second(first retry 1 second, second retry 2 seconds ...).
  7. Parent Element The element where the search should start. Can be obtained from GetChildren activity
  8. Screenshot file Name The name of the screenshot file taken at record time.
  9. Target Element The target element to perform actions on. This property can be set to one of the children from GetChildren Activity

Misc#

  1. Display Name The display name of the activity.

Out Error#

  1. Output Error The exception that caused the activity to fail. It may be set to a variable of type Exception that may be created under Variables at the bottom of the workflow. It is useful when Ignore Errors is set for this activity to check any errors thrown by the activity.

Out Properties#

  1. Output value The element text extracted from element after the activity was run. It may be set to a variable of type string that can be created under Variables at the bottom of the workflow.
  2. Was successful Returns true if the element was found and false otherwise. If the value is set to a variable, the workflow will not be stopped when the element is not found. It may be set to a variable of type bool that can be created under Variables at the bottom of the workflow.

Parent Window Properties#

These are properties that are used to identify the parent window of the element and corresponding process. All these properties are populated automatically at record time.

  1. Application Package Name The name of the package for this application, if any.
  2. Class Name Class name of the parent window.
  3. Main Window Handle The main window handle for the element window.
  4. Process arguments The process arguments used to run this process, in case we need to run it.
  5. Process Path The path to the process that contains the recorded element.
  6. Title The title of window containing the recorded element.