Activate Browser (Win32) throwing intermittent errors

[john.hammond]

Good morning all.

Very new to RPA, so apologies in advance.

I'm developing an object based on a template which requires me to spy a particular browser window and then activate it. In order to activate the window, I believe that I need to spy the page in Win32 mode. There are a few objects related to this process as it covers multiple windows and plenty of steps.

The initial object launches the appropriate window and navigates to a link, clicks it, which then prompts a second object to take over. On this object, the requested page attaches to the window and then activates it - attaching seems to work fine, but activation throws the following error:
Subsheet: 'Activate' ERROR: Internal : Failed to perform step 1 in Navigate Stage 'Activate' on page 'Activate' - Unable to match any windows with the query terms

Here is the App Modeller for the window with the default attributes spied:

It would make sense to me to detoggle 'Visible', 'Screen Visible' and 'Enabled' here, as this might not always be the case, but the modeller is then unable to highlight the appropriate window.

However, even with these all set to default, App modeller still cannot identify the window. So, I try to then go back into 'Identify' mode, but when toggling Win32 spying mode, the highlighted window no longer appears around the desired window. In fact, I have to close the object, re-open it in Blue Prism and then spy again in order for the highlighted window to appear in Win32 mode.

It feels like I'm doing something very basic wrong (particularly seeing as the logic for the rest of the object seems to be working absolutely fine, making this even more insanity-inducing). Any ideas?

I should say, this is currently running Blue Prism v6.6

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John Hammond
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[John__Carter · Accepted solution]

Welcome John - wrestling with app modeller can drive you crazy, we've all experienced this at times. Here are a couple of ideas to try

1) Is the 2nd object attaching to the same thing that the 1st object launched? Browsers can generate more than one exe (look in Task manager) and if you've attached to the 'wrong' one, you can get unexpected results.

2) Try spying a Win32 element in the 1st object (so you don't need a 2nd one)

3) Create a new object that treats the browser as a Win32 application, ie in the app modeller wizard choose the 'attach to windows application' options. Call the object something like 'Chrome Win32' and create a page called Activate.

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John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
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[john.hammond]

Thank you for your response John. You nailed it - it was picking up a different Chrome window to what I intended. Appreciate it muchly!

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John Hammond
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