Blue Prism Edge 6.10.1 Extension - HTML Mode Issues

[BrentonWestwood]

Hello all.    Recently my team has had issues with the Blue Prism Edge 6.10.1 Extension where the following occurs when running a Launch action from the Object studio:

1. Open Blue Prism
2. Run the Launch action to launch a website in Edge -- HTML mode works (can find HTML elements or the HTML spy mode works)
3. Close Edge
4. Run the Launch action again -- HTML mode does not work.   Only Windows and UIA modes work or only UIA or Windows elements can be found or spied

The Blue Prism Edge 6.10.1 Extension will not allow the HTML mode to work on the desktop again unless one of the following things are done:

• Close the object, sign out and close Blue Prism, launch Blue Prism again, and try the Object.Launch action again or 
• Toggle the In Private mode parameter used with the URL (add or remove the "--inprivate").   This does not work every time or
• After the Launch/HTML connection fails do the following:
  • Run the Application Modeller Wizard (next, next, next, finish -- no changes)
  • Run the Reset operation
  • Close the Edge window
  • Run the Launch action again

Please let me know if you have some solution to this issue.    It would be nice to be able to launch and close the browser over and over and Blue Prism be able to find HTML elements as it does with the first launch.

We have added a call to Attach right after the Launch is called.   This seems to help on our physical desktops but no on our virtual desktops.    Also, not all web sites seem to present this issue but we have a few that are problematic.

Thanks

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[HarpreetKaur]

Hello Brenton, Have you tried the following? 

1. Add a detach stage into the exception handling logic for when stuff starts failing in the HTML mode, then Attach again and see if HTML
2. Kill all instances for IE Edge and then try launching again.

Regards

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Harpreet Kaur Product Consultant
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[BrentonWestwood]

Hello Harpreet.   Those are good questions/suggestions and I did try those.    The detach and then attach does not work nor killing all of the Edge processes.   It seems that Blue Prism or the extension just get in a bad state and it requires resetting Blue Prism or closing Blue Prism and relaunching.   Also, I tested more yesterday and found that launching the browser in regular mode works more consistently without this extension issue than running the browser in Private mode (adding the "--inprivate" parameter).    This makes me wonder if there is some issue with the browser extension for some websites when run in private mode.   Additionally, it seems things work better on a physical desktop I have vs. the virtual desktop.    The OS version is Windows 10 Version 1909 but the builds slightly different.    Anyway, I made this post to see if other companies were encountering this odd issue.   I hope to test v6.10.4 in the next month to see if that version and the related extension help with this issue.

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[HarpreetKaur]

Brenton,

I literally had the opportunity to troubleshoot this exact same issue with one of my clients last night.
Please follow the below steps and let me know your findings:
1. Launch a blank browser using the Utility Env > Start Process
2. Once the blank instance is launched, connect to the window and add a new tab using send keys for 'ctrl+T'
3. When the new tab is open, focus on the address bar either by spying or by using another send keys actions 'alt+d'
4. Once the bot has the focus, type in the url and hit enter
5. Check your HTML mode now. It should be activated.

Please let me know how you go.

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Harpreet Kaur Product Consultant
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[NaveenRPA]

Hi Brenton Westwood,

Did you got the solution? I am also facing same issue in BP 6.9.
I re spyed all elements in ui mode and it is working fine but it is very slow compare to browser mode. 

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naveen k
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[BrentonWestwood]

Harpreet, there appears to be something to your solution.    When the issue occurred today, I added another tab, entered the URL for my application, and the HTML mode was enabled.   I closed the second tab and HTML worked with the original tab.   It seems that action of adding another tab may wake up the Blue Prism Edge Extension.   Also, if the Blue Prism Edge Extension works and HTML mode is enabled, it seems it may be a good idea to detach from the browser before closing Edge and launching Edge for the next process run.    Maybe the detach action will help prevent the extension from failing on  the launching of Edge on the second and other calls to launch Edge.    

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[BrentonWestwood]

In a case I have open with Blue Prism, this fix was proposed:   

There is a feature within Edge (introduced in version 88) called 'Startup Boost' which keeps the browser running in the background from login until Edge is launched.

This feature has been seen to cause issues with both spying and launching the Edge and Chrome browsers, so you may see the 'Browser not detected' exception when this feature is enabled.  Our Blue Prism Development team is currently investigating this issue under development reference BP-8349, to see if there is a way we can influence this behaviour from within Blue Prism.  In the meantime, our recommendation is to ensure that Startup Boost is disabled on any machines where automations interact with the Chrome or Edge browsers. To do this, open Edge and browse to edge://settings/system, and ensure that the 'Startup boost' option is unchecked.

So far, this did not fix my issue but I have done the following and gotten the Launch and Blue Prism Extension to work over and over today:   

• Pause after Launch for 5 seconds
• Call the Attach page after the Launch + Post Launch Delay pause -- usually Blue Prism was not attached after the launch stage and Blue Prism needed to be attached.  The Attach page in my case is a page with a check to see of Blue Prism is attached and if not, call the attach operation.
• Added a Wait stage check for a UIA element on the initial page that is launched (i.e. Login page) and if that element is not found after the Launch (reaches the timeout), call the Attach page one more time before throwing an exception   (wait check for the UIA element again after the additional attach call and if works, continue, else throw an exception).
• Pausing 5 seconds after a close of the browser or before the next launch call following the close of the browser

I guess the steps above may not be 100% efficient but it got things to work and RPA is not really performance testing, thus, a loss of 30 seconds or so is acceptable if it gets things to work.    I will continue with this method and see if it allows things to work better for all our browser applications.

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[MujahidBasha1]

Dear Harpreet,

we need one help from you and advice

we are facing issue when launch two working browser instances at the same time in edge but target application background running in ie mode
Error message:extension not detected 

blue prism version :6.10.1
regards,
mujahid

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Mujahid Basha
sr.software engineer
wipro
Asia/Kolkata
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