Blue Prism UI Automation Failing after Chrome / Edge Update to 140

[Adrian__Dones]

Hi guys,

Hope all of you are well and have a great week start.

Starting from last week (around Wednesday~Thursday) Blue Prism fails while running to identify properly the fields spied using UI Automation mode.

While trying to check in Application Modeler if the fields can still be visible, they were successfully identified, but while running the whole process, somehow the process remains blocked while trying to access those fields.

The interesting part is that after re-spying the fields using UI-Automation (just to test if a new fresh set of fields would make the cut) the bot still fails.

Just to mention, the process worked properly without any errors more than 2 years and all of a sudden it failed to work anymore.

Please let me know if this is a general issue and/or how it can be fixed.

Much appreciated all your help 🙂

[Michael_S]

Thanks for the help, everyone!

[Michael_S · Accepted solution]

Hello all,

The Chromium development team have identified a P0 bug within their code that leads to an infinite loop while walking the UIA tree. 
 
This has been logged within the Chromium project here: 
 
From Chrome 140+, multiple popup dialogs (e.g., Extension etc.) are detected via UI Automation tool  
 
Please also note the following comment within this bug: 
 
"many assistive technologies do not work anymore and get stuck in infinite loops because of this change."  
 
Here is how we believe this is impacting Blue Prism: 

• This is caused by elements within the tree referencing themselves as a child element. 

• In turn, this prevents Blue Prism from completing interactions with UIA spied elements, such as spying, highlighting and navigation etc. 

• As a result, Blue Prism will appear to hang, crash, or take an indeterminate amount of time to complete the interaction. 

 
Based on this new information, the Blue Prism engineering team are working to verify have now verified this as the root cause of this issue under development reference BPNGRPA-10051, which we will continue to update with any new information.

[simone.tomaCNH]

Hi all,

We recently encountered this issue in our company and resolved it by reverting to a previous version of Edge (the impact seemed to be more significant on Edge and on the bots that use Edge for us).

First, we downloaded the desired version from this trusted Microsoft source:

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=%22edge-stable%20channel%22%20x64

Next, we uninstalled Edge.

If the machine only shows the repair option in the control panel, run the command msiexec /i “Path\MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi” /qn ALLOWDOWNGRADE=1, replacing the path with the one you just downloaded.

If, on the other hand, you can uninstall Edge, follow the procedure and install a version prior to 140.

To block future updates, create the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate and create a DWORD (32-bit) value and name it DoNotUpdateToEdgeWithChromium, giving it a value of 1.

Once all the steps have been completed, reinstall the Blue Prism Edge extension, if necessary.

Simone

[Amy_T]

Hi all,

This is just a brief update to inform you all that we have sent out emails to customers and partners about this issue and detailing where to check for the latest information and updates. 

All the pertinent details related to this issue can be found in this Knowledge Base Article (portal login required), which is being kept up to date as our investigation continues as part of our collaboration with Google and Microsoft. There are workarounds available in order to restore service to impacted Production environments. We would like to request that you continue to monitor the Knowledge Base Article for further updates. If you have any immediate questions or need additional support, please raise a Support Ticket, and a member of our Global Support Team will be standing by to assist.

Many thanks! 

[afrank]

We are impacted and using Microsoft Edge, Version 140.0.3485.66 (Official build) (64-bit)

[stepher]

Good morning, Folks, and Happy Friday...

Any sense of an ETA of a resolution from the Chromium team?

As I read the Chromium ticket, we are now a month out from its original identification.  I also see a periodic comment that this is a 'release blocker' and requires some additional information.  I don't know about blocking releases, as my non-Developer machine has received a few updates since we started this thread.

Hoping to get this put behind us as quickly as possible.

Red

[david.l.morris]

The most recent comments I've seen were on Sep 15 as far as I've found when I check each day:

Basically someone set up a commit that would revert the change, but then someone else (Keren Zhu) and the code reviewer (Tom Lukaszewicz) both agreed that reverting the change (that is, reverting just the problematic code) would break dependencies that have been added since the addition of that change. So, he's suggesting a change to fix the code rather than revert it. And I guess no one has determined yet how to do that or hasn't submitted a commit for that yet.