Chrome in BP 6.9 -- New Tab not spyable in Browser Mode

[david.l.morris]

Hi Everyone,

I want to make sure this is actually a bug before I report it as such. As of this week (potentially with the recent update to the browser extension), I've found that Blue Prism 6.9 has issues with spying Chrome elements in Browser Mode after you open a new tab. I should mention that, for what I'm describing, I've tested this on a Virtual Machine as well as locally on my own computer, and the behavior is the same. In both of these environments, the behavior was different, let's say, a month ago or so, but I hadn't tested this frequently recently until this week.

I'm actually noticing a couple of issues, but I think one of them may already be known due to an issue with the ephemoral ports setting. I'm not sure if it's related or not.  So, what I'm describing I found to be the case whether that setting is on or off.

If I use Blue Prism 6.9 to launch Chrome with a Starting URL, it (usually) attaches correctly and the HTML elements are spyable using Browser Mode. But if Blue Prism or even if I manually click a link that triggers the next web page to open in a new tab or I just open a new tab and navigate to another webpage, the elements are not spyable in that new tab.

There are a couple things you may consider suggesting based on this (and you'd be right to suggest them as possibilities), so let me head off a couple of them that I am aware of already. First, I do not think this has to do with whether the ephemoral port setting is on or off. I did only a little bit of testing with each, but it does appear to behave this way consistently regardless of that setting. Second, it isn't (or at least shouldn't be) an issue with Chrome generating new Windows processes for new tabs. I say it shouldn't be because we have an existing automation that worked in 6.7, 6.8, and 6.9 (before the most recent update to the Chrome extension) including using elements in the new tab. Granted, in 6.9, it worked slow due to the slowness issue. Now that the extension has been updated, it's no longer slow, but it cannot identify elements in new tabs.

Let me know if anyone has run into this as well and whether you found a workaround. I haven't found a workaround just yet, but I'll be looking into it again tomorrow.

Thanks!

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[FedericoMignone]

Hi Dave, i want ask you, did you never had trouble spying elements in chrome? Because when I launch the app, the Application Modeller doesnt recognice any element in the window.

Thank you in advance!

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Federico Mignone
EY - Ernst And Young
Buenos Aires
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[david.l.morris]

Normally works for me. There are some versions of Blue Prism that are less stable than others regarding Chrome automation though. The only thing that should be required is having the Blue Prism extension installed in Chrome for at least Browser mode to work.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Dave,

I spotted this and took the liberty of having the team run a few tests to check your findings. We've been unable to replicate the issue that you report when using fixed ports for browser extension communications, but we have spotted the same behaviour that you describe above when using ephemeral ports. The developers are taking a look at the previous version of the extension to locate the source of the issue now.

Can I ask whether you restarted your runtime resources between changes to the browser extension port setting? I was thinking that if you were using ephemeral ports to begin with and adjusted the system setting without restarting your resources the same behaviour may appear to persist, but that's only because the resource would recognise the change in system setting next time it started up.

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[david.l.morris]

Hi Rob,

My fault. I thought 'restart the runtime resources' meant to restart the RR process and not the entire RR machine. Of course, I also only did a small bit of testing with the ephemeral ports setting. In any case, yeah I was wrong about that.

I just did some more testing and had the same results as you described, when I restart the machine between fixed/ephemeral port setting changes. I'm able to spy elements in new tabs while using fixed ports (System setting checked) and cannot spy in new tabs while using ephemeral ports (System setting unchecked).

I'll look into whether we can switch back to fixed port temporarily, but we'll definitely want to switch back if you guys are able to resolve the issue. I am curious as well as to whether this issue was introduced with the most recent update to the browser extension. It'd help me know that I'm not crazy and that spying in a new tab did work about 2 weeks ago, but I'm just not 100% sure.

Thanks for looking into this!

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Dave,

We've identified the source of the issue that you have described and a new version of the browser extension is now working it's way through our internal regression testing for each of the browsers that we support (Chrome, Edge Chromium and Firefox). This should hopefully be completed in the next few days and we'll push a new version of the extension to each of the respective browser stores.

I'll post further updates when I have more information on timings.

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[david.l.morris]

Thanks, Rob! If I come across things like this in the future, what's actually the best way to give information to you guys? Email to support, forum/community post like this, an idea in the Idea Portal, send through our Partner rep/manager, or other?

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Dave,

Reporting issues like this to customer support would probably be the best way of getting this feedback through to us, unless you would be interested in signing up for our new User Research Program, part of which is an early access initiative which can see qualifying customers get early access to the product (before general release) to evaluate new features and functionality.

If this would be of interest I believe you can sign up for the research program by going to the "Get involved" menu and selecting "User Research Program".

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[david.l.morris]

Yeah I filled out the User Research Program questionnaire on October 23rd. I'm down to sign up for whatever gives me the quickest way to report issues, especially whatever makes it easiest for you guys to intake the information.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[dcternes]

I think it's absolutely brilliant that this post led to that action led to this solution - and in such a timely fashion. It's an excellent advertisement for the Communities. Kudos to Dave and Robert!

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Dan Ternes
CTO APJ
Blue Prism
Asia/Hong_Kong
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