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

[DaveMorris]

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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[TravisBrown]

Hi Rob,

I am having the same issue. Will the update to the extension be applied automatically or will we have to update manually?

Thanks,
Travis

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Travis Brown
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Travis,

You should receive the update automatically - the way we deploy our Chrome and Edge Chromium extensions mean that when an updated version is published to the store any users of the extension should pull down the update immediately (unless measures have been taken to disable the automatic download of extensions from the Chrome/Edge stores).

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[TravisBrown]

Hi Rob,

Thanks. Are you able to advise how far away from a fix you are? Are you also able to come back on this thread once the said fix has been deployed?

Thanks,
Travis

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Travis Brown
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Travis,

Apologies for the delay, I didn't want to reply before I had a firm answer for you.

Our regression testing is now complete and I'm happy to confirm that the new version of the Chrome extension will be published to the Chrome store Monday morning (I would estimate between 8-9am UK time). We will be uploading the Edge and Firefox extensions on Monday morning as well, but I'm afraid I can't estimate when the review process on each of the stores will be complete. Past experience has shown Firefox to normally be quite quick, around a couple of hours, but the review of an upload to the Microsoft Edge store can take anywhere from a 1-3 days (though I can't guarantee it wouldn't be longer!).

I hope this helps.

Regards,

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[MK]

Hi,
I'm facing this issue of not able to spy Chrome elements in Browser Mode. I switched to Firfox but for Firefox the elements are not even getting highlighted in browser mode. Please advise.

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M K
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[robert.nicklin]

Hello M K,

I believe the issue you are describing is different than the one being discussed in this thread. This issue is specifically related to a new tab being opened within an existing browser instance in which Blue Prism is able to spy elements and finding that the new tab cannot be spied - I may be wrong, but your issue sounds like you can't spy Chrome at all.

I believe I've seen some other threads in which topics like this have been discussed, one such thread can be found here:
https://community.blueprism.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=145&MessageKey=f0d773da-afd5-44d8-9d21-f121ee87b9b4&CommunityKey=3743dbaa-6766-4a4d-b7ed-9a98b6b1dd01&tab=dig...

I'd suggest giving the existing discussion points a read and, if none of the suggested mitigations work for you, raising a support ticket so that we can investigate your problems more thoroughly.

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Travis (and Dave),

I can confirm that the new version of the Chrome extension is now live on the Chrome store. The new versions of the extension for Microsoft Edge Chromium and Firefox are now also working their way through the review process on the respective stores.

Regards,
Rob​

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[robert.nicklin]

Hello all,

Earlier today we identified a degradation of performance impacting browser automations for Chrome, Firefox and Edge. After further investigation, it has been identified that the recent patch made available yesterday, 16th November, to the browser extension has inadvertently introduced a performance issue.

As a result, we have reverted to the previous version of the extension with an updated version number of 2.2.0.6 for Chrome and Firefox to stabilise performance whilst we look to resolve the issue reported in this thread without impacting performance of the extension. The new version of the extension for the Edge store was still in review, so we have cancelled the publishing of this to leave the extension available on the Edge store fixed at the current version number of 2.2.0.3.

Regards,
Rob


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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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[MohammadSiddiqu]

I am also getting this issue when i am redirecting to a different page. The chrome browser gets disconnected. Will this also be resolved with the updated extension?

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Mohammad Siddique
Senior Consultant
Allstate
Asia/Kolkata
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[robert.nicklin]

Hi Mohammad,

Your issue sounds slightly different to the one mentioned in this thread - while I'd be happy to hear more about what steps you've taken to see this occur I'd suggest raising a support ticket as this may be a more appropriate route to diagnose your issue. There may also be some workarounds/changes to settings that support could advise you on to help in the meantime while they investigate your issue.

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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