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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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company