MS Edge and Chrome Extensions

[Walter.Koller]

I just noticed, when having Chrome and Edge installed on the same machine, Edge automatically imports the Chrome Extension. 

We have Chrome and Edge installed on our workplaces and having Chrome extension for Blue Prism installed but no extension for Edge.
When opening Edge and view the installed extensions, also the Chrome extension is shown. The link redirects to Chrome Web store and a message in Edge informs:

What is the difference between the Chrome extension and the Edge extension?
I was hoping to have improved automation features and reliability in Edge over Chrome.

Thanks

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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[Tejaskumar_Darji]

Hello,

I checked in my machine and I've separate extension for Chrome and Edge because both of them have their own store to get extensions. You can go to edge extension store and download it for Edge. Same goes if you want it for chrome open chrome extension store to get it.

One more alternative is to click on change option in programs for BluePrism and install from the setup file.(SS attached)

Edge and Chrome both built on the Chromium open-source browser so in the backend they're more similar than they are different. (Perhaps that is the reason extension is same for both Edge and Chrome)

Hope this helps.

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Thanks & Regards,
Tejaskumar Darji
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[Walter.Koller]

Thanks for your reply.

We didn't have Edge extensions installed yet. I wanted to do so when I saw there is already an extension installed in Edge but it says it comes from Chrome web store:

To be honest I don't know how Edge imported the extension from Chrome or directly from Chrome Web Store.

What is the difference between the extensions of specific to each of the browsers?
Would the Chrome extension work in Edge?
Are there any features only available in Chrome extension or only available in Edge extension?
Is Blue Prism aware of this cross-compatibility?
If so, will there be maybe only one extension in future for both? What is the recommendation by BP on which extension to use?

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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[expertcr]

Regarding your questions about the extension, please take a look at the following KB Article "How do I install the Blue Prism browser extension from the Chrome Store which is required to automate Microsoft Edge," this one has additional links that will help to explain what you are looking.

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Luis Lopez
Customer Support Engineer English and Spanish
Blue Prism Ltd
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[Walter.Koller]

Thanks a lot for the link.

So Blue Prism seem to support running Edge with Chrome extensions?
And this might even be a recommended approach for automation?

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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[david.l.morris]

Hi Walter,

In 6.8 (which is when Edge Chromium automation was introduced I think), it was slightly weird where the Chrome extension was installed in Edge. But, starting with 6.9, it's actually a separate extension that is in the Edge extension store. Now, whether it's actually a separate build or not, I've no idea, but it's no longer weird to install as of 6.9 and onward. 😃 And I believe that all of the extensions are installed automatically in 6.10+ so there's no manual effort other than configuration of the extensions such as enabling Private mode or whatever.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[Walter.Koller]

Thanks for your reply. 

I was more interested in the possible impact of using the Chrome extension for both browsers.
According to current roadmap MS keep quite in sync with Google Chrome roadmap. 
However, I am not sure if it MS will always take Google's changes to Chrome as given or if they will branch at some point in time.
Also I was hoping MS will integrate Chromium better in Windows functionality, giving Blue Prism better ways for automation than currently with Chrome. According to the information I got/found the extensions for Edge and Chrome are the same and there is no difference in terms of automation support.

Considering the two extensions are currently basically the same and Edge and Chrome both use Chromium, how difficult is it to migrate processes from one browser to another? I fear it will be a little more effort than changing the name of the executable in Application Modeller?

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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