Reading data from tables - Feedback/Suggestions

[RusenAktas]

Hi all,

I'm Rusen, research engineer from Blue Prism AI Labs.

We'd like to hear from you on your experiences reading/capturing data from tables. Please feel free to share what's working well, and what doesn't: Have you ever had problems with reading data from tables? Did it block you? Did you try using Region Mode? Got any "intelligent feature" suggestions? 

Thanks!


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Rusen Aktas, PhD
Research Engineer
Blue Prism AI Labs
London
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[MichalSzumski]

Hi Rusen,

I have been working with SAP quite a lot and there were couple of cases when reading the Table (using SAP mode) wasn't working as expected. Some of the tables were collected only for visible area - we had to program intelligent scrolling before read operation is performed. BOT is scrolling on the top of the table (to reset the state) and then it is scrolling to the bottom. Then he reads it and checks for empty lines (all lines are collected but if they weren't loaded then they are empty in output collection). then he goes page up to get next portion and check for empty lines again until no empty lines are present.

Other case in SAP was in very specific place - MIGO tcode. BluePrism read action was giving empty results (it was trying to read it but without success) and I ended up creating my own VB code to read it - The way how this table works is very strange (at least in my SAP version).

I avoid Region Mode at all cost and until now I was able to never use it 🙂

Best regards,
Michal Szumski

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Michal Szumski
RPA developer
Rockwell Automation
Europe/Warsaw
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[RusenAktas]

Hi Michal,

Thank you very much for your input. It's really valuable.

If you don't mind me asking, can you please tell me what put you off from using Region Mode as a backup solution? 🙂 

Thank you.

Best wishes,
Rusen Aktas

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Rusen Aktas
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[DaveMorris]

I very rarely find Blue Prism capable of reading data from tables by Blue Prism actually recognizing them as tables. 90% of the time I have to construct the logic myself to determine columns and rows using dynamic paths and manipulating the associated columns and rows values.

Region Mode, as far as I have seen, doesn't support the capability of something like 'Click Text'. So, even if I can read the values from a table using Region Mode, I'm unable to interact with the table without doing some complex logic to determine the X,Y coordinates of the words and then clicking on them. Adding a feature to be able to click on a word on the screen would be very valuable. There are plenty of other features missing from Blue Prism as well related to this and Application Modeller in general.


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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[RusenAktas]

Thank you for your feedback, Dave! 

This is very useful. What you're saying is, even though Blue Prism actually recognizes the individual elements, the table reading function is not there most of the time. This is because Blue Prism does not recognize the table as a single entity. Right?

Out of curiosity, how would you use "Click Text" in the context of tables? To click cells to trigger an event? Open the cell in a separate window in case the text is truncated? Something else?

And, are there any other important features missing from Blue Prism/Application Modeller related to this that comes to your mind? 

Thanks very much.
Rusen

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Rusen Aktas
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[_Amlansahoo]

Hi Rusen,

As we discuss the same on Ideas section want to bring it to here.

The problem with Blue prism while reading tables in blueprism we are not getting any data from table or blue prism is not able to read whole table. So we may have to read each element and put them in a collection.. This is fine if table contains less rows but it is difficult if table has multiple rows and multiple pages as well.

As far as I know region mode not at all reliable at all because it requires coordinates or images to match with element so if some changes happen UI or page is not maximized it might fail. Also using region mode we have to traverse through each line which we can do using other modes as well.
Region mode is not preferred at all for reading table as long as we don't have any other options.

As you are asking about blocking that definitely no but sometimes frustrating because if something can be done in 5 seconds it took 1 minute to do the same also needs to put lot logics. The main problem arises if a table contains dynamic columns for example If a web table COLUMN1 sometimes or for some  login and not for some other login then we may have to write lot of logic to accomplish this but it could be much easier if we can read whole table.

Note:- Reading table at least better in IE browser with HTML Mode. But it's pathetic fro chrome firefox using Browser mode even if you will highlight table many time it will give time out exception for reading that table.

Hope it Helps!

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Amlan Sahoo
RPA Consultant
Equinix
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