web app: drag & drop not working

[ChrisRider]

I am automating a report in a web app.  One of the requirements is to select a column and drag it "up" to select it.  Think of what an Excel sheet looks like - drag Column A up by about 40 pixels, then release it. I've spied the column name using both UI Automation Element and as html.  When I'm in Application Modeler and select Highlight, both spied resources show the column name being highlighted. In my Object, I have a Navigate stage.  I add a step to Drag and another step to Drop.  For the X,Y options, I'm values within the screen bounds.  As an example, screen bounds is 370,286,324,555 (screen resolution is 1920x1080).   In my drag step, I'm using X=371,Y=287 (thinking this is inside the bounds of the column name).  For my drop step, I'm using X=371,Y=247 (which I think should move the column name up by 40 pixels - I'm currently guessing on the number of pixels I need to move the column name up). As a human using the web app, I would left-click (hold), drag up, then release the left button to drop it.  This is how the web site lets a person add the column name to a filter. When Blue Prism is executing my drag and drop, I see text being selected below the button or sometimes nothing at all.  If someone can let me know if I'm giving the correct X,Y for drag & drop?   Thanks in advance.

[david.l.morris]

Hi Chris I think you're going to need Surface Automation (Region mode) for this. I've done similar things, though not as specific as you need, but I found drag/drop to be a very brittle feature to use. I could not figure out how to make it work without using Surface Automation to locate a specific image (even a textual image works too) and then using those coordinates as my starting drag location and then doing a little calc to decide what, for example, 40 pixels up would be for the drop. If you're on Blue Prism 6+, this isn't very difficult. It's hard for me to remember the pain of SA in BP 5, and I really try not to think about it. But I think that's going to be a bit rougher in 5. Respectfully, Dave