Hi,

I have a requirement where I need to download a CSV file of inventory from a web-based application that (for whatever reason) doesn't offer us an easy way to do this such as an API or access to the back-end database. I tried using Fiddler (an HTML logging tool) to figure out the URLs it visits to generate and download this file, but I'm not having much luck stringing together some tasks to log into the website (I got that one to work) and then download the file (that one doesn't - it loads the HTML for a website that says "your login has expired").

So I started looking for other options, and found VC's "Robot" task, which looks like it could solve my problem. I see a Record button, so of course I clicked that and then went through the steps I'd do if I was doing this manually - Click the start menu, load Chrome, enter the URL, enter my login and password, click the "reports" link on the resulting webpage, choose "inventory report", and click "export all rows". The problem I have is that I can't find a "stop recording" button anywhere. The only way I've been able to get out of the recording mode is to open task manager and end the process for the VC client. Also, when recording, I'd expect to see things start appearing in the "sequence" area of the screen, but they don't. I do see a black text-based description of what I've done, but that's it.

I also tried manually dragging things into the sequence section. I dragged in a Click action and told it to click on the Start Menu. I then dragged another click action and told it to click on the Search Box. From there, I want to use a SetText action to enter "chrome" into the search box and then hit the enter key to load Chrome, but it complains that "compiler errors encountered processing expression chrome. chrome is not declared. it may be inaccessible due to its protection level". It seems that I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what it is. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

I believe it's a right-click on the dark grey bar at the bottom of the add task window. I sure would like to see some detailed help on using this task.

You're right, it's a right-click in the dark grey area. My next question is how did you manage to figure that out? I see nothing in that area or anywhere on the task screen that says "right-click here to stop recording", or anything that even comes remotely close to that. I also don't see anything in what little documentation there is.

Now my problem is that my recording doesn't work. It gives me an error saying "index was outside of the bounds of the array". These are the steps I recorded:

1. Click on the Start menu.
   
2. Click on the Search box.
   
3. Enter the text "chrome" in the search box.
   
4. Hit the "enter" key. This loads Chrome.
   
5. Click on the Address bar in Chrome.
   
6. Type in a URL and hit the "enter" key. This loads the login screen.
   
7. Click on the username field and type in my username.
   
8. Click on the password field, type in my password, and hit the enter key. This logs me in.
   
9. Click on the "inventory report" link.
   
10. On the resulting page, click on the "export all rows" link. This downloads a CSV file.
    
11. Click on the "log out" link.
    
12. Click on the "x" in the top-right corner to close Chrome.
    

Once I get the file downloaded, I can use other VC tasks to move the file, import it into Access or Excel, combine it with data from another system, do whatever analysis I need to do, and then export the results. My plan is to then use another Robot task to pick up the resulting file and import it back into the original system. But, the only part of that whole sequence above that actually works is step 1 - it opens the start menu.

I would prefer to open Chrome by using an Execute task and pointing it to chrome.exe, but the problem I have with that is that it doesn't want to load a web page. Plus, it seems to open chrome in some sort of container window, rather than simply opening it on the desktop.

Well, I was trying to figure it out too a while back and tried everything until I stumbled on that. lol. That's about all I could figure out I'm afraid. The documentation needs a serious overhaul to catch up with the current version. It's too easy to get carried away with adding new features while letting thorough testing and documentation slip. Beware of getting too big too fast!

Hi,

I have a requirement where I need to download a CSV file of inventory from a web-based application that (for whatever reason) doesn't offer us an easy way to do this such as an API or access to the back-end database. I tried using Fiddler (an HTML logging tool) to figure out the URLs it visits to generate and download this file, but I'm not having much luck stringing together some tasks to log into the website (I got that one to work) and then download the file (that one doesn't - it loads the HTML for a website that says "your login has expired").

So I started looking for other options, and found VC's "Robot" task, which looks like it could solve my problem. I see a Record button, so of course I clicked that and then went through the steps I'd do if I was doing this manually - Click the start menu, load Chrome, enter the URL, enter my login and password, click the "reports" link on the resulting webpage, choose "inventory report", and click "export all rows". The problem I have is that I can't find a "stop recording" button anywhere. The only way I've been able to get out of the recording mode is to open task manager and end the process for the VC client. Also, when recording, I'd expect to see things start appearing in the "sequence" area of the screen, but they don't. I do see a black text-based description of what I've done, but that's it.

I also tried manually dragging things into the sequence section. I dragged in a Click action and told it to click on the Start Menu. I then dragged another click action and told it to click on the Search Box. From there, I want to use a SetText action to enter "chrome" into the search box and then hit the enter key to load Chrome, but it complains that "compiler errors encountered processing expression chrome. chrome is not declared. it may be inaccessible due to its protection level". It seems that I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what it is. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Hi, I think for your case you should use Webmacro task instead Robot task.

His query is two years old - hopefully he's already resolved it by now 🙂

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