Click Link on Web Page now taking 30 seconds

[CharlesBrewer]

Hello,

So I've been running this flow for a while, but lately this particular step to click on a web page link is taking 30 seconds.  This is in a loop, so it might need to click on the link 60-100 times, so this can add upwards of 50 minutes for this single step. I googled and saw someone recommended to add the "Focus Window" beforehand, I did that and no changes. I've tried it with both Send physical click on and off, and in both cases it is the same.  Any thoughts on how I can fix this?  Again this is a loop so the page is staying open, it's not like the page is reloading over and over again.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

Could you share how selector looks ?

[CharlesBrewer]

Hi there @Nived_Nambiar ,

I'm not completely sure what you're looking for so I shall send you many things. 

[Nived_Nambiar]

Try this way, in advanced settings of click webpage link action, toggle off send physical click option and try again.

Also let's try to make selector short, by checking html of webpage for that right click on uielement in webpage, and select inspect element option, share the screenshot of that.

[CharlesBrewer]

Hello again @Nived_Nambiar ,

I've tried it with the click on and off, but I'll try it with off this time, sure. Is this what you want?

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

Are you trying to seelect webpage link based on text ?

[CharlesBrewer]

Hello @Nived_Nambiar 

Yes sir. Here is a picture of it. It selects the first link to open a new page, gets some info, closes the page, and then moves down the list to the 2nd, 3rd, etc.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

Then i would recommend to try this selector instead of one you are trying long one u are using 

a:contains("%text%")

where %text% is variable in PAD which stores the link text which is to be clicked. for example: RA-170973 , RA-174493 etc.

Let me know whether it worked for you 

[CharlesBrewer]

Hi @Nived_Nambiar ,

I'm not sure I understand.  So delete the entire selector I have now and only put "a:contains("%text%")" ?
Also how will it know to click on the 1st link on the 1st loop, and then the 2nd link on the 2nd loop, etc. You see in my current selector I have the "tr:eq(%LoopIndex%)" so it hits the right link, I need to incorporate that yes? Otherwise I'm not sure how that works, talk to me like I'm dumb cause I kinda am 🙂

[CharlesBrewer]

@Nived_Nambiar 

Or how am I getting it to store the text? And also do the loop? I'm a bit confused here.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

Try any of appraoches which i am suggesting below 🙂

1st way:  using data scrapping option to scrape the text and its associated link (of the ID column )

Use data scrapping to to take the details of ID column, its text and corresponding URL and then loop through the datatable obtained from it and use go to webpage to go to the specific url of that specific ID and then perform operations regarding the ID and then use go to webpage again to go back.

2nd Way

For the selector case which we have discussed , selector should be placed like this 

here text variable should be the variable from PAD which holds the value of ID name like RA-170973 like that. 

If you have list of all ID names, you can loop through it and then assign it to text variable and make the bot to click on it 🙂

here List1 is initialized for temp purposes, but in your scenarionyou can use extract data from webpage action to extract the ID names.

Hope this helps 

Mark it as solution if it resolves your query 

[CharlesBrewer]

Hi @Nived_Nambiar ,

I guess I should have mentioned I already have it extracting the data and in a loop. It is not just extracting that column but 4 columns total, so I'm not sure how to take what I currently have and do what you want, without it messing up. here is kind of what it looks like : 

Looks like a big difference is I use Loop and not For Each. Basically it extracts the data, and then for each "RA" It has to open a page, and then click on a link to open another page, then save that page, then close those 2 pages, then go to the next RA.  Here is what the data extraction looks like : 

Do you recommend I use the For Each rather than Loop? I guess then I don't need the %LoopIndex% in the Selector, which is maybe where I was getting mostly confused. Still confused though. 😄

[Nived_Nambiar · Accepted solution]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

use for each to loop through row in DataTable which is extracted let's say each row is defined by row variable. then 

set a variable let's day id1 with value %row[0]%

Now use the id1 in the selector like below

a:contains("%id1%")

Hope this helps 🙂

[CharlesBrewer]

Hi @Nived_Nambiar ,

First thanks for all the help and I am sorry I do not seem to get it. Where do I put the row[0] step, or how do I increment it? Right now it's just going to do the 1st RA over and over and my brain does not seem to be working. Here is what I did (incorrectly), youll see I added a step to retrieve that column of RAs from the data and put it into a list, but not sure how to get the rows to increment

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

see the sample flow design [ignore url and all ]

So here what i am trying to acheieve is , selecting the link by text present in it. In the first row, text is RA-174081

So my bot should click the link which contains text RA-174081. simmilarly for next iteration it should consider the next row and so on 🙂

For checking whether the selector works or not, you can use the test selector which helps to test selector based on different values of %id1% variable 

just check with different ID values in the variable to test selector to verify whether it is highlighing correct element or not.

Hope it helps

[CharlesBrewer]

@Nived_Nambiar ,

I think I can't get that to work because I am unsure how you are typing the row[0] in, mine does not look the same.

[CharlesBrewer]

Nevermind I fixed that, I am dumb 🙂 It it going through the rows now. Is it going faster? It's hard to tell until I do an official run from the scheduled cloud flow, but I want to fix one more thing before I do that 😕

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @CharlesBrewer 

is it working up ?

[CharlesBrewer]

@Nived_Nambiar ,

Yes I just did a test run. That 30 second step is now taking 1 second as it should. Though overall the flow is still running long, it should have been a better reduction on time, but I possibly need to fix other steps. Thanks for this one though your time is much appreciated.