PAD software working terribly slow and Hangs at times

[Rkmatieda]

Dear Admins,

Please consider this feedback regarding Power Automate Desktop being terribly slow while creating the flows. It hangs many times, throws the error strings, and working with different panes (variable, activities, sub flows selections) is very troublesome because you will have to wait for few seconds till the other sub flow window opens after clicking on their tabs.

Also, this is peculiar because such behavior doesn't happen when you just start your computer and work with software. after some time, the slowness comes in effect. As a remedy you must restart the computer. And please note I don't have under capacity system, it has i7 processor and 32 gigs of RAM. 

However, also note that when I run the flow it is absolutely fine. I mean even though having written some heavy code it works perfactly ok. I have no problem in doing debuging of the code as well. It is just a problem in the flow development environment.

[ApexOrigin]

"in this moment PAD don't use gateways and is better performance."

I don't understand. Are you saying the performance will get worse when they start using gateways? When are they going to do that?

[Rkmatieda]

Hi All,

Currently I am using a version 2.9.29.21133 which is latest and quite stable.

Also, This post is about 6 months old. So Microsoft has improved it quite lot. Though not the optimum one in terms of user experience and comparison with other platforms, but it seems that Microsoft is upgrading it continuously.

[Thomas_Petersen]

I noticed a superuser discussing the switch from gateway to machines. No, it hasn't fixed anything.

For me, the biggest issue is developing, it lags and hacks no matter what specs I run it on or what is running next to it.

PLEASE fix it, our customers are getting quite irritated.

[Emad_Abed]

Same with me, development is lagging even with super specs PC.

Ver 2.12.171.21216

[nancmadi]

Everything everyone says here I am dealing with too... I can't even move my mouse around to click on objects to record, mouse jumps all over the place, hangs up... when I run a flow it will work fine sometimes and other times not at all not consistent when I haven't even changed my steps.  UGHHHH

Here's my version

[JakubZizka]

I personally must agree with most of the users. My Insights are PAD Performance seems to deteriorate with time, so I usually restart PAD after 2-3 hours of work. And I even restart PC and it really helps. Also, the size of the flow directly influences the Performance. Flow with 30-40 Steps and couple subflows is usually OK. But the moment I have 5+ subflows 60-70 steps the performance just jumps off the cliff. Closing subflows and restarting PAD helps.

Whenever I get to make long decision trees (50-70 Steps in PAD) of IF Conditions with multiple variables, I copy paste them in Notepad++ because it is faster to edit them this way. I believe it will be faster even with should the UI get smooth sometime. I Also like to create subflows in separate new flow away from the main flow and then copy paste it into the main flow.

Where PAD shines are working with files and folders and excel files. It is so fast and reliable, and you don’t even have to slow down here at all.

When running without debugger you should think about putting quite a lot of “waits” especially when automating UI Applications cause a lot of times your actions are a lot faster than the UI is. The debugger slows down the steps intentionally …and slowing down (Wait for window/Wait etc.) is the key to make it more reliable. The power I see is not in running 10-20 seconds faster than a human can but in running at 2AM 24/7 slowly but surely.

[Hvus]

PAD is terrible!   I am working very nice with WinAutomation.
Please let us continue working with WinAutomation UNTIL you develop a nice product. 
A lot of problems to resolve and we are not ready to abandon WinAutomation. 

I hope you administrator read our opinions.

IT IS SO SLOW.

[Kresimir_RPA]

In my case, working in PAD is frustratingly slow. Just dragging any action to working field or right clicking enabling/disabling an action takes about 3 seconds to complete. Just switching from subflow to subflow pad takes 3-4 seconds. Basically every click in PAD takes 3 to 4 seconds. It's very frustrating. Do you guys having the same issue? I was convinced that it's because of cloud environment.

In Softomotive ProcessRobot everything worked fast and instantly. 

[Emad_Abed]

Yes, we all facing the same, this is a known issue with PAD, it is extremely slow and swallows the system resources.

[douglasabreu]

O maior de todos jamais será esquecido.

WINAUTOMATION

[joshd111]

@Kresimir_RPA Yes, this is now my experience too after running the scripts a few times. The only "fix" is to restart PAD. I think PAD is locking resources during runtime and not releasing. 

[Moriz86]

We experience the same performance issues, which have become much worse after the December 2021 update.

We work with fairly big automation (15 or more subflows) and the system is lacking and crashing all the time. It is made our time spent on development increase threefold. We used ProcessRobot before, which had no delays at all!

I too hope that the performance issues will be solved soon

[Jithin_5]

I installed the latest version of PAD and the time it takes to save and to open up is horrible.  Closing and opening PAD does not help either. Hope we get an update that fixes this issue soon. 

[luisfmts]

2022 and still terrible performance

[ApexOrigin]

Does anyone know if the Microsoft PAD team have even acknowledged this issue? Do they have a portal for prioritizing customer issues for their software where users can vote on the importance of the issue, like other software vendors?

[douglasabreu]

eles destruíram uma grande empresa, o winautomation fazia tudo incrivelmente bem, tudo! Empacotaram o maior RPA em um design UI moderno e extremamente irritante, enquanto o bom e velho visual do java fazia tudo muito melhor, a interface do fluxo era perfeita!

O que talvez pudesse ser feito seria adicionar um plugin como o connections da versão online só isso, deixava como estava O MESMO VISUAL, eu faria assim se ESSA DECISÃO estivesse na minha mão.

Devolvam o WINAUTOMATION

[ThePobblebonk]

Hi,

This is happening again and if I close all other applications it still happens. As far as I am concerned unless this issue is addressed permanently I won't be recommending implementing this for business users. This issue has been around long enough that MS should understand what is the underlying issue and refactoring where needed. Every new release should be regression tested for this issue and not pushed until addressed.

[douglasabreu]

Para mim, o WINAUTOMATION era e é infinitamente melhor que o PAD, seria tão simples não enxer essa interface de botões coloridos e animados, mas deixá-lo como estava e incluir novas funcionalidades no sistema que já existia, eu jamais vou abandonar o antigo. Se eu pudesse, eu o colocaria o velho WINAUTOMATION vivo novamente ♥️!

[Kresimir_RPA]

Agree 100%.

[Kresimir_RPA]

Totally agree. It was 5x times faster developing in old winautomation/processrobot. 

I hoped that it would get better after few updates, but it didn't. The bigger the desktop flow gets it gets slower.

By slower I mean, every drag and drop, enabling/disabling actions, copy/paste, saving desktop flows.

There is no option to put actions in sections and minimize them, especially when you have hundreds of actions in one subflow etc.. The colour of working interface is tiring for the eyes.

Also, different groups of actions should be tinted with different shade of colours, so it would be easier to work with them when you're scrolling through hundreds of actions or debugging something.

Kind regards,

Crash&Peace