Hello again.
My name is Richie.
Today, we will learn how to use UiPath in building desktop automation for virtual applications
which are accessible through citrix or remote desktops.
After this tutorial you will be able to create an automation workflow that allows you to
type text into an application and clicks a button.
This application is running in a virtual desktop.
A virtual application is an application that runs on another computer and its graphical
interface is streamed to your computer.
Most known virtualization technology comes from Citrix and for simplicity I will refer
to automating such virtual application as Citrix automation.
Citrix automation plays an important role in small to corporate companies like BPO and
contact centers where applications are being accessed remotely because of security considerations.
I will introduce you to some of the basic and helpful ways in working with UiPath for
Citrix.
Here in my example, I’ll be using an application accessed via remote desktop but the underlying
techniques are identical when dealing with Citrix apps.
I'm sure you are already familiar with UiPath's recording tool.
The way it works is it will capture the element on the screen and sets its preferences based
on the open application window.
Let's run the recorder.
As you can see, when we point our recorder inside our remote desktop, it doesn't recognize
the elements inside it.
That's because, it interprets it as an image.
So UiPath cannot interact to the installed application inside the remote desktop directly.
So what do we do is to manually record the steps and specify the actions of each activity.
It'll be easier once you understand how it works.
Let's Press "Escape" to cancel our recording.
So what do we do if this is the case?
Let's select Step-by-Step tab.
This allows us to manually select an item to click and to type.
Let's click Image and select Mouse click.
As what it says, it will perform a click on the region we indicated.
Let's highlight the label, "Email".
And why should we not highlight the textbox instead?
Because UiPath will perform an optical recognition to find this image.
There are multiple text boxes and these images are identical.
So UiPath will have a hard time finding the right image.
Now that UiPath is able to recognize the image, the next we will do is to indicate where wanted
to type the text.
This option, "Indicate a point on the screen" will help us do that.
Let's click on it and click right next to "Email".
That's it for the click event.
Next let's type some text into the textbox.
We will fill out both the Email and Employee number fields.
Let me clear out the default values first before we do our recording.
We can also add an activity to clear out these fields but let's just clear the fields manually
for now.
Let's click "Element", Let's choose "keyboard" then "Type".
Now we can just click anywhere on the screen because we know for sure that the email editbox
has the keyboard input.
Let's type a sample email address here.
(test@sample.com) and press Enter.
There it fills out the Email field.
Let's do the same steps with "Employee number".
Let's select image>mouse>click then we highlight the "Employee Number".
Then we indicate where we wanted it to click.
So let's click next to it.
Next for the type activity, let's go to "element", "keyboard", "type".
Click anywhere on the image then let's type a sample employee number.
Next, let's click the "Create Expense Report" button.
Again, let's go to the Image >mouse>click This time, the pointer is already set to the
"Center" so let's just click on OK.
We're done.
Let's Save the recording.
Let's make this sequence as a start node.
I will clear out the existing data first.
Ok.
Let's run the workflow.
So now.
It runs it properly.
Let's go back to the workflow.
Let me explain this thoroughly.
First, let's check the properties of the Click event in the email textbox.
Remember that we have specified to where we wanted our pointer to click?
The X-Y Offset determines the exact position of the point to click relative to our identified
image.
Next, let's go to the Type command.
As you can see, the screenshot captures the whole virtual machine window.
To make it easier for you to understand the workflow, we can change the image screenshot
by clicking the "Options" menu then select "Change informative screenshot".
Then that's the time we will be able to select the image that would explain better about
this activity.
Let's also change the Activity name into "Type into the Email field"
Let's do the same with the "Employee number".
Let's go to "Options" menu then select "Change informative screenshot".
Then we can highlight the Employee number label and textbox.
Let's also change the Activity name to "Type the Employee number"
Ok. let's run the workflow again.
Perfect.
As you can see.
We have proven that UiPath works even with complex applications like remote desktops.
In the next video, we will learn how to retrieve data from Citrix environments.
Thanks for watching!