Lab 1: Implementation - Automate Data Entry into Legacy App

Scroll down and uncheck the Use Process Board option (we will not use the Process Board capabilities on this workshop).

Click Save on the bottom right to create your new automation process.

We recommend using 1680x1050 for the connection resolution. If you would like to use a higher resolution you can try, but be sure to keep the same resolution at all times.

Enter the RPA Manager Address (no need to type the https:// prefix) and click Continue:

Then your User Name and your Password and click Sign In:

If the Repository Explorer tab is not displayed, you can enable it by going to the View menu and clicking on Show Repository Explorer:

You should have the Google Drive link sent to you along with the credentials and other workshop material. This drive contains the solution for all Labs. If you do not have access, ask the instructor.

Navigate to the Desktop\LegacyApps\Java folder and select the start.bat file.

Expand the Insert Environment Variable dropdown list and select the %USERPROFILE% one. It will be added at the beginning of the just populated File name path. Remove the C:\Users\workshop entry to leave the path as follows:

%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\LegacyApps\Java\start.bat

Click OK to save and close.

The Legacy App is opened and once the login window (with title NTO Login) is displayed, the execution finishes and RPA Builder is restored to the foreground.

Drag and drop a User Account Decrypter, name it as systemLogin and select the Activity Parameters.systemLogin variable for the User account:

Click OK to save and close.

You can notice that the Username input box is already focused (a blinking cursor is on it). We could inject the credentials right away, but we’re going to ignore that and pretend the focus is not yet there. Why?, to show you how you can make sure to set the focus on the field of your election for future use cases.

Drag and drop an Image Search step and open it. Name it as Search for Username.

Click the Start from scratch button to capture your pattern image.

Move and resize the capture window to select the Username label as follows:

Press F10 to validate the capture window.

Click the Full Screen button and Capture to confirm the selection.

To do so, drag and drop a Mouse Actions step and open it. Name it as Click on Username input box.

Notice how the Relative To setting is automatically set to the X/Y coordinates of the previous Image Search. This means that any click captured will always be based on such coordinates.

Click on the Start button to capture the mouse actions:

When the Login window appears, simply left-click anywhere on the Username input box as follows:

Press F10 to end the capture. The mouse event will have been saved. Click OK to save and close.

Drag and drop a Keystrokes step and name it as Perform Login. The Keystrokes activity allows you to simulate keyboard entries.

In the wizard window, click on the + button to enter a number of keystrokes as follows:

Click OK to save and close.

First close the Legacy Application.

Then, click the Run button and see what happens:

Login is performed, RPA Builder is restored in the foreground and you can see how the main application window is then loaded. We will be doing the rest of the operations on such main window, but it takes some time to get loaded. We do need to wait until it gets loaded before entering the invoice data!

Name it as Wait for main Window.

As the legacy application main window is already loaded as we did the previous test, we can click on the Collect window titles to get all the current window titles in our Windows box. Once clicked, you can open the Window title dropdown list and locate the NTO Financial Module (normal) one.

Leave the rest of the settings as default and click OK to save and close.

If you do a new test (remember to first close the existing instance of the app), you will see how RPA Builder is not restored to the foreground until the main window is displayed and detected by this last Window Wait step.

Do so using a single Keystrokes step. Dreag and drop one, name it as Move to New Invoice Form and set focus and add an ALTDOWN, 3 and ALTUP keystokes followed by a TAB:

Drag and drop a new Group and name it as Insert Data.

Within a single Keystokes step, you will be adding all data and moving the focus between all the input boxes. Again, all in a single step.

Double-click on it to open the wizard window. Click on the + button to start adding data/keystrokes:

First, you need to enter the Invoice Number data.

In the Keystrokes Editor expand the Insert Script Variable dropdown list and locate and select the Activity Parameters.invoiceNumber variable.

Expand the Insert Special Character dropdown list and locate and select the TAB entry.

This is how it should look like so far:

Click OK to finalise. See how the invoiceNumber variable and TAB keystroke looks like:

${Activity Parameters.invoiceDate}{TAB}

${Activity Parameters.invoiceDueDate}{TAB}

${Activity Parameters.invoicePurchaseOrder}{TAB}

${Activity Parameters.invoiceTotals} (no {TAB} is needed here)

Add the following keystrokes one after the other:

TAB, SPACE and SPACE (this last one to close the informative dialog box)

There are many ways to close an application: use keyboard shortcut, mouse clicking, ask window to close or kill the app…​ all these can be done with MuleSoft RPA. On this case, we’ll use the ALT-F4 keyboard shortcut.

Drag and drop a new Keystrokes step and name it as Close the app.

Add an ALTDOWN, F4 and ALTUP keystokes:

This is how the activity should look like now: