Advanced UI Interaction 2.2
Input actions are the ones where you or the robot take some direct actions on the application or web page you’re automating: clicking, typing, keyboard shortcuts, and so on.
Output actions are those that help you extract information out of an app, and into Studio for further processing.
Input methods:
- Default - it uses the mouse and keyboard drivers to simulate a human operating them. It works every time, but with a few downsides, like speed and the requirement to have the application active. So it’s a good idea to start with this method to make sure everything works, and then change it to one of the other 2 methods.
- Simulate Type/Click - it is the fastest and works in the background, but it does not support keyboard shortcuts. Uses the technology of the target app to simulate the type or click.
- Window Messages - converts all text to lowercase, it cannot empty a field before writing to it and it is not particularly fast. It sends a specific message directly to the target application to perform the specified action.
Output methods:
- Fulltext is the default method, and it’s the best one for most situations. It’s fast, accurate, and works in background.
- The Native method has the advantage of being able to extract word data, like the screen coordinates of each word or character.
- OCR - As you may know, in general, OCR technology is not 100% accurate, but it does work as a last resort in situation where none of the other direct methods give us the intended results.
