🚧

Important!

Objects Browser is currently an Experimental feature currently under development and subject to change. Such beta features are not supported for Enterprise customers. Projects which use this feature are not guaranteed to be backward compatible with future iterations of Studio. Object Browser is currently available only with a Community license.

To create a UI library, a UI application, manage UI descriptors and more, use the UI Objects Browser panel.

Whenever you use a UI activity and generate a selector by indicating an element on the screen, the UI Objects Browser panel refreshes, identifies the activity, and displays it in the UI Activities tab, after the project is saved.

You can add the identified UI Element to the Objects Browser, by right-clicking the activity or descriptor in the UI Activities tab, and then selecting Add to UI Objects. In the same context menu, you can navigate to the activity, with the Go to Activity option.
The UI Activities panel displays all selectors and UI Descriptors that are used within the project, grouped by workflow files and folders.

Create a UI Application

From the UI Objects Browser panel, click the plus sign in the Descriptors tab or right-click Project Descriptors in the same tab and select Create Application. The Create Application window opens:

Add a unique application name, version, and description. Click Create application. Your application is visible in the Descriptors tab, under Project UI Descriptors.

Create a Screen

In the Descriptors tab, select your application, click the plus sign in the Descriptors tab or right-click your application and select Create Screen. The Add Screen window opens:

Add a unique screen name and description, click Create screen when done. The screen is visible in the Descriptors tab, under your application.

Create a UI Element

In the Descriptors tab, select your app screen, click the plus sign in the Descriptors tab or right-click the screen and select Create Element. The Add UI Element window opens:

Add an intuitive UI Element name and description, click Save when done. The tree in the Descriptors tab should be similar to this:

Add to UI Objects

From the UI Activities Tab

In the UI Activities tab, select an activity or selector from the tree, right-click and choose Add to Objects, the Add to UI Objects Library window opens:

From here, you can create a new UI Element with the current UI Descriptor, add it to an existing UI element or update an existing UI descriptor.

In our example, we used the selector generated from the Open Application activity. This type of selector can be used for creating a new screen in our application or adding a new descriptor to an existing one.

From the Body of the Activity

Elements can be added directly from activities inside the Designer panel. Click on the Options button in the body of an activity and select Add to UI Objects.

Elements and screens added as descriptors to your library are marked visually in the UI Activities tab, after the project is saved:

The workflows are marked:

• with a gray dot, if at least 1 activity from the workflow file references a UI Descriptor from the Objects panel;
• with a blue dot, if all activities from the workflow reference UI Descriptors from the Objects panel.
  The UI activities are marked:
• with an empty dot, if the activity does not reference a UI Descriptor from the Objects panel.
• with a blue dot, if it references a UI Descriptor from the Objects panel.

Edit a Screen or Element

In the Descriptors tab, right-click a screen or element and select Edit Screen or Edit Element.

Click the Edit Partial Selector Target, Edit Selector Target or Edit Application Target to open the Selector Editor and make changes to selectors.

Editing is also possible for UI Elements and screens that are either Computer Vision Targets or Unified Targets, via the corresponding Edit button, that allows you to re-indicate an element.

Selectors can also be edited from the body of the activity. Click on the Options button in the body of an activity and select Edit Selector.

Since the selector was already added as a descriptor and referenced in Objects Browser, the following window is opened:

• Unlink and edit: breaks the link between the selector and the UI library. After editing, use the Add to UI Objects option to add the selector back to the library by either overwriting the older version or creating a new UI Element in the same screen.
• Show in UI Objects Browser: focuses the element in the Descriptors tab. Right-click and choose Edit Element to edit the descriptor inside the library.
• Cancel: closes the window.

The same options are available when an object is already linked to the Objects Browser panel and the Indicate on Screen option of an activity is used.

📘

Note:

When descriptors are removed from the project, either the UI library is uninstalled or deleted locally, they are also unlinked from the project. Add the descriptors again to reestablish the link.

Resolve UI Descriptors

Whenever you indicate a screen or UI Element which is already referenced in Objects Browser, either under Project UI Descriptors or UI Libraries, the match is automatically detected and the following window is prompted:

• Use Existing: uses the UI descriptor defined in the UI Objects Browser, UI library installed as dependencies, or UI libraries from the Snippets panel.
• Keep in Activity: uses the selector from inside the activity.

Using the Add to UI Objects option from the menu in the body of the activity can also return a matching UI Descriptor. The following window is prompted:

• Use Existing: uses the UI descriptor defined in the UI Objects Browser, UI library installed as dependencies, or UI libraries from the Snippets panel.
• Create New: opens the Add to UI Objects Library window, and allows the creation of a new UI Element;
• Cancel: closes the window.

Indicating a screen searches for a corresponding UI descriptor, while indicating a target element searches for a matching UI descriptor. When using the Recorder, corresponding matches for screen and elements are searched within the local UI library from Project UI Descriptors or the imported dependencies from UI Libraries.

📘

Note:

Matching is only applicable for selectors from UIAutomation activities, and not for UIAutomationNext or CV activities, which have different ways of representing information.

Use UI Elements

Objects defined in UI libraries can be dragged and dropped to activities inside the Designer panel, whether for updating a selector inside an activity or adding a new one altogether.

📘

Note:

It is recommended to name UI elements intuitively before adding them to the library to make them easy to recognize in the Descriptors tab.

📘

Note:

At runtime, the UI Descriptors are resolved from the Objects Browser panel, if the activities reference such UI Descriptors.