Appendix 8: Desktop Spy Tutorial 

Introduction

Desktop Plugin is useful for .Net based Windows applications. Process Studio Desktop Spy is used to identify element locators by extracting windows element attributes.  

Prerequisites

Following are the prerequisites for Desktop Plugin,

1. Windows Operating System
2. Install jdk and set JAVA_HOME, JRE_HOME environment variables.
3. Windows .NET framework 4.6 and above
4. Process studio distribution full path name should not have any spaces.
5. Chrome browser is required to run DesktopSpy for AE releases prior to R5.3.0.
6. License is required to run DesktopSpy and Desktop plugins. License can be acquired and applied by contacting AutomationEdge Inc. (Refer Desktop plugin documentation above for a description on how to Apply License).

Setup

DesktopSpy is used to get many of the configuration parameters of Desktop plugin steps. To be able to use DesktopSpy we need to configure Process Studio Options Desktop Spy Port and Desktop Runtime Port. This is shown in the snapshots below.

1. In Process Studio go to Tools menu and click on Options... 
   

2. Set or change Desktop Spy Port and Desktop Runtime Port if required or leave it to the default values.
   

3. You are now ready to start using Desktop Spy.
   

Start using Desktop Spy

Follow the Steps below to setup and use Desktop Spy.

1. To launch Web Spy go to Tools menu and click SpyDesktop Spy sub-menu. 
   

2. If there is no active workflow a warning pop-up is shown. Click OK to create a new Workflow.
   

3. Name the workflow Read.
   

4. Click Desktop Spy. Desk Spy opens in the foreground to Process Studio as seen in the snapshot below. 
   

5. You are now ready to DesktopSpy on any Windows Desktop Application.
   
6. Mouse over any element of the Windows Desktop Application or Java Applet and click keyboard left ctrl to populate element attributes.
   
7. Let us DesktopSpy Microsoft Word Windows Application.
   
8. Mouse over any element of the word document and click keyboard left ctrl to populate element attributes.
   
9. 
   

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   For Example mouse over Change Styles and click keyboard left ctrl to populate values on DesktopSpy as shown below.  
   

 

10. In the following example Mouse over is done on save icon.  
    

11. The values of Accessor, Alternatives or Prefix can be used in plugin steps as required. 
    
12. We can also select Accessor Alternatives from drop down as shown below.
    

13. The Value field in Desktop Spy shows the shows predicted output Value/Text of Desktop Read plugin
    
    
    

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    . The value of the text box highlighted in red is seen in the image below. 
    

14. Similarly you may continue DesktopSpy on other Windows applications.