Exercise - Use the recorder to automate web applications

Completed

To become familiar with automating tasks using the recorder, let's try it on a web page. Follow the presented instructions to develop a recorded flow. The flow will convert a set amount of USA Dollars to Japanese Yen using the MSN currency converter tool.

To record the flow:

  1. Create a new desktop flow and select Recorder in the flow designer.

  2. When the recorder dialog launches, select Record and then select Next.

    Screenshot of the launch new browser option in the recorder window.

  3. Select the Record button. The recorder is now live and will note any inputs that you make while it's live.

  4. Open a new browser by selecting a linked button from your desktop, such as a tray icon for your web browser. (In our example, we've selected the tray icon for Microsoft Edge.) The recorder will record this step.

  5. Type in the following URL to go to the MSN currency converter page: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/tools/currencyconverter, and select Return on your keyboard.

    (Here is the link to the MSN currency converter page.)

    Screenshot of the MSN currency converter page.

  6. Set the drop-down menus of the converter to United States Dollar and Japanese Yen, respectively.

    Screenshot of the currency drop-down menus in the MSN currency converter page.

  7. Select the field with the converted Yen, right-click on it, and extract its value by selecting the Get text("") option. After you've done this, notice how Recorder creates a variable called AttributeValue. Once you have this value in the flow, you can use it in subsequent steps.

    Screenshot of the option to extract the converted value from the MSN currency converter page.

  8. Finally, press Done in the Recorder to add all the automatically generated actions to the flow. These actions are no different from any others: they can be moved, edited, or deleted.

    Screenshot of the generated actions in the workspace.

Notice how once you start Recorder, it records actions on your desktop (such as selecting the tray Microsoft Edge button from Windows in the first step of our example) as well as web browser actions. It makes no difference to Recorder!