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WinAutomation Changelog

What's new in WinAutomation 9.0.1.5539

Oct 16, 2019
  • New Licensing:
  • Licensing shifts from perpetual to annual subscription
  • The license expiration date is added in the “Options & License” Tab of the WinAutomation Console
  • General New Features:
  • Global Concurrency Policy can now be set
  • New Triggers added:
  • Exchange Email Monitor,
  • Database Monitor,
  • Performance Counter
  • Recurring Schedules can be assigned a Start and Expiration date & time
  • Console:
  • Concurrency Policy subtab added to the Console Options Tab
  • Process Designer:
  • The option to remove all breakpoints in a Process has been added
  • Controls in the Controls Repository can now be sorted
  • New Actions :
  • “Run Python Script” Action enables Users to execute Python scripts
  • “Cryptography” Action group enables the encrypting, decrypting and hashing of data and files
  • “CaptureFast” Action group provides integration with the cloud-based data capturing platform CaptureFast
  • “CyberArk” Action group offers integration with the CyberArk secure password vault platform
  • “Cognitive” Action group enables integration with Cognitive functions provided by Google, IBM and Microsoft
  • “Terminal Emulation” Action group allows interaction with legacy terminals
  • Improvements & Fixes:
  • Email triggers can now retrieve the password from the Command Line
  • User Agent no longer fails to connect when Authentication options are missing
  • Improved capturing and use of Pager elements in Google Chrome
  • The “Include Subfolders” option when synchronizing files on SFTP Servers now works as expected
  • “Find Usages” in the Process Designer is no longer case sensitive
  • Improvements in UI and Web Automation
  • The Table Extraction Preview no longer omits the first row when an entire HTML Table is extracted
  • Improved performance in workstations where Java is not installed
  • Restarting the WinAutomation Server no longer causes an error in Autologin using Command Line
  • Information window no longer pops up when the cursor does not hover over the WinAutomation tray icon
  • Using Mouse and Keyboard Actions in compiled Processes no longer causes an error
  • Improved the performance of UI Controls in compiled Processes

New in WinAutomation 8.0.4.5352 (Apr 19, 2019)

  • Improved: Adjusted width size in the Custom Dialog designed to show all the required information.
  • Improved: All actions within a Switch, now require to be within a Case as well.
  • Improved: Backup of the database can now be performed for any database size.
  • Improved: Performance of UI/Desktop actions.
  • Improved: Performance of Web Automation actions.
  • Improved: Send Email action, now works with accounts that do not require authentication.
  • Improved: “Merge PDF Files” action now supports password protected files.
  • Improved: WinAutomation now supports File monitoring Trigger for network folders for logged out users.
  • Improved: “Zip File” and “Unzip File” actions now support the use of password protected files.
  • Improved: Variables comparison according to their datatypes.
  • Improved: Send Email through Outlook action now supports sending emails from shared mailboxes.
  • Improved: Improved location of objects using image recognition actions.
  • Improved: “Invoke Web Service” action now includes the HTTP Patch method.
  • Improved: Ability to extract text through digitally signed PDF documents.
  • Improved: Exporting the Logs from the WinAutomation Console, now includes the additional details as well.
  • Improved: “Synchronize FTP” Action now takes the “Transfer Type” settings in the WinAutomation Console Options Tab into consideration before the transfer.
  • Corrected: Fix on control’s extraction from the Automation Browser.
  • Corrected: “Open FTP” Action used to throw an error when used with Autologin.

New in WinAutomation 8.0.3.5190 (Apr 19, 2019)

  • Improved: Web Selectors now support use of Regular expressions.
  • Improved: “Retrieve Exchange Email Messages” Action now supports shared email accounts.
  • Improved: User now gets notified before deleting a Trigger or Schedule.
  • Improved: Processes imported from a higher version can be opened in the Process Designer, informing the user that the specific actions are not supported.
  • Improved: “Send Click” Action, now sends correct Left/Right click when mouse button settings are reversed.
  • Improved: Improved interaction with Excel files in 32-bit installations.
  • Improved: Legal Notice message now gets bypassed when Autologin is used.

New in WinAutomation 8.0.2.5070 (Sep 14, 2018)

  • Improved: WinAutomation is able to access and interact with SAP applications (Only available in the Professional Plus Edition).
  • Improved: Logs, can now be exported in .xlsx, .xls and .csv format.
  • Improved: Search Option so that to search for functions in the functions pane.
  • Improved: “Send Keys” action, now supports to send the “Enter” key located on the NumPad.
  • Corrected: WinAutomation, now works with the Chrome version 69.0.3497.81

New in WinAutomation 8.0.1.4934 (Jun 29, 2018)

  • Improved:WinAutomation is able to access and interact with Java-based applications (Only available in the Professional Plus Edition).
  • Improved:WinAutomation is now a high-dpi friendly application.
  • Corrected:Actions that included Unicode characters, now accept the use of variables without throwing an error.
  • Corrected:Move mouse to image in selected sub-region now targets the correct image on the screen.
  • Corrected:Generated executables now accept the use of “Launch Chrome” and “Launch Firefox” actions.
  • Corrected:Triggers and Schedules operate correctly among multiple users.

New in WinAutomation 8.0.0.4886 (Jun 6, 2018)

  • General New Features:
  • Added: Set expiry date: in Schedule, now includes the time also. The option to provide the Autologin password via a Command Line
  • Added: Automatic Logging: to log ALL actions and their execution timing in the Logs.
  • Added: The ability to get a Screenshot of the monitor(s) and add it in the logs, upon an exception (Set from the Process Properties of from the Exception handling)
  • Added: Additional details of an error, available in the Process Designer and not only through the Console Logs
  • Added: Add a WinAutomation shortcut while installing for easy and quick access
  • Added: Web Automation enhancement with supporting IE, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome
  • Process Designer:
  • Added: Find Usages: for Functions, displaying a list of where each Function is being used for ease of troubleshooting
  • Added: Sort Images: in the Images Repository by Name or Date for ease of access
  • Added: Go to Line: Functionality in the Process Designer to enable better troubleshooting in large processes
  • Added: Text Search: within the Process Designer to search for any text present in the actions, comments or regions
  • Added: Image magnifier tool is now showing in all Image related actions, for more accuracy in Image capturing
  • Added: Mass Function delete. The option to select more than one Functions and delete them all
  • New Actions:
  • Added: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome support for better Web-Automation
  • Added: Run Excel Macro: New Action in order ton Run an Excel Macro by its name
  • Added: Execute JavaScript on Web Browser: New Action in order to run JavaScripts on a webpage
  • Added: Save Excel: New Action, that will help in saving an Excel file without having to close it
  • Added: Extract PDF Pages to New PDF New Action, for splitting a PDF file into smaller parts
  • Added: Time Zone added to Get Current Date and Time Action
  • Added: Support for OCR with two engines: MODI and Tesseract
  • Added: New conditional actions for decision making Switch-Case
  • Added: Supporting Microsoft Exchange with new Email actions

New in WinAutomation 7.0.2.4665 (Dec 21, 2017)

  • Added:Compiled Robots files under the User’s folder are removed after installing a new version.
  • Improved:WinAutomation Console is now remembering the layout changes.
  • Improved:Handling temp files in a much more efficient way, creating a WinAutomation subfolder in the Temp.
  • Improved:Autologin improvement, as now the password is being checked for being valid or not before proceeding to the autologin.
  • Corrected:Issue with gear icon window visibility, in the properties of an action, when panes are undocked is now resolved.
  • Corrected:Invoke Web Service action works now as expected in case of Error Code.
  • Corrected:Action “If Image” while checking the option to “Find All Images in List”, was taking under consideration only the second image.
  • Corrected:Correction in the “Retrieve Email Messages From Outlook” action when the sender is a user of the same domain.
  • Corrected:Images captured from WinAutomation version 6 or earlier can now be opened.
  • Corrected:The error message thrown in action “Process Emails”, while trying to move mails to a folder that does not exist, is now refined.
  • Corrected:“Run Dos Command” action is not hanging anymore on specific commands.
  • Corrected:Action “Read Text from File” correctly handling special characters without breaking the robot.
  • Corrected:Invalid Windows file name characters, are no longer acceptable in robot names.
  • Corrected:When copying “Drag and Drop Element in Window” action, controls were not copied along.

New in WinAutomation 7.0.1.4549 (Aug 24, 2017)

  • Improved:Default value in “Wait for Image” action, “Wait for Image to” action’s input is now “Appear”.
  • Improved:Special characters in a robot’s title are not allowed,when creating one.
  • Improved:Outlook accounts are now being read by name, case insensitive.
  • Corrected:Certain Robots’ properties in General, Run&Concurrency Policy were not being saved correctly.
  • Corrected:“Find Usages” option in variables, was generating an error when double clicked, after deleting a variable or its associated actions.
  • Corrected:Error in Logs, appearing when terminating a process from the Task Manager is now fixed
  • Corrected:“Display Notification popup Window” option now preserves the users setting (checked-unckeked) after restarting the machine.
  • Corrected:Closing all functions in a Robot Designer, was not allowing the opening of other functions.
  • Corrected:Action “Stop Robot” with error message was not working correctly.
  • Corrected:Action “Get First Free Row on Column from Excel Worksheet” was not working correctly.
  • Corrected:In action “Set DropDown List Value on Web Page”, in Advanced tab, field “If a Pop-Up Dialog Appears”, when choosing option “Press a Button” the value set in the menu that was not being saved.
  • Corrected:The Tab button was not working correctly in some actions’ properties window.
  • Corrected:When selecting the “Default Layout” option in the Robot Designer, functions should revert to their tab based view (or close).
  • Corrected:“Get Details of Window” action, when getting a Window’s title was not returning any value

New in WinAutomation 7.0 (Aug 24, 2017)

  • General New Features:
  • Added: Find Robot: A new option in the console, with which you are now able to search for your robots.
  • Added: WinAutomation Controller: New commands using the controller to export information about a specific robot or the full database in XML. Enable or Disable Robots.
  • Robot Designer:
  • Added: Images Repository: Introducing the images repository. Similar to the control repository, now all the images are being stored in the images repository.
  • Added: Remove Unused Controls: New option, to remove unused controls from the control repository. This option, is offered in the images repository as well.
  • Added: Reorder Selectors: Now, you have the ability to reorder the selectors in the control repository.
  • Added: Find Usages: New feature with which actions are using a particular control.
  • Added: Exception Handling: New exception handling rules such as “Set Variable” and option to set rules for “All Exceptions”
  • Added: Copying actions with their associated controls: Copying an action from one robot to another, copies the associated controls as well.
  • Actions:
  • Added: Exception Block Actions: Introducing the Exception Block actions, with which you can set an exception handling rule for all the actions located within the block.
  • Added: Get Last Exception Action: Introducing the Get Last exception action, with which you can get the exception message of the last exception thrown.
  • Added: Set & Get Screen Resolution Actions: New actions, with which you have the ability to get the resolution of your screen or set another resolution to your screen.
  • Added: Open – Close SQL Connection Actions: New actions, with which you can open and close an SQL connection.
  • Added: CMD Session Actions: Introducing the CMD session group of actions to execute commands and get responses.
  • Added: Advanced Excel actions: Introducing a large group of new Excel actions such as options to Insert or Delete columns on a spreadsheet.
  • Added: Outlook Actions: Introducing Outlook actions with which you can interact with MS Outlook.
  • Added: Synchronization Actions: Introducing Synchronization actions and Lock Handles with which you can avoid one robot affecting another while execution.
  • Added: PDF Actions: Introducing a new group of actions with which you can extract text and images from PDF files.

New in WinAutomation 6.0.5.4438 (May 12, 2017)

  • Corrected:
  • After upgrading to the latest Windows 10 Creators Update, not being able to capture UI Controls is now fixed.
  • “Get Robots Path” action returned a different text value when running from the console from when running through the Robot’s Designer is now fixed.
  • “Unzip action” is able to unzip empty folders.
  • “Invoke Web Service” action does not fail when the Expect: 100-continue is set as a header.
  • Improved:
  • Reduced the time of execution of the “Zip Files” action.
  • Improved the “Email” group of actions.

New in WinAutomation 6.0.3.4240 (Dec 6, 2016)

  • Improved:“If Window” action when the window is set to “is open”. If Window is not found the correct value is returned
  • Corrected:Fixed password encryption Robot issue
  • Corrected:“Connecting to Server…” state upon installation fixed. The connection to the Server is totally restored upon installation
  • Corrected:“Schedule Type: Monthly” option “Last day of Month” or “Last Working Day of Month” selected, was showing nothing in the “Next Scheduled Run” field
  • Corrected:In the time stored in the scheduler, the 12hour format was always used regardless of the user’s date pre-set format

New in WinAutomation 5.0.4.3995 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Improved: Error Handling mechanism: Various improvements to make error handling more robust by introducing more exceptions to be handled by different actions.
  • Improved: Use Desktop action: A new option has been added in the advanced settings of the action so that users can specify if left-clicking on an app’s icon on the taskbar should cause a new instance of the application to be launched
  • Improved: Extract Data From Web Page & Get Details of Element on Web Page actions: The text-extraction mechanism has been fortified to handle certain corner-case scenarios more elegantly, which should result in more accurate text being produced
  • Improved: Web Automation actions: Users now have the ability to suppress a broader range of errors that might occur while these actions are being executed. More specifically javascript errors should no longer cause the actions to terminate the job if/when the user has put exception-suppression in place, say, in actions like Extract Data From Web Page
  • Improved: Custom Dialog: The help-entry for the action has been enriched to mention which flags are supported by the datepicker control
  • Corrected: Retrieve Emails action: The internal email-handling mechanism has been improved to detect the main-content of an email. This should address an issue in certain kinds of emails where the .BodyText property of the EmailInstanceVariant was not reporting the text of the main-content of the underlying emails correctly
  • Corrected: Retrieve Emails, Download From Web, Take Screenshot of Web Page: These actions should now be able to handle saving to files using filenames more than 230 characters long. Such filenames get automatically clipped to 230 characters so as to work along the limitations imposed by the underlying filesystem
  • Corrected: Console: Exporting a job with a name longer than 230 characters should now be working as intended. The name of the resulting .waj file is set to the first 230 characters of the job being exported
  • Corrected: Console: Moving a folder into another folder which contains a sub-folder with the same name as the one being moved should now be working as intended
  • Corrected: Wait for Window action: Fixed an issue which was causing the action to fail with an error message when set to wait for an excel application to reach a certain window-state
  • Corrected: Press Button in Window action: The exception-handling for this action should now be working as intended when the button is not found when the action gets executed
  • Corrected: All Window-Manipulation actions: Fixed an issue which was causing these actions to hang indefinitely -especially under Windows10- regardless of which window they were instructed to target
  • Corrected: Get Window action: Fixed a bug which was causing the wrong window to be picked in certain corner cases
  • Corrected: Get Window action: Fixed a bug which was causing the action to fail in finding the window of the ‘Edge’ browser under Windows 10
  • Corrected: Use Desktop action: The helper of the action should now be able to select the start button in the taskbar of Windows 10
  • Corrected: Web Automation Helpers & Web Recorder: Fixed an issue affecting certain websites, which was preventing the options-menu to pop-up when the "appskey" would be pressed on the keyboard
  • Corrected: Web Automation Helpers & Web Recorder: Fixed a bug which was causing these components to get clogged when attempting to select specific elements in the product-results of Ebay
  • Corrected: Web Automation Helpers & Web Recorder: Fixed an issue which was causing highlighters to disappear permanently unless the webpage was scrolled up or down
  • Corrected: Extract Data From Web Page action: Fixed a bug which was preventing the action from successfully navigating from one page of results to the next when the next-page element would be based on
  • Corrected: Extract Data From Web Page & Get Details of Element on Web Page actions: The text-extraction mechanism has been fortified to handle certain corner-case scenarios more elegantly, which should result in more accurate text being produced
  • Corrected: Web Automation actions: Manually setting the selector of any web automation action to a custom selector which contains nested selectors ala div:has(> a:contains(‘foo’), > a:contains(‘bar’)) should no longer be causing the action to error out when executed
  • Corrected: Rename File action: Fixed a bug by which, when the action was set to overwrite-mode, the original file was getting deleted if/when the eventual filename specified was the same as the original file name, only different casing-wise (The action used to simply throw a cryptic error)

New in WinAutomation 5.0.3 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Improved: Web Automation actions: RunScript exceptions can now be handled through the exception handling mechanism
  • Improved: Numeric Variants: Numbers are now always getting parsed using US formatting conventions, that is comma ‘,’ for separating thousands and the dot ‘.’ for separating the decimal component (old behaviour was to use the regional settings of the host machine)
  • Improved: Populate Text Field on Web Page action: Optimized to be faster when the ’emulate typing’ option is checked
  • Improved: Open Secure FTP Connection action: Upon setting ‘SFTP’ as the type of the connection, the ‘Active Mode’ checkbox should now be getting hidden as intended, since it’s not applicable to ‘SFTP’
  • Corrected: Read from Excel action: The action should no longer throw an exception when attempting to read the value of a cell containing a number written in scientific notation like 602E23
  • Corrected: Open FTP Connection action: Now has ‘Passive’ as its default mode (used to be ‘Active’)
  • Corrected: Custom Dialog action: Fixed an issue which was causing the delete key to not be handled properly by ‘Multiline Textbox’ controls
  • Corrected: Run VBScript action: Printing non-ASCII characters -such as the pound sign (£)- to standard output/error streams should no longer cause the output variants of the action to contain garbled text
  • Corrected: Invoke FTP Command action: Should no longer be failing when/if the acceptable return codes list is left empty
  • Corrected: Move Mouse action: Corrected the mouse movement instantly relatively to the active window, where the mouse was moved falsely relative to the top-left corner of the screen
  • Corrected: Compiled .exe Jobs: Custom dialog was falsely not present on the taskbar after getting minimized for the first time. It should now be visible as intended
  • Corrected: Fixed an issue affecting certain websites, which was causing the Web Automation actions and the Web Helpers to not work as intended

New in WinAutomation 5.0.2 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Improved: Macro Recorder. Filling forms by typing into textboxes and pressing tab in between is now resulting in alternating distinct Populate Text Field / Send Key {Tab} activities
  • Improved: The Populate Text Field in Web Page action now can optionally de-focus the populated element as in some web pages this is required for the new element value to be accepted
  • Improved: UI selectors, introduce the :disabled, :visible and :enabled Selectors and also the :password selector which will target elements with the password attribute set
  • Improved: The CSS Theming textbox in Display Custom Dialog Action Properties UI, now accepts Tab and Enter keystrokes
  • Improved: Macro Recorder’s better handling of Arrow Up/Down keystrokes when sent to spinner controls
  • Improved: Extract Data from Window action. When getting the file names from a File Explorer window, file titles are now extracted correctly
  • Improved: Caching mechanism implemented in Macro Recorder and UI Automation Helpers so that subsequent clicks to the same elements are sped up
  • Improved: In UI Automation the :is pseudo-selector is introduced ad works like it’s counterpart :not selector
  • Improved: Macro Recorder. The Get Window activities that get deleted by hand do also take down with them those Send Keys actions that target the affected window
  • Improved: Better logging support for File Monitor Trigger
  • Improved: The Create New Folder action allows the creation of a folder given its full path/name instead of entering the parent folder and the new folder name
  • Improved: Get Details of Element on Web Page, Extract Data from Web Page the text extraction mechanism now removes invisible zero width characters (e.g. control characters) from the extracted text
  • Improved: Better generated description for Press button in Window action
  • Improved: Click Element in Window Action, Get details of element in Window actions. When the element of a File Explorer window is out view, the action scrolls the view to scan the data-grid and find the element
  • Improved: Macro Recorder is now creating more efficient UI selectors for element of the File Explorer window
  • Improved: Macro Recorder now records the entire trajectory of the mouse when in coordinates mode and one of the mouse buttons is pressed
  • Corrected: Installation errors on Windows Servers & XP fixed
  • Corrected: Invoke FTP action, correction in the second-line description
  • Corrected: Visibility and positioning issues resolved for web content when displayed in Web Helpers
  • Corrected: Mathematic calculations within expression that provided false results, due to regional settings, have now been corrected
  • Corrected: Wait for hotkey action timeout would sometime result in a runtime error
  • Corrected: Custom dialog, now takes into account the enter/escape buttons
  • Corrected: Better second-line description for the Create Folder action
  • Corrected: The :eq() Operator now selects the correct window, when two or more windows are of the same class/title
  • Corrected: Consistency of Close Internet Explorer action. There were incidents where the targeted browser stayed open despite this action
  • Corrected: UI Automation. Better detection of scroll up/down buttons of the Windows 7 File Explorer window
  • Corrected: Go To Web Page and Click Link on Web Page actions, now have better mechanism for detecting whether a web page has fully loaded or not
  • Corrected: Move mouse animation relative to the foreground window, honors the actual delays of the animation.
  • Corrected: Macro Recorder now resumes recording activities, after the user attempts to close the dialog, but presses Cancel in the confirmation dialog that pops up
  • Corrected: UI/Automation. Better handling of spinner controls
  • Corrected: Web Automation, unhandled exceptions have been addressed on certain web pages and web page elements
  • Corrected: Macro Recorder, switch keyboard layout activity is now captured correctly
  • Corrected: Custom Dialog. When set to be initially maximized the Custom Dialog scrollbar is more accurate to the window limits
  • Corrected: Web Automation, better waiting mechanism to wait for all frames of a web page to be loaded completely
  • Corrected: Macro Recorder now captures accurately CTRL+Letter key combinations
  • Corrected: Better generated error messages in Custom dialog
  • Corrected: WinAutomation can now convert text representing numbers written in exotic formats (such as Scientific Notation) to the proper Numeric Variants
  • Corrected: Output of Subtract Lists action. The result list is of the same type, as the original ones
  • Corrected: Custom Dialog Designer. Pasting text into a control now works correctly for every type of control
  • Corrected: Custom Dialog size from compiled exe is shown as specified
  • Corrected: Macro Recorder is now generating the correct action when accessing windows preview in the task bar
  • Corrected: Select Menu option is now generated when clicking on the menu options of the System Tray Icons

New in WinAutomation 5.0.1 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Improved: in Display Custom Dialog action an option has been added for a password text control to be required, i.e. to be mandatory for the user to enter e value.
  • Improved: The Macro Recorder now generated better and more reliable selectors for UI Elements.
  • Improved: The exit codes of the WinAutomationController have been rearranged to report all possible exceptions.
  • Improved: A hotkey for resuming the execution of a Job stopped by a breakpoint has been introduced.
  • Improved: The Macro Recorder now operates as an independent process resulting in a more stable application execution.
  • Corrected: The File Monitor Trigger permanently stopped watching a remote folder if the connection to the folder was temporary unavailable.
  • Corrected: In Web Automation, some web pages failed to be automated in v5 although they worked fine in previous versions.
  • Corrected: The Click Link on Web Page action failed for some links that contained Javascript

New in WinAutomation 5.0 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Added: Functions: a Job can be now broken down into smaller parts (or functions) that can be called by any other part of the Job. This leads to a more modular design where different segments of a Job can be used over and over from different points. It is also possible to jump to a function for handling an exception.
  • Added: UI Automation: WinAutomation is now capable of distinguishing among the different controls within a window. A large set of actions has been added under the UI/Windows category for directly manipulating Windows Applications and their controls, as well as extracting data from them.
  • Added: Macro Recorder: The Macro Recorder leverages the UI Automation technology described above and now has a Smart Recording mode enabled by default. In this mode the recorder records the interactions of the user with the various controls of an application instead of just recording mouse coordinates. Of course, the simpler mode of recording coordinates is still available for use when appropriate.
  • Added: Live Helpers: In all Web Automation actions the user can now select a web page element by clicking on any open Internet Explorer window. Respectively, for UI Automation actions the user can specify a Windows control by clicking on the target application.
  • Added: Custom GUI: The new Display Custom Dialog action includes a Form Designer tool that allows the user to design and present custom dialogs with all kinds of controls in them.
  • New Actions:
  • Added: Use Desktop action to perform taskbar related operations
  • Added: Get Window action to retrieve a specific window or the foreground window (also replaces the Get Foreground Window action)
  • Added: Select Tab in Window action to activate a tab in a tab group
  • Added: Click Element in Window action to click on a specific control in a window
  • Added: Select Menu Option in Window action to select a menu item in a window’s menu bar
  • Added: Drag and Drop Element in Window action to perform a drag and drop operation within a window or from one window to another
  • Added: Expand/Collapse Tree Node in Window action to expand/collapse nodes in a tree control.
  • Added: Focus Text Field in Window action to move the input focus to a specific textbox
  • Added: Populate Text Field in Window action to set the text of a specific textbox in a window
  • Added: Press Button in Window action to click on a button control in a window
  • Added: Select Radio Button in Window action to select a radio button in a button group
  • Added: Set Checkbox State in Window action to check or uncheck a checkbox in a window
  • Added: Set DropDown List Value in Window action to select a value in a dropdown list (aka combobox)
  • Added: Get Details of Window action to get the value of properties of a specific window (or its text)
  • Added: Get Details of Element in Window action to get the properties of a specific control in a window
  • Added: Get Selected Checkboxes in Window action to retrieve the state of a checkbox or the names of the selected checkboxes in a group
  • Added: Get Selected Radiobutton in Window action to retrieve the state of a radiobutton or the name of the selected radiobutton in a group
  • Added: Extract Data from Window action to retrieve the text of a window or a specific control in the form of a single value, a list or a table
  • Added: Run Javascript action to execute some custom Javascript code and retrieve its output into a variable.
  • Added: Get Default Printer Name action to get the name of the printer that is currently set as default
  • Added: Show Desktop action to minimize all windows
  • Added: Display Custom Dialog action to design a custom dialog for requesting or presenting data to the end user
  • Improved Actions:
  • Improved: In Wait for Hotkey action a new option allows for setting a maximum time to wait for
  • Improved: In Read Text from File action it is now possible to specify the encoding of the file to be read
  • Improved: In Write Text to File action two new encodings (Unicode without BOM and UTF-8 without BOM) have been added
  • Improved: In Send Keys action the Period and the Comma have been added in the Special Keys menu
  • Improved: In Send Email action variables are now accepted for SMTP Server properties
  • Improved: In Replace Text action an option is added to enable the interpretation of escape sequences like ‘\t’, ‘\xA0’, ‘\u’ as actual characters
  • Improved: In Add to DateTime action it is now possible to add/subtract months or years to/from a date time value
  • Plus numerous performance improvements, various bug fixes (mostly obscure ones) and minor improvements.

New in WinAutomation 4.0.6 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Improved: Performance improvement when selecting an option from a SELECT element in a web page, through the Set Drop Down List Value on a Web Page action
  • Improved: When WinAutomation fails to open a Job because it has been created with a newer version of the application, a descriptive message is displayed.
  • Corrected: The emulate typing checkbox in the Populate Text Field on Web Page action properties dialog defaulted to true every time a new textbox was selected using the Web Helper.
  • Corrected: CSS Selectors in Web Automation actions that included a comma within the :contains selector where not interpreted correctly.
  • Corrected: The WinAutomation installation process now makes sure that the service is up before any other process is launched. Additionally it refuses to proceed if the WinAutomation Console of the previously installed version is still running.

New in WinAutomation 4.0.5 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • The error message produced by the Wait for Web Page action when a timeout occurred has been changed to a more descriptive one.
  • Corrected: The Invoke Web Service action failed to transmit the cookies correctly when specified in the Custom Headers property.
  • Corrected: The highlighter of the Web Helper window of every Web Automation action failed to locate the correct element when the user manually inserted the * selector in the CSS Selector property of the action.
  • Corrected: The Take Screenshot of Element on Web Page action failed to capture the correct picture when the element is at the bottom of a web page and the vertical scrollbar is part of a nested frame instead of a the top most document.
  • Corrected: Focus Text Field action does not work properly for non focusable-elements such CAPTCHA images that lie at the bottom of a web page and the one of the scrollbars is part of a nested frame/div while the other scrollbar is part of the top most document.
  • Improved: When using a WebBrowser Instance or Excel Instance type variable without having been initialized a null reference exception occurred. This is now replaced by a descriptive error message.
  • Improved: Any Web Automation action not set to wait for the web page to load, does not impose a 3 seconds delay any more before moving the the next action, resulting to a faster Job execution.
  • Corrected: By manually selecting a collapsed region in the Job Designer using the keyboard, only the Start Region action was selected, instead of the whole region.
  • Corrected: In the Search Action textbox of the Job Designer the Select, Copy, Cut and Paste hotkeys (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V) affected the Job’s actions and not the search textbox.
  • Improved: A Job created by a newer edition of WinAutomation that the one installed is now prohibited from running and being edited by the older edition.
  • Corrected: Memory leak occurred in some rare cases when an exception occurred while opening a Job.
  • Corrected: When opening a Job that contained external actions from an addon that was not installed, the mouse pointer remained hourglass instead or reverting to default style.
  • Modified: The Cut/Copy/Paste menu items are now removed from the File Menu of the Console.
  • Improved: Error message for opening a Job containing unknown/missing actions changed to a more descriptive one.
  • Corrected: While uploading files to some SFTP servers through theUpload Files to to FTP action, the action attempted to change the permissions of the uploaded files, sometimes resulting to the abortion of the operation.
  • Corrected: Text file attachments downloaded by theRetrieve Emails action became corrupted if the file used a non-ASCII encoding.
  • Improved: Memory footprint of the Retrieve Emails action has been significantly reduced for large emails download.
  • Corrected: Actions related to windows manipulation matched a random window if only the window class was provided to the action and the title was empty (instead of matching a window with an empty title).
  • Corrected: When the user selected the Exit WinAutomation menu item in the WinAutomation agent context menu and then clicked cancel in the confirmation dialog the service stopped nonetheless.
  • Improved: A more descriptive error message is now displayed by the FTP Upload Folder action when attempting to upload a folder that already exists on the server.
  • Corrected: In Image Recognition based actions, specifying a zero-size subregion to search in for the desired image resulted in an error.
  • Corrected: when the foreground window is momentarily unavailable, the error is suppressed and the operation is repeated.
  • Corrected: the Invoke FTP Command action failed in some cases when sending a command to an SFTP server.
  • Corrected: forcing the Job Designer to close while a Job was running in debug mode sometimes caused the WinAutomation Console to crash.
  • Corrected: FtpFile/FolderVariants that start with Double Forward Slashes, cause errors when attempting to retrieve the base directory of the path via the .Directory property.
  • Corrected: the Move Mouse action, if the “Relative To Current Mouse Position property and an animation scheme is selected, moved the mouse to double the amount of the offset needed.
  • Improved: communication mechanism between the WinAutomation agent and the Notification window has been improved for the latter not to introduce a performance bottleneck in tight loops.
  • Corrected: In some websites using yahoo libraries certain div elements get mistaken for rich text editors resulting in erroneous extraction of their content by the Extract data from Web Page action.
  • Improved: The save button and the insert new region button in the Job Designer are now disabled while a job is being run from within the Job Designer.
  • Improved: In some cases the macro recorder failed to record a modifier key due to a delay in the process of intercepting its state.
  • Modified: The text Choose your weapon in the Create New Job dialog has been changed to Choose a tool.
  • Corrected: Web Recorder and Web Helper for Data Extraction: When a header of an html table that’s has been selected for extraction contains a % sign it is now automatically escaped so as to avoid phantom errors about missing variables
  • Corrected: when multiple users were accessing the same WinAutomation service instance through terminal services sometimes the notifications were routed to the wrong user.

New in WinAutomation 4.0.4 (Mar 15, 2016)

  • Support added for new IE10.
  • Improved: The variable generated by the Launch New Internet Explorer action which holds the web browser instance, now has a .Handle property that returns the handle of the browser’s window. The value can be passed to Window-related actions (move, resize, focus window etc) which accept a window handle as input.
  • Corrected: The Open Secure FTP Connection action failed to establish connection with certain FTP servers.
  • Corrected: The web element selection engine can now handle the rare cases where the browser returns an empty value instead of the tag of an element.
  • Improved: The Extract Data From Web action now identifies the pager element (“Next Page”) even in more complex configurations.
  • Corrected: Take Screenshot action did not perform as intended in some cases.
  • Modified: Windows related actions do not display the window picker icon in their property dialogs when they are set to matching a window by its handle.
  • Corrected: All WinAutomation windows when restored from a minimized state, now make sure that they are displayed in a visible portion of the screen.
  • Improved: The Set Drop Down List Value on Web Page action can now select options even when their values is an empty text.
  • Corrected: The Download Folder from FTP action, now does not modify the working directory.
  • Corrected: The utility that retrieves the email folders in the Retrieve Emails and Process Emails actions as well as in the Email Trigger would freeze the UI for a while if wrong settings have been entered in the IMAP account section.
  • Modified: The Parse Text action now throws an exception if the regex provided is invalid.
  • Corrected: The Display Notification action now always outputs its message to the command prompt console when the Job is compiled as a console application (even when the Display Notifications option in the Compiler dialog is unchecked).
  • Corrected: Exception thrown by FTP actions when used through a secure FTP connection, now have more descriptive messages.
  • Corrected: When a Job with triggers attached was copied, the triggers of the newly copied Job were not functioning until the WinAutomation service was restarted.
  • Corrected: The highlighter of the Web Helper sometimes was displayed off-position when highlighting an element within a frame.
  • Corrected: Rich Text Editors, in some cases were difficult to select using the Web Helper.
  • Corrected: The Extract Data from Web Page action now extracts the data from the first page only, when a negative value is provided to be the number of pages to extract data from.
  • Improved: The Set Drop Down List Value on Web Page action now accepts a list variable when more than one values need to be selected.
  • Improved: The extraction of the inner text of a Web Page element now removes any additional info injected into the page by the Skype plugin.
  • Improved: The Focus Web Element action now scrolls the web page to bring the focused element into view.
  • Corrected: The Extract Data from Web Page action when instructed to extract all the options of a drop down web element, it returned only the selected options.
  • Improved: The Click download Link on Web Page action is now able to handle download dialogs that are already open, when the CSS selector property is empty.
  • Improved: There is now a way to execute arbitrary javascript code on the automation browser.
  • Modified: Windows Related action now throw an exception if both window name and window class are not set.
  • Corrected: In some extreme cases the Retrieve Emails action failed to parse the email’s body.
  • Corrected: Download from Web and Invoke Web Service actions fail for urls which contain double quotes, or specify a port and are not explicitly preceded by http or https
  • Corrected: When the Send Keys action was instructed to type a number preceded by zeros the zeros were trimmed upon closing the properties dialog of the action.
  • Corrected: The Synchronize FTP Directory action sometimes fails if the working directory was not explicitly set by a Change Working Directory action.
  • Corrected: In the Invoke Web Service action the Connection Timeout property ignored the value set by the user and always defaulted to 30 seconds.

New in WinAutomation 4.0.3.1892 (Oct 19, 2012)

  • Modified: The properties dialog of the Schedule Trigger cannot be dismissed any more if no dates are specified.
  • Corrected: in some cases a Schedule Trigger fired a couple of minutes before the scheduled time resulting to a double execution of the Job.
  • Corrected: A Schedule Trigger with the "Skip Job" option checked did not skip the Job in question when the machine is resuming from hybernation/suspension state.
  • Corrected: Execution of a WMIC command through the "Run DOS Command" action failed when ran in Windows XP.
  • Corrected: The "Take Screenshot of Web Page" action produced images with black areas when invoked through the Web Automation Browser and the scrollbars did not appear properly.
  • Corrected: The "Take Screenshot of Web Page" action produced inaccurate screenshots for elements residing within iframes or when zooming is applied.
  • Corrected: The exception handling portion of the "Take Screenshot of Web Page" action, when executed fired the wrong exception.
  • Corrected: The extraction of the inner text of a page or an element returned inaccurate result when encountered HTML tags with attributes that had non-ascii characters and/or digits or when an element contained exotic characters that were rendered as whitespace.
  • Corrected: The extraction of the inner text of a page now takes into account the value property for buttons and text boxes.
  • Improved: Actions that extract data from a web page or a web element can now retrieve the inner HTML, the outer HTML and the new HTML5 data-related attributes of an element.
  • Modified: The "Extract Data from Web Page" action now treats a a hidden element as non-existent, Meaning that the "exists" attribute will return "FALSE" for an element that exists in the page, but is hidden.
  • Improved: The "Extract Data from Web Page" action in order to identify which element of the page acts as a pager, now is able to utilize information from parent elements of the pager for more accurate results.
  • Improved: The Web Helper window for the "Extract Data from Web Page" action now performs much faster when a large number of table cells need to be highlighted.
  • Corrected: The Web Helper window for the "Extract Data from Web Page" action failed to highlight the selected pager element if this element was placed within an iframe.
  • Corrected: The Web Helper window for the "Extract Data from Web Page" action highlighted all elements matching the specified CSS selector, even when in "Single Value" mode.
  • Corrected: The Data Extraction Preview in the Web Helper window for the "Extract Data from Web Page" action did not take into account any regular expressions specified in the settings for generating the preview.
  • Corrected: The "Extract Data from Web Page" action did not apply any regular expressions specified when extracting element values in "Single Value" or in "List" mode.
  • Corrected: The "Extract Data from Web Page" action and the "Get Detail of Element on Web Page" action failed to retrieve the STYLE attribute of an HTML element.
  • Improved: The "Single Instance" option is now available as an option in the Compiler Properties Dialog when the application type is "Command Line Application". Moreover, it is unchecked by default.
  • Improved: Jobs compiled with the "Single Instance" option set, now return an exit code of -1 when the user attempts to run them while another instance of the same executable is already running.
  • Corrected: In Windows XP the "Generate Exe" dialog produces an irrelevant warning message when the Compile button is pressed.
  • Corrected: Compiled Jobs did not report their version number when inquired through WMI in Windows XP.
  • Corrected: Compiling Jobs to executables failed if the Company Name or the Copyright Notices contained double quotes or trailing backspaces.
  • Improved: Jobs compiled as "Windows Application" now display the EXE file name as the title of the form displayed when running the compiled Job.
  • Corrected: The notifications popup windows displayed by compiled Jobs were not positioned correctly when the message to be displayed was too long.
  • Corrected: The "Populate Text Field on Web Page" action didn't respect the MaxLength and Enabled attributes of the target INPUT element when "Emulate Typing" setting was unchecked.
  • Corrected: The "Populate Text Field on Web Page" action, when handling File Upload Inputs, always waited for the web page to complete loading even when the respective option was unchecked.
  • Corrected: The "Populate Text Field on Web Page" action failed when instructed to set the text in a Rich Text editor and the value to be written contained one or more double quotes.
  • Improved: The "Populate Text Field on Web Page" action can now set the value of hidden fields.
  • Improved: The "Populate Text Field on Web Page" action now supports INPUT elements with TYPE=COLOR
  • Corrected: "Wait for Web Page Content" action threw an error when set to wait for an element located within a frame.
  • Corrected: Attaching to the foreground Internet Explorer window through the "Launch new Internet Explorer" action did not wait for the browser to complete loading the current web page.
  • Corrected: All web automation actions that makes sense only in the context of HTML pages now throw an exception when they are used on an Internet Explorer instance that holds a non-HTML document (such as an image or a PDF document).
  • Corrected: The "Go to Web Page" action threw an exception when instructed to navigate to a non-HTML document and the "Wait for Page to Load" option was checked.
  • Corrected: The "Get Details of Web Page" action failed to return the correct when the assigned browser instance displayed a non-HTML document
  • Corrected: The "Retrieve Emails" action failed to save any attachment if the ContentType was set to text/plain.
  • Improved: The "Retrieve Emails" and "Process Emails" action properties dialogs do not attempt to retrieve the list of email folders when the mail account username or password is given as a variable.
  • Modified: In the "Comment" action properties dialog the comments text box now has the default focus.
  • Improved: The "Variables Manager" dialog closes when the Esc key is pressed.
  • Corrected: The "Open FTP Connection" and "Open Secure FTP Connection" actions failed to execute when no password was provided.

New in WinAutomation 3.1.5.637 (Jan 27, 2011)

  • Corrected: Numbers with a decimal point were not accepted in expressions. The job failed to compile.
  • Corrected: The "Run Job" action failed with an error message when the Job contained a variable of type DataRow that didn't contain any value at the moment when the "Run Job" action was executed.
  • Modified: In the "Exception Handling" tab of the action properties' dialog, the selected action is now displayed in white text for better readability.
  • Corrected: The "Wait for Window" action in some cases failed to wait for a window if configured to wait for the "Lose Focus" event.
  • Corrected: The WinAutomation icon in the system tray remained visible after a restart and until the WinAutomation Console window opened, even when set to not visible.

New in WinAutomation 3.1.4 (Jan 27, 2011)

  • Corrected: In some cases, while a Job had completed its execution, the notification window remained open and in the WinAutomation Console the Job continued to appear as running.

New in WinAutomation 3.1.3 (Jan 27, 2011)

  • Corrected: Under certain circumstance an error occurred when opening the properties dialog of the "Delete Files" action.

New in WinAutomation 3.1.2.602 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Corrected: A syntax error with the message "Division by zero" occurred in expressions that included a division, regardless of the value of the operands.

New in WinAutomation 3.1.1 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Corrected: When a copy/paste operation was followed by an undo/redo sequence in some cases an extra action would be added in the Job.
  • Corrected: The text value returned by the "Download from Web" action is now stripped from all non-printable characters.
  • Corrected: In certain cases a "Cannot Unload Domain" exception would occur when stopping a running Job.
  • Modified: The Numeric data type now holds larger values with more precision.

New in WinAutomation 3.1.0 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Added: Support for add-ons - external action packs.
  • Added: The "Write Text to File" action has an additional property for specifying the encoding used for the text to be written into the file.
  • Added: The "Download from Web" action has a new "Encoding" property for specifying the encoding used for the web page. If the value is set to "Auto-detect" the action uses the encoding specified by the web server.
  • Added: The "Download from Web" action has a default value for the "User Agent" property.
  • Added: In Job Designer, a "Start from Here" menu item has been added in the Context Menu (right click menu) allowing the user to start the execution of a job from a specific action.
  • Added: Toolbar buttons and menu items in Job Designer are now disabled when a job is executing through the Debugger.
  • Added: While debugging the "Execute Next Action" button can be pressed with a hotkey. The designated hotkey can be specified in the Job Designer Options dialog.
  • Added: While debugging the Job scrolls automatically so that the currently executing action is always visible.
  • Modified: The File Monitor Trigger variable %FileTriggerFilePath% now contains a file object instead of text making easier to retrieve info regarding the file that triggered the Job.
  • Modified: The Dialog box displayed by the "Display Select From List Dialog" action is now resizable to facilitate the selection of long list items.
  • Corrected: The "Send Mouse Click" action presses the correct mouse button when the functions of the left and right mouse buttons have been swapped.
  • Modified: The "Get Special Folder" action now contains a label that displays the path for the selected special folder.
  • Added: In the "Action Properties" dialog the F1 key is now used for opening the help topic for the specific action.
  • Added: The "Wait for Window" action can now wait for a window to get the focus (to become the foreground window) or lose the focus.
  • Added: The "If Window" action can now determine whether a specific window is focused (is the foreground window) or not.
  • Added: The "If Service" action can now determine whether a specific service is installed on the computer or not.
  • Added: New Action: "Get Foreground Window" action retrieves the title and handle of the Window that has the focus.
  • Added: New Action: "Generate Random Number" action, to get a random number or a list of random numbers.
  • Added: New Action: "Shuffle List" action, to randomly permute the items of a list.
  • Added: In the "Parse Text" action there is now an option to perform case-insensitive matching
  • Corrected: In certain cases, some actions issued a "Reference not set to an instance of an object" error when run through the debugger.
  • Modified: If a Job runs for more than 24 hours, now the Notification dialog also displays the total days in the running time field.
  • Added: New Action: "Get Mouse Position" action, to retrieve the position of the mouse cursor on the screen.
  • Added: The actions "Move Mouse" and "Send Mouse Click" now accept variables for mouse coordinates and the new mouse position can be relative to the current mouse position.
  • Added: New Action: "Terminate Process" action, to immediately stop a running process.
  • Added: New Action: "Ping" action, for sending a ping message to a remote computer.
  • Added: The "Sort List" action can now sort a list of objects, through specific properties
  • Corrected: When an IP address was entered in an action's property, depending on the regional settings of the computer, sometimes it was mistakenly interpreted as a number.
  • Added: New Action: "Synchronize FTP Directory" action, to synchronize the contents of a local and remote directory.
  • Added: The "Move Mouse to Image" action has now an option to wait if the image is not initially found as well as an option to send a click after the cursor is moved over the image.
  • Added: New Action: "If Image" action, to check whether an image exists or not on the screen.
  • Added: The "If" action now includes the following operators: "Starts with", "Does not start with", "Contains", "Does not contain", "Ends with", "Does not end with" and "Is Empty". All these new operators (except the last one) work both in case-sensitive and case-insensitive mode.
  • Added: The Job Designer can now save the Job automatically upon running the Job through the debugger. This option can be specified through the Job Designer Options Dialog.
  • Corrected: In some cases the Console didn't close successfully, leaving a ghost process running.
  • Added: New Action: "Remove Duplicate Items from List" action, to remove multiple occurrences of the same item in a list.
  • Added: New Action: "Empty Folder" action, to delete the contents of a folder without deleting the folder itself.
  • Modified: The "Get Job's Path" action now retrieves the path (folder plus job name) of non-compiled jobs too.
  • Modified: The "Download from Web" action can download a file and keep its original name as specified by the web server. When this option is selected, only the destination folder needs to be provided, instead of the full local path.
  • Added: In the "Replace Text" action there is now an option to perform case-insensitive matching
  • Modified: The "Replace With" property of the "Replace Text" action now accepts multi-line values.
  • Added: The "Convert Text to DateTime" action has now an option for converting dates that are represented in a non-standard format.
  • Corrected: The "Write Text to File" action crashed the designer when an extremely long text was entered as the value to be written into the file.
  • Added: The "Clear Logs" dialog allows you to archive the events into a different file before deleting them.
  • Corrected: In Windows Vista/7 for the event log to be cleared the Console should run with elevated privileged (as administrator).
  • Added: In the "Run DOS Command" action a new output property has been added for retrieving any error messages issued by the command or the console application.
  • Added: In the "End Job" action a new property has been added for specifying the Exit Code for Jobs that are compiled.
  • Modified: In the "Exception Handling" tab of an action's properties dialog, exceptions that are handled (have some behavior assigned) are displayed in bold.
  • Corrected: When two or more Job designers were open simultaneously the same Undo history was shared between the different designers.
  • Added: Support for persistent variables that keep their value between subsequent executions of the same Job. For compiled Jobs, persistent variables are stored into a satellite file and can be encrypted.
  • Added: A Welcome window is displayed when launching the WinAutomation console, that contains video tutorials and educational material.
  • Added: In the Options window there is an additional option that sets the application to remember the size and layout of the Console and Job Designer windows.
  • Corrected: In the "Rename Files" action, when renaming a file and specifying as a new name the name it already had, and the "Overwrite" selection was chosen, the file was deleted.
  • Modified: In the "Run Job" action the list of Jobs to choose from, now appears sorted.

New in WinAutomation 3.0.3 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Corrected: When deleting an action sometimes the window didn't refresh properly.
  • Corrected: An error occurred in the "Run Job" action if the Job had already launched an Excel instance
  • Corrected: The "Unzip files" action would not unzip files that their names started or ended with a dot (.)
  • Corrected: In rare cases the Notification Window was displayed below other windows. In other cases it could steal the keyboard focus from the foreground window.
  • Corrected: The "Find Common List Items" action returned the first list instead of the intersection of the two provided lists
  • Corrected: The "Capture" function in the "Move Mouse to Image" and "Wait for Image" actions produced an error if an empty region was selected
  • Added: A message box is displayed to inform the user after an attempt to export a Job that contains illegal characters in its name.
  • Corrected: The "Rename File(s)" action in the Designer did not display correctly the "Add DateTime before/after" property value in the designer.

New in WinAutomation 3.0.2 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Corrected: Jobs performance deteriorated when variables contained large amount of data.
  • Corrected: SendKeys action failed to send correctly the characters ~, %, ^, (, ), +, [ and ].
  • Corrected: Exception occurred in very large jobs (more than 3000 actions).
  • Corrected: In some cases, a job would stop when the user pressed Enter because the "Stop Job" in the notification window had the focus by default.

New in WinAutomation 3.0.1 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Corrected: Schedule Trigger's "Monthly" option is now working as intended.
  • Corrected: Subtract Lists action bug corrected.
  • Added: Minimum Delay Between Keystrokes (Send Keys action) is now 0
  • Corrected: A known issue with "Send Keys" action where in rare cases duplicate keystrokes were sent.
  • Added: Send Keys now works in remote desktop
  • Added: Send Keys now works in Console Window
  • Added: Multiple repetitive keystrokes can be sent in the format {X:n}
  • Corrected: "Delete FTP Directory" action now deletes directories even when they are not empty (recursively)
  • Corrected: A normal exception thrown by the "Unzip Files" action could result in an unhandled exception
  • Corrected: When "Display Big Icons" setting was selected in Job Designer the icons failed to display properly.
  • Corrected: "Open FTP Connection" could fail if the agent was launched before the service. It has now been fixed.

New in WinAutomation 3.0.0.368 (Jun 9, 2009)

  • Service
  • WinAutomation's service is now more lightweight and more stable.
  • All errors with 64bit versions of windows have been fixed.
  • You can now stop WinAutomation's service by right clicking on the tray icon of the Agent and selecting: "Stop WinAutomation Service"
  • WinAutomation's service has been redesigned, to require less system resources.
  • There is no longer an option to start and stop the service through the console. Opening the console will automatically start the service and you cannot stop the service through the tray icon if the console is open.
  • Console
  • The general options have been enriched; check "Tools - Options" in the console window to test the new options. Specifically:
  • There is now an option to stop all jobs that are currently running with a HotKey (General tab)
  • There is an option that allows you to control if WinAutomation's service will start when the machine boots (Service tab)
  • You can now disable the system tray icon (Notifications tab)
  • The "balloon" that used to notify the user whenever a job started or ended has been replaced by a special Notification Popup Window that you can show or hide (Notifications tab)
  • You can globally decide which file types will be treated as ASCII files by the FTP actions (FTP tab)
  • There are some "Global Error Handling" options that you can set in the case that your jobs fail to complete such as Write the Event to a log file or Send Email (Error Handling tab). In the case that you decide to send an email, you will have to set the SMTP options (SMTP Server tab)
  • There is a new logging system; check "Tools - View Logs" to see the changes. You can filter the log events based on date, type of event or source of event. There is also a new pane in the console that shows the most recent Log Records.
  • You can now open multiple jobs and still be able to interact with the console
  • You can view the logs for a specific job (Right click on the job and select "View Logs for the specific job" option)
  • The jobs are now saved in a database that you can backup, restore and compact ("Tools - Manage Jobs Database")
  • The jobs are now exported to a new file type (*.waj), however, there is backward compatibility (you can import old xml files but you can't open waj files with WinAutomation 2)
  • You can import multiple jobs at once
  • There is a special executable in WinAutomation's installation directory (WinAutomationController.exe) that allows you to run and stop your jobs through the command line.
  • Job Designer
  • All actions have been redesigned and in their property dialogs the main tab is now divided in 2 sections: "Action Input" and "Action Output".
  • A new special "gear" icon has been introduced, that allows you to select from variables that have been created/used earlier in the job. This icon can be used only in fields that reside in the "Action Input" section of the action's properties window.
  • There are a lot of internal features like automatic variable handling (automatically create a new variable when it's declared and delete when it's not used) and the addition of new types of variables (files, folders etc) that intend to make interaction with variables much easier. For example, you do not need to use the "Define New Variable" option now: you just place a variable name in the field and if it does not exist, it is automatically created.
  • There are no longer yellow and white background colors in forms: whenever you want to use a variable, you will have to enclose it in percentages (e.g %MyVar%).
  • The image recognition system has been significantly changed: it is now more accurate and stable, and the tolerance option is now more versatile (in version 3, it does not only understand differences in color tones but it also indicates the amount of different pixels that is allowed).
  • New Actions
  • Download From Web (Web category): This action acts like a browser and can handle http requests, supporting both, get and post method for posting data.
  • Get Command Line Arguments (WinAutomation actions category): This action retrieves the command line arguments that can be provided through the command line or if the job is compiled.
  • Get Job's Path (WinAutomation actions category): This action retrieves the path to the executable (obviously works only if the job is compiled)
  • Wait For Mouse (Wait category): You can now use this action for specific type of applications where the only indicator that you have for a complete task is the mouse icon
  • Press/Release Key (Mouse and Keyboard category): Presses (and holds) or releases a moifier key. This new action allows you to combine any of the known modifiers (Control, Alt, Shift) with a mouse move/click.
  • Set Key State (Mouse and Keyboard category): You can use this key to ensure that Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and Num Lock are on the state that you want them to be during the execution of a specific job.
  • Display Notification (Message Boxes category): This action can be used to print useful information about the job execution in the Notification window that pops up whenever you run the job through the console (unless you have specified that this window does not appear). Also, it will print the information that you specify in the console window that will appear if you compile your job as a "Console Application".
  • Display Select Date dialog (Message Boxes category): Allows you to prompt the user to select a date or a date range.
  • Get Special Folder (Folders category): This action will return the path of special Windows folders (e.g Desktop). It can prove really useful if you want to create a job that does not depend on the user's Windows version (XP/Vista).
  • Open Secure FTP Connection (FTP category): Allows you to open a secure FTP connection (sFTP or FTPs, implicit or explicit)
  • Download Folder(s) (FTP category): Allows the download of a folder and its contents through FTP
  • Upload Folder(s) (FTP category): Allows the upload of a folder and its contents through FTP
  • Invoke FTP Command (FTP category): Allows you to send a custom FTP command to an FTP server
  • Change Text Case (Text Actions category): Allows you to change the case of a specific text (possible options to convert to: lowercase, UPPERCASE, Sentence case, Title Case)
  • Changed Actions
  • Run Job action (WinAutomation actions category): There is now an option to "Wait for job to complete". The job that is called through this action, can now use the variables that are declared in the main job.
  • Display Input Dialog (Message Boxes category): This action can now prompt the user for a password, and accept multiple lines as input.
  • Display Select from List Dialog (Message Boxes category): You can now allow the user to select multiple items and disallow the empty selection.
  • Get Files in Folder (Files category): Allows you to sort the files that you retrieve based on specific attributes (e.g Size, Last Modified etc)
  • Get SubFolders in Folder (Folders category): Allows you to sort the folders that you retrieve based on specific attributes (e.g Creation Time, Last Modified etc)
  • Download File(s) from FTP (FTP category): Allows you to select "Auto" as a transfer type.
  • Upload File(s) to FTP (FTP category): Allows you to select "Auto" as a transfer type.
  • Open FTP Connection (FTP category): You can now use use a variable as password
  • Compile Job to Exe
  • There are new options to choose from when you are generating an executable: you can specify how the exe will deal with a possible exception (e.g Return error code = 1) or if you want to compile the job as a windows or a console application.

New in WinAutomation 2.0.3.746 (Mar 12, 2008)

  • Generate Executable for Job (PRO Version only)
  • Run DOS command Action
  • Play Sound Action
  • Take Screenshot Action
  • Control Screensaver Action
  • Wait for Image Action
  • Move Mouse on Image Action
  • Display Select Dialog
  • Send Email Action
  • Execute SQL Statement Action
  • Get Text Length Action
  • Append Line to Text Action
  • Get Subtext Action
  • Pad Text Action
  • Trim Text Action
  • Convert Number to Text Action
  • Convert Text to Date Time Action
  • Convert Date Time to Text Action
  • Create Random Text Action
  • Join Text Action
  • Split Text Action
  • Parse Text Action
  • Replace Text Action
  • Subtract Dates Action
  • Create new List Action
  • Add Item to List Action
  • Remove Item from List Action
  • Sort List Action
  • Find Common List Items Action
  • Subtract List Action
  • Retrieve Data Table Column Action
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

New in WinAutomation 1.0.1.320 (Jul 18, 2007)

  • Idle Time trigger
  • Ping Trigger
  • Keyboard and Mouse actions
  • Text Actions
  • Non-interactive Job Running
  • Excel Actions
  • Zip and Unzip Actions
  • Folder Support Correction
  • New Loop control actions
  • Update of Help file
  • Launch of manual