Selection Screen

The UI Automation activities enable you to work with UI elements by simulating human interaction. To do this, you can identify UI elements by indicating them on your screen. Usually, a pair of elements are indicated for this purpose: a target and an anchor. This pair is known as a descriptor.

When indicating, the Selection Screen is used to help you perform more advanced tasks, such as pausing the execution, changing the framework that is being used for detection, selecting an anchor, or editing the selector you are using, to name a few.

You can check out the video below for more information.

Indicating an element

To indicate an UI element, you must first drag and drop an Use Application/Browser activity into the Workflow Designer in Studio and then indicate the application or the browser you want to automate.

Once the application or the browser is indicated, you can drag any Modern UI Automation activity inside the Use Application/Browser activity and select Indicate in App or Indicate in browser from the application card. This opens the first instance of the Selection Options helper alongside the target application, which enables you to indicate the UI element you want to use.

Next, click the UI element you want to interact with. The element is highlighted green.

Selection Options helper

In this stage of the Selection Options helper, you can use certain functionalities, as follows:

Pause selection - You can pause the configuration for a specified amount of time or pause the configuration with no timeout and resume it when you want. From the drop-down menu you can choose one of these options:
- 1 second
- 3 seconds
- 5 seconds - This is the default value.
- 7 seconds
- 9 seconds
- No time limit - The configuration is paused until Resume is selected.
This option stops the indicate process and enables you to interact with your machine any way you want, being especially useful if the application is minimized, out of view, or other reasons like bringing the application in the correct state. You can use F2 as a hotkey.
Note: You can scroll in applications that are scrollable without having to pause the Selection Screen.
Hoverable items selection - You can indicate items that are only visible when hovering over them. You can use F6 as a hotkey.
Image region selection - You can switch from indicating direclty the element you want to use to selecting a freeform area that contains the target element and which is later processed via image recognition. You can also drag a selection on the screen to indicate an area that you want to use as your target. Doing this disables the Strict selector and Fuzzy selector search methods. You can use F3 as a hotkey.
Enable Native text - You can identify all the text labels on the target application that can be viewed through the Native method.
By clicking the Show all Native elements button, the text labels are highlighted in the target application.
Enable Computer Vision - You can enable Computer Vision to automate certain areas or elements especially when selectors are not available, for instance when automating on a remote desktop. You can use F8 as a hotkey.
By clicking the Show all CV elements button, all the elements found by Computer Vision are highlighted in the target application.
Change UI framework - You can change the technology used to determine the UI elements and their selectors. You can use either the drop-down menu or the F4 hotkey. The available framework types are:
- Auto - Automatically chooses the framework that is considered to be the most suitable for the indicated element. This option is selected by default. Usually work fine with all types of user interfaces.
- Active Accessibility - Uses the Active Accessibility framework, which is Windows specific. It is recommended to use this option with legacy software, when the default option does not work.
- UI Automation - Uses the proprietary UiPath framework. It is recommended to use this option with newer applications, when the default option does not work.
Validate - Validate the selection you have made. More details in the Validating the descriptor chapter below.
Confirm - Confirm the changes and close the selection wizard.
Cancel - Discard all changes and close the selection wizard.

Once a target is selected, this opens the next stage of the Selection Options window, which enables you to further configure the descriptor for the indicated element, by adding an anchor and configuring more advanced settings.

Note: When using StudioX, the Settings in this screen are not displayed by default. To edit them, you must use the docs image

button while hovering over the target or anchor.

Once you have finished configuring the Selection Options, to return to UiPath Studio and keep all the changes you have made, you can select Confirm, press Enter, or select the blue check mark in the hover menu.

The entire process looks like this: