Navigate stage

The navigate stage allows you to perform navigational steps (or actions) in your target application. Examples include clicking buttons, opening menus, dialogs, closing windows, sending keystrokes etc.

Properties Form

The navigate properties form presents two lists, one above the other. The first list is a list of navigational actions to be performed. These actions will be performed in order, from top to bottom. For example the first action may be open "File" menu, the second might be click "save". The order here is important, so you should be careful to add the navigational actions in the correct order.

Each navigational action consists of an application element, and an action. The application element is the target of the action (eg the menu item to be clicked) and the action describes what is to be done to that element (eg click, open, minimise etc).

The lower list represents a series of inputs for the currently selected navigational action in the upper list. For example, if the action is click, it may be necessary to supply coordinates for that click action. This list is dynamic and depends on the action selected in the current row.

Adding a new navigational action

First click the "Add" button to add a new row. Then drag and drop an application element from the Application Explorer on the left into the appropriate field.

Depending on the nature of the application element (specifically whether you chose to make the application element dynamic when you created it), you may need to supply parameters to the application element by clicking the appropriate button. This allows the element to be identified when your business object is run as part of a process.

Next you should choose an action from the drop-down list. This list varies dynamically according to the type of application element selected. If an action does not appear in the list then it cannot be performed against the chosen application element.

The last field indicates whether there are any inputs (items to be completed in the lower list) for the selected action, and whether they have been supplied.

Pause After Each Step

A pause can be set to occur after each of the navigational actions configured in a navigate stage. This can be provided by setting an expression in the Pause After Each Step field in the form. If not set, the runtime engine will not pause after the steps it encounters in a stage.

The expression in the field must resolve to either a number, representing the number of seconds to pause, or a timespan representing the amount of time to pause. If a number is provided, fractional parts are honoured by the runtime engine. Negative values are treated as zero – ie. no pause will be effected.