What's New in APA 7.7

CAPTURING & ACCESSIBILITY

The Capturing Assistant window:

  • Shows the coordinates of the top left corner of the capture, relative to the desktop coordinates and the window being captured.

  • Enables you to capture with various options:

    • CTRL+Mouse Click to capture Accessibility

    • SHIFT+Mouse Click to capture Full Tree

    • SHIFT+CTRL+Mouse Click to capture Tree Accessibility

Learn more Capturing Screen Elements and Using the Accessibility Connector.

Capturing Experience

An improvement was made to connectors and extensions (Win32 and extensions including Office and PowerBuilder, Web, Generic HTML, Chrome, .Net, JavaNative and SAP) to use connectivity timers to automatically subscribe to and watch eventless properties. This feature does not apply to Terminal and Siebel. This is not necessary for WPF.

You can now get the values for a property that was not previously bindable in Monitor. For example, in the .Net connector in previous APA versions, when hiding a screen element in a .Net application, the corresponding Visible property in Monitor did not update its value correctly. Now when the screen element is hidden, APA is updated, the property is Visible=False. The Visible value is updated every second.

Learn more Eventless Properties.

Only use Destroy and Refresh when absolutely necessary, for example, for HTML site-specific Java-related issues. If continuous recognition is required, rather select the Dynamic Document option.

Learn more Functionality of Generic HTML Screen Elements.

New GHTML Mouse Input Emulation Functionality

Three new functions are now available for interacting with GHTML screen elements:

  • Click on Point

  • Double Click on Point

  • Right Click on Point

Learn more Functionality of Generic HTML Screen Elements and Mouse Input Emulation.

GHTML Improvements

In previous version, the selectors were based on using a parent-child axis. Smarter selection generation has now been added and also uses:

  • ID

  • Name

  • CSS Class

  • Node Type

This generates shorter and more efficient selectors.

GHTML New Recognition Properties

New Identification recognition properties were added:

  • Parent Id: The unique ID for the parent element.

  • Parent Name: The name of the parent element.

  • Class: The element class.

  • Parent Class: The parent class.

  • Order: Index.

  • Children Count: The number of children.

Learn more Viewing Generic HTML Screen Element Identification Details.

Handling Popups and Alerts

In Edge IE mode and the Generic HTML connectors, support was added for getting data from popups and alerts and performing actions on the controls inside the popups and alerts.

  • Click Popup Button (as well as Popup Closed and Popup Opened events)

  • Set Prompt Input Value

Learn more Functionality of Generic HTML Screen Elements.

Scaling

The Real-Time Designer is not high DPI-aware. In order to prevent problems interfacing with the various applications when capturing screen elements, in the Windows Display Settings, set the Scale and layout to 100% on all monitors.

In 7.7 scaling support was added to runtime, eliminating the need to change the scale and layout in production.

Connectivity Watcher

The Connectivity Watcher is now event driven (and not polling-based), and allows you to set a probability threshold. The event is fired when the threshold is violated..

Projects created with the previous version of Connectivity Watcher will continue to function as usual, as events will be fired via the current Connectivity Watcher.

Learn more The Connectivity Watcher.

PDF Improvements

A new PDF library was developed that is more efficient and versatile when processing PDFs and PDF forms. This library replace the Acrobat library that was used for working with PDF forms.

Learn more PDF Library Objects.

IMAGE Handling

A new image handling library was developed that works with image files in png, jpg, jpeg, tif and tiff formats. This new type is based on computer vision capabilities.

Learn more Image Library Objects and Using Image Library.

ABBYY OCR Enhancements

The Connectivity.OCR library object was updated to add support for:

  • Reading cells in complex, asymmetrical tables.

  • Reading text in various languages.

  • Retrieving a list of screen element rectangles with the specified word.

Learn more Using the ABBYY OCR Object.

Terminal Connectors

The Terminal Connectors have been redesigned and simplified, while maintaining backward compatibility. This includes:

  • 64-bit terminal applications are now supported via the Direct.Terminal.ServerLib.exe process. This is automatic and there is no configuration required.

  • A new Direct Terminal Utility enables you to select a window, and return a list of the associated DLLs. You can then select a DLL and return the hllapi function name. These can be used as values for the HLLAP function name and HLLAPI Dll Path properties of the Extra Terminal type. This saves a lot of time when developing Terminal Connector solutions. Learn more Checking HLLAPI DLL and Function Name.

  • Updates to the Extra Terminal type in the Direct.Common.Library are:

    • A Permanent Connection parameter was added that enables you to use a permanent connection to the terminal, without the need for using the Extra Terminal Permanent Connection type. If this is set to False, the functionality for APA 7.6 and earlier is retained.

    • A Connect to terminal session and Disconnect from terminal session functions were added, enabling you to connect and disconnect from the terminal session. This is only relevant if you enable the Permanent Connection option.

    • All Extra Terminal Permanent Connection type properties are available in the Extra Terminal type.

Learn more Using the Terminal Connector and Using an Extra Terminal or Extra Terminal Permanent Connection Service.

Salesforce Library

The Salesforce library now allows you connect to Salesforce using Webform, upload or download Salesforce objects, and supports compound fields.

Learn more Salesforce Library Object and Using Salesforce.

MS Outlook Library

The various MS Outlook libraries were updated:

  • Microsoft Office 365 Remote Library Object (Direct.MsOffice.Remote.Library) : Add Recipient(s) to Outlook Email and Move Email to Folder functions were added.

  • Microsoft Office Local Library Object (Direct.MsOffice.Local.Library): Add Recipient(s) to Outlook Email and Get Active Email functions were added.

Learn more Microsoft Office 365 Remote Library Object and Microsoft Office Local Library Object.

HTTP Request Enchantments

New properties added to the HTTP Request object:

  • Protocol Version

  • Added support for proxy authentication. You can now define a Proxy Username and Proxy Password.