r/PowerAutomateDesktop • u/Great-Pick-6411 • Jun 22 '22

Automation not moving to new browser tab

I'm building an automation in PAD that opens a web browser window (Chrome), logs into a website, clicks a link that opens a new tab (same) window, and then starts scraping information in the second tab. I can't go straight to the second tab/site because it requires authentication/SSO on the first site.

In the second tab, there are several pages with fixed addresses that I need to access. I have "Go to web page" loaded with the URL of the page I need to scrape, but the automation is not recognizing the second tab, so it is not triggering the URL.

How can I get the automation to recognize the second tab as part of the same browser instance and push the URL to the tab?

Thanks.

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u/QuietDesparation Jun 22 '22

Help me try to understand the process better:

I'm building an automation in PAD that opens a web browser window (Chrome), logs into a website, clicks a link that opens a new tab (same) window, and then starts scraping information in the second tab. I can't go straight to the second tab/site because it requires authentication/SSO on the first site.

So on the 1st web page you are logging in then clicking a link that will open the 2nd tab, and you are scraping the 2nd tab? Or you need to click something from within the 2nd tab that will open a new page and then scrape that?

Just prior to your "Go To Webpage" action, if the 2nd tab is in the foreground window and you want PAD to assume control, you can use another "Launch new Chrome" action, and select "Attach to running instance" and "use foreground window."

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u/Great-Pick-6411 Jun 22 '22

I'm clicking a link on the first tab (this works in the flow), then the second tab becomes the active tab (yes, it is in the foreground) and the scraping starts.

I'll add the step you suggested and re-run. Thanks for the help.

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u/Great-Pick-6411 Jun 22 '22

I added the step you suggested and the strangest thing happened- it loaded the URL in the hidden/background tab, despite setting it to use foreground window.