Read Thread Is No Longer Alive

Question

I have a blueprism process which attaches to a web page and performs various actions. The process has been running smoothly for six months, but I am now getting an initial error of "ERROR: Internal : AMI error occurred in WaitStart Stage 'Wait For Detail' on page 'Update Claim' - External AppMan reader thread exited before response from query"

After this Blueprism is unable to perform any online action. I get a message saying that the "Read Thread Is No Longer Alive"

It appears to be caused by the Accessibility and UI identification methods in the App Modeller.

Convent

hey, is it publicly available webpage? I'd love to experiment on it. Is it possible that some security has been implemented there? – Excavator

Unfortunately not, it's a Sharepoint page. Could you elaborate on the security element? I believe they have changed security rights, but if I am able to login as the bot I can perform the actions manually? – Convent

Do you get this error every time or is it after a certain period of time, or random? Have you tried detaching and attaching right before the problematic step? – Mechanotherapy

Hi @MarekStejskal I get this error every time. I have even tried just highlighting elements from the app modeler and I get the same error. – Convent

Is there any option to attach to a different process? I usually get similar errors when there are multiple windows that match the attach criteria, but it gets messed up when I want to select/highlight an element. Try to detach and attach using a process ID, just to be sure. – Mechanotherapy

Apologies, but how do I get the process ID? – Convent

If I open the webpage myself, and open the object it attaches. However, it still won't run the action required. It also won't highlight the elements. – Convent

It may happen that even if you launch the app/browser through BP, it will not attach to a correct process. It happens quite frequently with apps that have some launchers. I recommend attaching manually using the Navigate stage and using the PID that you can get from the Task manager (details tab, PID column). – Mechanotherapy

Does error happens in every spying mode? – Excavator

@AndrzejKaczor No only in UI and Accessibility(two blue ones) – Convent

@MarekStejskal Thanks for explanation. No unfortunately that has not solved the issue. Same message appearing. – Convent

Can you try changing the Application Manager Mode? (Using the application wizard) – Mechanotherapy

On a slightly unrelated note, do you really need to use the AA modes on a Sharepoint site? Is the browser mode not sufficeint? Are there any tricky html elements that cannot be accessed HTML way? – Mechanotherapy

So I've tried the External 64 bit mode and embedded default but neither made a difference. Yes unfortunately there is two elements which I need to delete text, type, select value from a list and hit enter. I need to use the global mouse click center but that doesn't seem to be available in the in the HTML elements – Convent

@E_McAndrew for HTML elements though, you have 'Click center' instead of 'Global mouse click center'. Unfortunately, the problem you are having is hard to reproduce given the website is not public. I'd suggest updating your blue prism (latest release is from late last year, version 6.4) if it's not updated (make sure both the client and server are updated, else your client won't connect to the server) and if that fails too, to resort to region mode spying. If you do use region mode, you'll have to be more careful with the code, introducing more safeguards and testing thoroughly. – Heathenize

@Heathenize Unfortunately click center doesn't work on this particular page for me. I am looking to correct the issue instead of editing the existing process. We are currently not in a position to upgrade, but are on version 6.3. Again the process ran smoothly for 6 months so why would it change now. I realise it is difficult to answer (hoping that somebody has seen it before) – Convent

As for why this happened, there are quite a few things that could have caused it, one thing being updates; either on the machine the bot is running, or the sharepoint – Heathenize

Yes it is looking like a Sharepoint update has caused the issue unfortunately. – Convent

Answer 1

Issue was caused by Microsoft pushing out an update to Sharepoint. Blueprism are aware of the issue and have put a post up notifying users https://help.blueprism.com/Automation-Design/Application-Integration/Active-Accessibility-Spy-Mode/1280268672/Why-does-Active-Accessibility-crash-Blue-Prism-when-spying-SharePoint.htm

I re-engineered logic to use HTML elements. I found that the focus action performed the same as a global mouse click center.

Convent