Technical Articles
SAP Intelligent RPA: SuccessFactors Log in tutorial
Hello!
This will be a guide to create a bot that can log into the SAP SuccessFactors admin page. I will guide you through creating the project, capturing the required pages, then building the workflow. At the end I will include some debugging tips I learned while building this for the first time myself.
Requirements to follow along with this guide
- Desktop Studio
- Desktop Agent
- The zoom level of the web page (Chrome) and Display (I.e. Change the size of text, apps, and other items) should be 100% to ensure a good capture.
Note: Trial accounts or services always come with limitations, but this project is possible with a trial account
Before you begin, you may want to look at these courses offered on openSAP
- How to Build Bots with SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation
- SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation in a Nutshell
1. Creation of new project [File->New project]
2. Open https://salesdemo.successfactors.eu/login?company=******* (where ***** is your SF ID) in Chrome
3. Select Add Application in the Desktop Studio.
4. Select the page we navigated to in chrome (it will appear in the capture application screen). If the page does not appear, click on the refresh button. Edit and change the Name as highlighted below. I changed it to ‘SuccessFactors’ because this is the application name and not the page name (We will add the page next). Click on the Save option.
6. Select the login page – If the page is not shown, click on the refresh icon. Then click on Scan and Capture.
Note:- If the target zoom level is more than 100 percent, it will not fully capture the page. The zoom level of the web page and Display (I.e. Change the size of text, apps, and other items) should always be 100% as mentioned earlier in the prerequisite.
7. Once the capturing is completed the below page will be seen. Notice how the pSuccessFactorsLogIn is shown in red we will resolve that in the next step.
8. Double click on the highlighted domain in the “Captured Data” panel to set the criteria, then double click on the title to add it as well.
Once the criteria is set, the highlighted page will turn into green, this will let you know that the criteria is properly identifying the captured page.
Click on the SuccessFactors Application and then double click on the domain in captured data to add it as a criteria for the overall application of SuccessFactors
9. Select the ‘username’ field by clicking on it. Upon selection, it will turn dark blue. After this the DOM structure is shown in the Subtree. Select input from the subtree to show the captured data, then double click on ‘name = username’ to add it to the criteria for the object. It can be renamed, but I will keep it as ‘oUsername’. Once the criteria is set, the highlighted object will turn green.
Follow the same steps for the password field
10. Select the Login button by clicking on it. From the DOM structure in the Subtree select the Button tag, then in the capture data section double click on Text = Log On. Initially, it will be red, but after setting the criteria it will turn green.
11. Now click on the workflow.
12. Right-click on SuccessFactors and then click on New Workflow
17. Double click on the page activity.
18. Drag the set activity to the highlighted item for the username and password.
19. Click on the highlighted Set activity
20. Enter the below detail in the properties. Put your username instead of “USERNAME”, but be sure to surround it with ‘’.
Do the same for the Set Password activity
25. Now that the workflow has been built we will go to the code to make some changes, first lets set chrome as the default navigator.
Go to the start application activity and right click it and select ‘Go to code’
26. Now enter “SuccessFactors.navigator = e.navigator.Chrome” to set the browser as chrome. Make sure it is before the .start() line
27. Go to the code for the Login Page activity in the workflow
28. Now edit the click() function to be a mouse click by adding ‘Mouse’.
29. Now click on the build option to build the project again.
30. Click on the debug option.
31. Debugging has started.
32. Now desktop agent will appear in the taskbar. Click on the highlighted Desktop agent.
Conclusion:-
Now you have the skills to create the first part of a workflow in SuccessFactors by having a bot complete the log in. You can then use the “Reuse” activity and reference this Log in workflow to build more complex projects.
In the next blog post we will learn how to use the reuse activity so we can leverage this workflow to create other workflows without having to recreate steps in another workflow.
If your project isn’t running properly make sure that you have the chrome IRPA extension installed and enabled and that you have both the Chrome and desktop zoom level set to 100%.
Have a great day and happy bot building!
–Max McPhee
Excellent post!!!! thanks for a clear step by step!!!
Hello Max. Great Blog.
Just a question regarding mouse click. What is the difference between 'click' and 'mouseclick'?
What I know is both are almost the same, but the 'mouseclick' executes a click on the item with mouse simulation. Am I right?
Hi Aditya,
You are correct, the clickMouse() function simulates the click with the mouse shown in the UI while click() does not. I found with chrome that it was more reliable to use the clickMouse() which is why I recommend using that for this use case.
Hi Max:
Nice post. I am working in a automation iRPA project with SSFF, I am experiencing problems by setting or getting elements in some page parts: I get the message: 'Item x not running', despite the capture is ok, and I choise the rigth criteria. Do you have an idea what I can do?. Thank you very much.