How to automate View Output screen on Oracle EBS app

When automating Oracle EBS application, we would have come across the term called Concurrent Programs. When we run a concurrent program, it performs its scheduled actions and/or operations and then returns with a status either as NORMAL, WARNING or ERROR.

Many a times during automation there is a need to know the status of the concurrent program to decide if we want to continue further with the script execution or not. It becomes easy to debug the concurrent program as we would know if the program is performing its operations correctly or not and also failing for which parameter combinations(if are used).

The error log can be viewed in the different formats but the most famous commonly used is Browser as it is very easy for each and everyone to view in this format as we can view multiple formats at one place.

When we try automating this flow, you will notice that OATS aka OpenScript is unable to capture the browser window opened to view the output. The reason behind the window is opened programatically(i.e. in background a randomly generated id is been used every time we click on View Output button) and OpenScript is unable to focus and perform any operation on the window during execution.

There are 2 ways in which one can approach and solve the issue.

1. Changing the global setting to view the output in Text format

In this approach, one will have to make a global setting in the profile to always view the output in Text format. It means, it would open a popup window displaying the output in a text area like field. This way we have the control over it as we are able to record and identify the text field object on the form and get the text from the same.

To modify the setting, go to Profile > System and then in search box put Viewer%. A list of options containing viewer keyword will be displayed. Select the 'VIEWER : Text' and change the existing value(i.e. Browser) to Text and save it.

Note : One need to have a System Administrator access to modify the setting. Also this is a global setting and will reflect for everyone who uses the application instance, so one should be very careful when updating/modifying this setting.

2. Using a Third party library - AUTOIT and Robot

In this approach, we will have to write an AutoIt code to make the required browser screen in focus and then use Robot to perform the operations like get all contents or save file etc. I have already created an .exe file using AutoIt which can be directly used to perform the focus operation, which is attached here.

Follow the below steps to use the same in your project -

1. Download, Unzip/Extract and Save the activate_window.exe under the resources folder in your project directory.

2. Copy the below snippet and paste in your java file. Then call the verifyConcurrentProgramOutput() function by passing the identifier of the browser window as parameter to verify the output. Also modify the exe file path and the title/url used to identify the window.

The following code focuses the window containing the URL or title mentioned, then copies the browser contents using Robot keyboard and then save it to the clipboard.

You can download the source files here.

- Rohit Tupe