Google Chrome object recorder capture attributes

You are absolutely on the right track. Your instinct to deselect Path and rely on DOMXPath is exactly what Automation Anywhere recommends as a best practice for web automation.

When Google Chrome updates, it often slightly alters how the browser renders its accessibility tree to the operating system. Because the Path attribute is just a numeric representation of an element's position in that tree, even a minor browser update can break your bot—even if the website itself hasn't changed at all.

Here is a quick cheat sheet for Recorder attributes on web applications:

Attributes to KEEP selected:

• DOMXPath: This is the most reliable property for web automation. If the element is dynamic, try to use a Relative XPath (starting with //) rather than an Absolute XPath, and use wildcards (*) for changing numbers.

• HTML Tag: Always good to keep (e.g., input, button, a).

• ID or Name: Keep these only if they are static. If the ID looks like a randomly generated string of numbers and letters that changes every session, deselect it.

Attributes to DESELECT:

• Path: Always uncheck this for web applications. It is highly brittle.

• HTML Href / HTML Value: Uncheck these if they contain dynamic session tokens or URLs that change every time you log in.

• Recorder best practices

• Edit a task recorded with the Universal Recorder (Contains a detailed breakdown of DOMXPath vs Path)

​@DavdB106684 The other thing to do is to use a VM for your bot runners where you can control the updates to Chrome and other applications. Does Chrome need to be on the bleeding edge version for your application to run? Probably not. And since you’re using this as an automation browser, not a general surf-the-web browser, you’re not going to be affected by the zero day vulnerabilities that you might with the browser you use to visit all sorts of sites.

Thank you both. 

For clarification this is a bot we have had for a few years now. It logs into the Moneris web site and downloads a data file. It has to click on various menu icons and drop down boxes. Every so often Moneris changes their site and we have to update the bot. But the last couple of times this issue arose i could not see anything different so I am just assuming its a Google Chrome update that is causing it. Its a very weird issue. Whenever the bot clicks on something that pops up a window that window opens and closes multiple times very quickly and nothing gets selected within it. 

I have been struggling trying to find the right attributes to use to get it to work again and nothing seems to help. Our bot runners used to run on a VM but when we upgraded to AA360 we were told to use VDI’s instead. And of course, they are constantly being updated and patched which makes finding the issue so much harder. Ie, is it a patch issue, a google chrome update, etc.

I will have to see if i can convince someone to turn off the chrome updates on our VDI’s but i doubt they will go for it. 

​@DavdB106684, this is not an Automation Anywhere issue; it is something related to the browser or a compatibility issue between the Moneris website and the new browser version. The functional team may not see the problem because they are still on the older browser version, but once the browser updates, certain UI behaviors change and Recorder Capture begins to fail. More details are explained in the post: Why Your Automation Anywhere Recorder Capture Actions Suddenly Failed (And How to Fix It).

Can you please set your display resolution at 1366 x 768 and try to recapture the object.

I doubt the security team will allow us to roll back to an older version of google chrome given the potential security risk (ie, security patches to the newer versions that would not get applied to the older versions). The bigger issue here is that i cannot even recapture the objects anymore. Normally when something like this happens all we have to do is recapture the objects but that is not working no matter what I do. 

I am going to try the suggestion of changing the resolution to capture the object and then changing it back because at this point I am desperate.

One other thing, randomly the bot will work fine. For example, it worked fine on Monday, and it worked fine once last week. So essentially it seems to work fine once a week (this bot is scheduled to run daily).

It appears that automation anywhere is aware of this issue. When i went to create a support ticket and started typing in the subject line a series of possible related causes appeared, one of which was titled “Automation 360 | Recorder commands intermittently fail after Chrome upgrade 154.X” 

Article number is 000026492.

However, good luck finding it from the community page. I tried searching for it here and could not find it. It only shows up when i try to create a support ticket.

The article states they are aware of the issue but don’t know the cause and have provided some potential solutions which i haven’t tried yet but will. 

The article is dated Oct 7th, 2026.

​@DavdB106684 This one?

No. This one.

https://apeople.automationanywhere.com/s/article/automation-360-recorder-commands-chrome-upgrade-issue

I tried the first temporary workaround and it resolved my problem, at least in Dev.