18.1 Trigger-Based Attended Automation: Forms, Triggers & Global Variables

18.1 Trigger-Based Attended Automation: Forms, Triggers & Global Variables

Core Concept: In trigger-based attended automation, workflows start when something happens on the user's machine: the user clicks a button in an application, presses a hotkey, changes a form field, or a global variable changes. Several triggers can listen at once, so one attended process can react to many events during the user's work.

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Building Blocks

These capabilities need version 23.4 or later of Form, System, UIAutomation, and Callout activities.

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Trigger Workflows

A trigger workflow is a workflow whose first activity is a trigger. The rest of the workflow is what runs each time the trigger fires. Only one trigger per workflow is allowed. Trigger workflows can be debugged on their own or in the context of the whole project.

Trigger activities

In Studio versions before 2023.4, these triggers had to sit inside a Trigger Scope activity.

Scheduling mode

Each trigger has a Scheduling mode that decides what happens when it fires again while its workflow is still running:

For Sequential and Concurrent modes, monitoring continues until the user stops the execution or a Break activity is reached.

Other trigger properties

• Enabled: when False, the trigger starts but fires no events until enabled at run time with Enable Local Trigger.
• Include children (Application Event Trigger): also monitors the element's children.
• Healing Agent mode: Disabled, Inherit job settings, Recommendation only, or Same as App/Browser.

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Global Variables

Global variables are created in the Data Manager and are visible to all workflows of the project. Two activities connect them to triggers:

• Global Variable Changed Trigger starts a trigger workflow when the value of a global variable changes.
• Notify Global Variable Changed pushes the change notification to the workflows that subscribe to it.

This lets one workflow update state, for example the current customer ID, and other trigger workflows react.

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Forms in Trigger-Based Automation

• Forms are .uiform files designed with the Form Builder (custom HTML forms are also possible), independent of the activities that show them.
• Show Form displays a form; give each instance a unique Instance Name to show several forms at once, or leave it empty to act on all instances.
• Continue Workflow Execution decides whether the workflow waits for the form or continues while it is shown.
• Get Form Values, Set Form Values, Change Form Properties, and Run Form Script read, change, and script forms at run time.

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Worked Example: A Claims Assistant

A claims handler works in a web claims system:

1. Main shows a side form with the claim summary and runs Run Local Triggers.
2. A trigger workflow starting with a Click Event Trigger on the system's "Open claim" button reads the claim number and updates a global variable.
3. A Global Variable Changed Trigger workflow refreshes the side form with Set Form Values.
4. A Form Event Trigger on the form's "Check policy" button runs a lookup and shows the result.
5. A Hotkey Trigger (Ctrl+Shift+Q) with Sequential Drop starts a quick-note capture, cancelling any earlier capture still running.

Each piece is a small workflow that reacts to one event, which keeps the process easy to maintain.

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Common Traps

• Putting the trigger anywhere other than first in the workflow, or adding a second trigger to the same workflow.
• Choosing Concurrent for triggers whose workflows change the same application screen; overlapping runs then fight over the UI.
• Forgetting that OneTime stops monitoring after the first event.
• Mixing up the two global variable activities: the trigger reacts to a change, Notify Global Variable Changed announces it.