On Error, perform action and retry, but only so many times

[Ukiman1014]

I have an action that looks for text on a webpage.  Sometimes the page doesn't completely load, so the action times out and fails.  I'm trying to use the On error settings to handle this.  Upon error, I want it to run a subflow that refreshes the browser page and then try again, but only so many times before giving up.  Would this do it?  I'm not sure that I understand how the different pieces work together.

[Srini007]

Hi @Ukiman1014 

Yes, this way it will satisfy your requirement

So, First it will check the element if the action is error out due to slowness of you website it will go to on error block and retry the action by running the sub flow

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Thanks,

Srini

[UshaJyothi20]

click on new rule then you can find run subflow 

then select the subflow which you need to run

[Agnius · Accepted solution]

First of all, the If web page contains action will not really error out if the element has not loaded. It will only throw an error if the browser is not open, or there is no browser instance available. You should be setting your rules on a Wait for web page content action instead. 

Also, what the rules that you have there will actually result in is as follows:

1. It will retry 1 time before trying to cal the sub-flow. This is the retry policy. It kicks in before the error handling rules.
2. If it still fails after the 1 retry, it will call the sub-flow.
3. After the sub-flow ends, it will repeat the action. This is not limited to 1 retry. It has nothing to do with the retry policy. So, this will effectively attempt to repeat the action infinitely, if it never succeeds.

What you should do instead, is have the Wait for web page content action inside a Loop that goes from 1 to n (where n is the number of times you want to retry). Make the Wait for web page content action call the sub-flow to refresh the browser on error, and set a variable value to something. For example, have a variable that says %PageFailure% and set it to %True% in the on error rules. And then make it continue to the next action. 

The next action should be an If condition that checks %PageFailure%. If it is not equal to %True%, you can use Exit loop to stop retrying. If it is equal to %True%, then continue with the retries. Make sure you reset %PageFailure% at the beginning of the loop.

After your loop ends, you can check %PageFailure% again to see if it is equal to %True%. If it is, you will likely need to stop your flow.

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[axllin]

I suggest use the " wait ## seconds" to show webpage...

[Ukiman1014]

Thanks!  This worked great!  It's a shame that PAD's retry and error handling don't work together, forcing us to add the functionality ourselves.  Here is how I have it set up:

Overall loop:

Set timeout to 15 seconds:

On error, run refresh the browser page subflow:

Within the subflow, set variable to true, so loop executes again.

[MichaelAnnis]

I think this has been answered pretty exhaustively, but as another option, if you have ANY error subflow that is a workaround and want it to only process a certain amount of times, do this:

At start of MAIN:

Set ErrorCount to 0

In the ERROR subflow:

Set %ErrorCount% to %ErrorCount + 1%

If ErrorCount <= 3 (for this example)

    ‘Perform error workaround

Else

    ‘Throw Error

End(IF)

this way, each pass through this subflow will trigger the count and on the 4th attempt it will throw an error. 

good luck

[Agnius]

Great that you got it resolved.

PAD unfortunately does not (yet) have a native framework for proper more customized error handling. But it is quite simple to build it, when you know a few tricks. But I do hope that MS will in fact implement a few features to make it easier. I've been talking to them quite a bit about this, so hopefully it does eventually happen.