Windows automation

nsande · Post by **nsande** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:35 pm

Hi,

I am not an IT guy so I would appreciate some pointers from those with more experience.

I need to find a way of automatically opening our FO trading system at a given time, navigating to the right page and running a report. Then saving the results to a file.

Unfortunately, the report I want to run is currently not available in the program "scheduler" so it would probably require some IT development and a lot of hassle. Our IT department is currently swamped with things related to MIFID and other regulatory stuff and I feel that my request would probably end up at the bottom of the pile.

I feel that there must be a simpler way of getting this done. I know that there are commercial software packages that claim to be able to do stuff like this

Automate

Robotask

etc.

Does anyone have experience with running either of these or anything similar?

Regards,

Niclas

indiosmo · Post by **indiosmo** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:24 pm

While I personally don't have any experience with it I know the back office at my previous job used Automate extensively to do something similar to what you need with end of day reports (login to the system, click around screens, generate reports and email to clients).

This was programmed by the back office people themselves so it shouldn't require too much programming knowledge.

cordura21 · Post by **cordura21** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 7:24 pm

I used https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

It's very good. I automated a pretty complex procedure of exporting hundreds of csv from hundreds of Windows installers. The installer even changed thru dates, so there was some 'if-else' logic.

I called 'the octopus'.

Check it out. Cheers, Cord

Hansi · Post by **Hansi** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:10 pm

There most likely is an easier way of generating the report without the GUI so might be worth at least asking even if they say they don't have time.

Our IT uses Tricentis Tosca, CA LISA and AutoIt for automatic GUI testing but not experience on any of them personally.

Here are a few open source options: https://blog.testproject.io/2016/12/22/open-source-test-automation-tools-for-desktop-applications/

contango_and_cash · Post by **contango_and_cash** » Fri Mar 02, 2018 4:55 pm

fwiw, i would just use python for this. windows "clicking" stuff is straight forward.

i guess the only pain in the ass here is that you run into questions like:

- will you be logged in

- will you need control of the PC at the same time

- do you just create some slave computer that runs this type of of task + others in the future

whenever i have run into questions like this i start to wonder if i am approaching the problem correctly; normally the answer is yes.

nsande · Post by **nsande** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 2:02 pm

Thanks everybody for the help.

I might try to get something working in Python. We use already Python for some other stuff.

I guess this would be most easily done using the pexpect environment?

Regards,

Niclas

Tradenator · Post by **Tradenator** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 10:41 pm

Windows Powershell? Just have Task Scheduler call it.

ac940 · Post by **ac940** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:56 pm

I like autohotkey for this stuff www.autohotkey.com. But it requires a bit of experience if you don't want your automation to break up every now and then. I mainly use it with keyboard shortcuts for switching between bloombergs launchpad windows and my other apps (web, eclipse, etc) since I'm low on screen space.

HitmanH · Post by **HitmanH** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 10:33 am

Ditch windows?