Delay

Delay

Type: delay  ·  Package: Core Activities v1.0.8

Pauses the execution for the given time (in milliseconds) and then continues with the next activity. It is useful to give a system time to react: for a page to finish loading, for an application to open a window, for a file to finish being written.

Use it as a last resort

A fixed wait is fragile: if you set 2 seconds and the system one day takes 3, the bot fails; if you set 10 “just in case”, you make it slow. Whenever you can, prefer waiting for a condition (an element appears, a file exists) instead of a fixed time. For the web, use Page Wait For; to retry something unstable, use Retry. Keep Delay for short, deliberate pauses.

How it works

When the flow reaches the activity, it stops for the given milliseconds and then continues. Remember: 1000 ms = 1 second.

• The value is rounded to whole milliseconds. 0 does not wait.
• When it finishes, it writes an informational line to the log with the time waited: in milliseconds (Waited 500 ms.) or, from one second on, in seconds.
• If someone terminates the execution during the wait, the pause ends right there.

Required parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
milliseconds	int	—	Wait time in milliseconds (0 or greater). E.g. 1500 = 1.5 seconds.

Optional parameters

None.

Output

This activity does not return a value.

Example

Wait half a second between two actions so as not to overload a slow system:

Page Click   page = page   selector = "#save"
Delay        milliseconds = 500
Page Click   page = page   selector = "#confirm"

You want to wait…	milliseconds
Half a second	500
1 second	1000
5 seconds	5000
1 minute	60000

Common errors

Message	Cause and fix
Negative value	A value below -1 makes the activity fail, and -1 waits with no limit. If the time comes from a calculation, check with an If first that it is 0 or greater.
The value cannot be converted to a number	The expression returned a text that is not a number. Convert it with num(...).

Related activities

• Retry — retry an unstable action instead of waiting blindly.
• While — actively wait until a condition is met.