UI Discover

Zoan UI Discover is the tool that captures selectors pointing with the mouse, without typing anything. It’s the normal — and recommended — way to tell the bot which element to act on: you open the screen you want to automate, click on the element, and Zoan Automation generates a robust selector for you.

En BETA

UI Discover is a beta feature. It works well for the vast majority of cases; If you find an element that doesn’t capture quite well, you can adjust the selector by hand in the same panel.

When does it appear

Any activity that needs an element —Click, Fill Field, Get Text, Desktop…— has a parameter of type selector in its Properties panel. That parameter displays a Capture button (or the summary of the selector already captured, with the option to recapture).

Pressing it opens the Zoan UI Discover window. Depending on the activity, it works in one of two modes:

• Browser — for web pages (requires Chrome/Edge extension).
• Desktop — for Windows applications (built-in, nothing extra needed).

---

Browser mode

Step 0: Install the extension (one time)

In-browser capture works with a small extension that acts as a bridge between the page and the Designer. If it is not installed, the panel indicates it with “Extension not installed”. To install it:

1. Open chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions in Edge). The Open Extensions button in the panel does this for you.
2. Activate Developer Mode (switch on the top right).
3. Click Upload unpackaged.
4. Select the chrome-extension folder (included with the Designer installation).

When the extension is active and the Designer is open, the panel will show ● Extension connected in green.

The connection is local

The extension communicates with the Designer only on your machine (a local channel). It does not send anything to the internet: it only passes the element you indicate to the Designer.

Step 1: Capture the element

1. Open, in Chrome or Edge, the page you want to automate and leave it in the correct state (logged in, on the appropriate screen).
2. On the panel, press ⊙ Capture. The Designer is minimized and the browser comes to the front.
3. Move the mouse: the element under the cursor is highlighted. click on the one you want to capture.
4. Did you have the wrong screen? Press Escape to cancel.

The panel returns to the front displaying the result: a capture of the element, its attribute editor, the backing CSS and the JSON of the selector.

Step 2: Review and debug the selector

The attribute editor displays a card for each level of the selector:

• The • elemento card is the target.
• The • contexto cards are your ancestors (they give context to locate it without ambiguity).

En cada tarjeta puedes:

• Edit the value of an attribute (for example, changing a fixed text to a wildcard: Pedido 1024 → Pedido *).
• Remove an attribute with the × (fewer attributes = more robust).
• Add an attribute from the Available: Zoan Automation captures all the attributes of the element and offers you the ones that are not in use such as chips + id, + name, etc. One click adds them.

Below, the JSON — editable block shows the full selector. What you edit in the attributes is reflected in the JSON and vice versa; You don’t normally need to touch it, but it’s there for fine adjustments.

Step 3: validate

Press ⊙ Validate: the extension searches for the element on the real page and tells you how it found it, with a color:

• 🟢 Green — found through semantic means. Robust. It’s what you’re looking for.
• 🟠 Orange — found only by CSS. Fragile; The selector should be improved.
• 🟣 Purple — found only by XPath. Very fragile; recapture.
• 🔴 Red — not found. Check that the page is loaded and on the correct screen.

The meaning of each color and how to get green is detailed in Selectors › Resolution order.

Step 4: confirm

When you are satisfied, press ✓ Confirm. The selector is saved in the activity parameter and the window is closed. You can also ↺ Recapture (re-target) or Copy JSON/CSS to reuse it.

---

Anchors: spatial references

If the element has no unique attributes (a blank field next to a label), use an anchor: a nearby reference element that is identifiable.

In the panel, in the anchors section:

1. Press ⊕ Capture Anchor and click on the reference element (for example, the Last_Name label). You return to the panel without losing the main selector.
2. Choose the relationship (right_of, left_of, below, above, nearest) — for example, “target is to the right of the anchor.”
3. Adjust the maximum distance in pixels if necessary.

You can add multiple anchors; The bot uses them to filter between candidates when there are several similar elements.

---

Desktop mode

For Desktop activities, UI Discover uses a built-in screen switcher based on Windows UI Automation — no extension needed.

1. When capturing, a full screen overlay and a small bar appear at the top right.
2. Move the mouse over the application: the control under the cursor is highlighted (button, field, cell…).
3. click to capture it. Press Escape to cancel.
4. If you need to interact with the app without capturing (open a menu, switch tabs), press ⏸ Pause in the bar; ▶ Resume again when you want to continue pointing.

The result is edited the same as in browser mode (attributes controlType, automationId, name…). For controls without their own name, the panel suggests anchors from nearby labels: they appear as Add as anchor chips.

Aplicaciones Java

UI Discover also captures Desktop Java application controls (Swing/AWT) using the Java Access Bridge:

• When pointing to a Java app for the first time, Zoan Automation tries to activate the bridge automatically (the bar shows “Connecting Java…”).
• If the bridge has just been enabled, Java apps already open must be restarted for their controls to be discoverable.
• If not available, install a supported JDK and run jabswitch -enable once.

---

Tips

• Leave the screen ready before capturing: logged in and in the correct view. You capture what you see.
• Chase the green when validating; orange and purple warn that the selector will break soon.
• Simplify: remove excess attributes and change variable texts to wildcards.
• Capturing the item that the panel saves later helps you remember, at a glance, what each activity selects.

Next steps

• Selectors — understand what captures and how to make it robust.
• Browser and Desktop — the activities that use these selectors.