Match rules overview

Every time an application runs a new user interface, the underlying program renders the interface. To users, the interface appears the same because certain characteristics, such as the type and position of application interface elements (labels, buttons, lists), remain the same. However, from a technical perspective, the application interface elements are different for every instance of the application.

To automate an application, a developer must identify an application interface element across multiple application instances, just as a user would. Additionally, the developer must distinguish between unchanging or persistent data used to identify an element and the changing or transient data the automation should ignore.

Pega Robot Studio™ provides an advanced matching system that uniquely identifies application interface elements across multiple instances of an application using a set of rules that capture the necessary persistent data. Developers can customize matching behavior by adding, removing, or modifying these rules.

At runtime, as applications run and the targets within the applications display on and remove from the user interface, Pega Robot Studio dynamically applies the match rules for the controls you interrogated. If a target is not currently displaying, then the match rules for the target have failed.

When the target displays, Pega Robot Studio uses the properties of the target and compares them to the match rules associated with the corresponding control in Pega Robot Studio. At runtime, if the properties of the target satisfy the requirements of the control's match rules, the target matches, and the control is available for the project automations.

Since controls exist within a hierarchy, when a control fails to match, all associated child controls also fail to match. Pega Robot Studio applies the rules in the most efficient way so that the matching process is quick and runtime maintains the application performance.