I've been struggling to automate a vendor portal at work, and it's frustrating because every time they update their site, my automation breaks, forcing me to revert to manual clicking. I'm curious to know what web tasks others are still handling manually due to similar issues. Is there a specific process you've wanted to automate but just can't keep functioning? For me, it's expense report submissions that keep tripping me up.
5 Answers
I once had to manually enter usernames with mobile numbers on a telecom website. It was a tedious task with hundreds of entries, and my automation kept breaking due to the site timing out frequently. The site itself is slow and tricky, making it a one-off job in the end.
Honestly, I struggle with CI/CD processes too. I keep trying to set up automation for pushes, but they always seem to fail on me, forcing me to revert to manual pushes instead. It would be easier to just automate it, but I can’t seem to get my scripts right.
If you’re facing issues with web automation, try using your browser’s network tools to see if you can tap into hidden API requests instead of dealing with messy HTML. I once tried automating a large vendor's portal, but their behavioral analysis flagged me, making it impossible. Eventually, I had to give up.
I've used Selenium to fill out forms across multiple facilities, reducing a 30-minute task to just 5! But I faced the same dilemma with fields that were hard to find due to updates. It seems your situation could also benefit from Selenium, just be aware of those dependencies.
I deal with a terrible ticketing system that forces me to fill out a form with varying input names each time. I wrote an AutoHotkey script to help, but it broke whenever my browser updated. Automation helped a bit, but it often fails at the last minute, which is super annoying.
Sounds like your vendor has some anti-bot tracking set up. Automated processes can be quite a guessing game with those systems!