Hi,
So i am working on automating some reporting from clarity and want to avoid having to deal with the UI at all. Before knowing about the soap calls, i was using a URL technique i found playing around with the network activity monitor. What i found was when i download a portlet, i was calling the same URl each time i download the portlet. if you want to see what i am talking about, press f12, download a portlet and then copy the URL from the app?action... named line. This is the URL i am using to automate downloading the reports. The good thing about this is that i can download any portlet with this method without having to deal with any objects or queries that i have to deal with when using the soap calls. I get the data exactly as expected in the process. The draw backs are that i have to be logged in and on the page of the portlet before putting the URL in inorder for it to work.
Heres my questions:
1. Does anyone know how reliable this method is? I was not able to get any confirmation from anyone so far as to how this URL would change or be affected to behave in irregular ways (Main concern as an automation guy)
2. Is there better ways to try to get the csv files faster and reliably? Currently i have a bot going in to clarity, navigating to the page of the portlet and downloading via the URL and it hasnt changed in a long while, but i am concerned of the longevity of my process.
a. I am working on creating excel files that make soap calls and populate tables with the data, but this is slow since the macro i made times out frequently.
Thanks,
Malay