Automation in Citrix

Hi Team,

At present we are using UI Path in our Citrix production environment and it has been nearly a year. we are severely suffering from errors like (selector not found, object ref not set , desktop disconnected on exception ).

We are mostly concern about (selector not found, object ref not set , desktop disconnected on exception ). Development team claims they are following your best practices and we are still not sure why we are still having this problems.

As per our current stats robot has 60 to 70 % failure ratio.

Robot daily processes approx 133 cases and out of which approx 80 are failures.

So you can imagine the impact in terms of productivity. we are not worried about how much time robot takes to process a case. our worry is why robot is not able to perform the set of recorded activities. why is it so difficult for robot to process the case ?

Now we are planning to upgrade and just wanted to understand few points.

  1. Is Citrix is a good choice for us/ anyone ?
  2. Do we any options apart from Citrix ?

Bottom line => we want error free production environment. we do have your resources in our organization but still we are helpless !!


Hi @AshishP ,

Can you please upload the workflow file here where we can validate it and advise you over the issue?
It generally happens when there is dynamic selectors not accounted in code, design issues, Connection failure.
Also, please let us know the current version you are using.

Thanks & Regards,

Vikas Jain has all the details you need. he is fully aware of this situation.

we are using UI Path version 8.1.5870.32892.

I will be happy to have screen share session. if you wish.

I am also aware of UI Path known issue and I am fine with it. UI Path has already given us the assurance during next upgrade known issues will be gone.

We are mostly concern about (selector not found, object ref not set , desktop disconnected on exception ). we need to know the real cause.

  1. Is UI path not able to handle Citrix environment ?
  2. Is it a coding issue where things works sometimes and sometimes does not work ?
  3. what if our organization pay your team to code for us. Do you guarantee your code will work in our environment and keeping error ratio max 5 to 7%

Let me know your thoughts.


What is strange is

  1. The error is selector not found
  2. You’re using Citrix which has selectors only for top-level window - it’s not selector based

Citrix is generally more difficult than a normal automation, but “selector not found” is not a inside Citrix error.

For desktop disconnection, if you’re using RDP check on the forum for the keep session alive on minimize. Most probably you’re using individual robots. Please note that if you’ll be using Orchestrator and start the process from the server we’ll be able to monitor and keep the session alive.

You’ll need to give us

  • workflows
  • logs
  • errors list
    If those can not be publicly shared then provide them via the support channel.

To answer your questions:

  1. Yes, UiPath can handle Citrix. Depending on your use case it may be very easy or very difficult (eg: scraping data out of scrollable tables). Of corse Citrix is more difficult.
  2. Most probably it is a workflow coding issue. Of course there are chances to have a bug (like OCR in Loop). We strongly advise you to update.
  3. No. We are fully stretched on people :). Have your people been trained in UiPath? If not, direct them towards the academy, at least.

I will check with my seniors on the workflow sharing part, if they are okey with it then we will share code and logs via support channel.

Thnx for the quick come back.


Citrix is more difficult than normal automation. But still doable. Of course, if you have the option to install UiPath directly on the Citrix Server will be better.

Statistically is a problem with how you are developing the workflow. It may be an issue with UiPath.

You are already aware of this situation and you have seen their coding pattern. what are your thoughts on this case in terms of coding ?

If you want the entire code and logs again then please let me know.

we really want to avoid (selector not found, object ref not set ) situation because its massively hampering the robots productivity.

@Badita :

Yes, we are gonna upgrade to your latest version and I would recommend business to avoid Citrix environment.

Again, I can not be 100% sure but statistically these two are workflow programming errors.

I have submitted a report and it is with the senior folks over recurring issues,however We need to logs and code in order to do a through investigation and advise you over automation approach, coding patterns, logical designing etc.


Thnx…i will arrange code and logs.

Hi @AshishP,

Just to give you an opinion from someone outside of UiPath…

No, actually it isn’t a good choice. But it’s a necessity in some cases and is doable. It will (almost) never be as reliable as having the robot on the same machine as the applications.

Main thing to remember when designing a Citrix automation is to not assume something will work - always check if a value has been found, was it in correct format etc. There’s a lot of things that could interfere, since in essence you’re reading images that could get overlapped by something unexpected at any point (or not load completely, or refresh at a weird rate etc.).

Your error types (aside of desktop disconnected) seem to come from an optimistic execution path, where things are expected to be there, but aren’t, and it’s not handled correctly.
If you have someone experienced in execution path analysis or a good software tester, even if he’s not on your RPA team, go through the code with him/her and let the doubts fly in. You might be surprised how many scenarios there might be that you didn’t think of.
This doesn’t mean you need to cover all of them - sometimes an execution should just fail. In that case remember to have compensation flows to revert the system/application to a known state where you can continue, even if it means closing everything (especially since you’re not concerned with execution time that much).

Personally I wholeheartedly hate working with Citrix, but still have to admit that UiPath software does a very good job at it. It’s still not painless, but with OCR-based automation it will never be.

Good luck in fixing your workflows and maybe you could even share some lessons learned in the future as well :slight_smile:



@andrzej.kniola : thnx for the feedback even we hate Citrix :wink:

we will recommend business for an UiPath Upgrade & avoiding Citrix environment.

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