Rookie requesting assistance

[Doghouse]

Hello,

I was directed here from another forum after asking what application would be the best to use to automate my daily chore of loging into my computer at work.

This is my daily login procedure:

Open Microsoft Outlook, enter username and password (same as my network login un and pw)

Open Microsoft Office Communicator, enter un and pw (same as my network login un and pw)

Open 3 windows of a DOS based program enter un and pw specific to this application

Open Internet Explorer

Navigtate to site, enter system un and pw

Navigtate to site - sperate tab not a new window, enter system un and pw

Navigtate to site - sperate tab not a new window, enter site specific un and pw

Navigtate to site - sperate tab not a new window, enter site specific un and pw

Navigtate to site - sperate tab not a new window, enter system un and pw

Navigtate to site - sperate tab not a new window, no un or pw

Navigtate to site - sperate tab not a new window, no un or pw

Open 4 windows of a DOS based program enter un and pw specific to this application and run macro currently created for this application(or add macro incormation to script if that wound be easier) specific to each window

Open another window with Internet Explorer with site specific un and pw

All of the passwords are changed every 60-90 days, so I would like to store the un and pw information in an Excel spreadsheet stored on a flash drive.

Any direction you can provide is greatly appreciated!

[Doghouse]

I am currently working on breaking this down into smaller elements that do similar tasks. If you have suggestions on any part of this, your assistance is appreciated. The areas I am currently having the biggest difficulties with are pulling information from an external file and opening mutliple tabs in an IE window.

Thanks in advance.

[EnderWiggin]

I am currently working on breaking this down into smaller elements that do similar tasks. If you have suggestions on any part of this, your assistance is appreciated. The areas I am currently having the biggest difficulties with are pulling information from an external file and opening mutliple tabs in an IE window.

Thanks in advance.

I'm also new, but maybe the blind will lead the blind until someone else suggests something. I'm working off the assumption that what you're asking for is far too specific and complicated for anyone to just volunteer to write it for you. So you need to try to accomplish what you can as easily as you can. I think the pros would opt to connect the code to the various applications individually. But maybe you can rig something that would do a lot of this just by sending a set of keystrokes, and maybe the rest you could create hotkeys to manage.

I wouldn't store your username and password in excel, if I were making it, because it's more of an application to navigate than would be necessary if you kept them in notepad. Why not define your username and password variables and save them in the script itself, or if not the script, use notepad to save in a text file. Both are strings/constants. I don't remember exactly what you'd do to make it pretty and official but you could just have

$user='(TYPE YOUR NAME HERE)'

$pass='(TYPE YOUR PASS HERE)'

Then when the script needs either, you'd just enter the variable. Wouldn't be any harder to change than in excel.

The more I think about it, the less I think I'd set it all up as a script, especially given our lack of expertise. There's a great post here under example scripts, with step by step instructions and pre-written code for a hotkey system.

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=115805&st=0&p=808835&hl=firefox&fromsearch=1&#entry808835

I found I was able to get that running without any programming experience and am able to write mini-scripts and then assign them to hotkeys. You could still keep your username and password in one central variable form and link it to the scripts you write for each of your routine tasks. I'll bookmark your page. Let me know if you make any progress or look into the hotkey idea. If so, I will try to brainstorm with you. I think IE will require that we borrow code for launching pages in IE or at least use the UDF. But I'd like to learn to do that anyway (though I use firefox-- still it probably translates). Cheers

[enaiman]

Well - it looks definitely you can benefit from a script to automate this (never seen so many authentications needed ...)

What you need to do is:

- for everything not using IE

Start that application. (Be sure you know the title of the window)

Search to see if the window with that specific title exists.

Either ControlSend (if there are controls for un and pwd) either SendKeepActive the un and pwd.

- for IE

Open IE.

Navigate to first page.

Identify controls for un, pwd, and "submit" from html code (_IE functions)

Do required actions

No idea what is needed to open a new tab (you'll have to search the forum for that)

Navigate ...

.. rinse and repeat ...

Good luck, you'll need it.

[Doghouse]

Well - it looks definitely you can benefit from a script to automate this (never seen so many authentications needed ...)

Everyone in the building has the same complaint...too many keystrokes to start the day. If this sheds any light on all the passwords, I work for a phone company. Each application just 'has' to have it's own password. We've been whinning about this for years (and I'm sure the whinning predates my employment there).

EnderWiggin:

My initial thought was to include the un and pw information in the script. But, I could already hear our IT folks screaming in my ear about side stepping their security measures. Another reason for storing the un and pw information in a seperate file is the fact that we are forced to change all passwords every 60-90 days.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm looking forward to getting back to work so I can start working on this project! (I really need access for my work PC for some info)

[EnderWiggin]

Everyone in the building has the same complaint...too many keystrokes to start the day. If this sheds any light on all the passwords, I work for a phone company. Each application just 'has' to have it's own password. We've been whinning about this for years (and I'm sure the whinning predates my employment there).

EnderWiggin:

My initial thought was to include the un and pw information in the script. But, I could already hear our IT folks screaming in my ear about side stepping their security measures. Another reason for storing the un and pw information in a seperate file is the fact that we are forced to change all passwords every 60-90 days.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm looking forward to getting back to work so I can start working on this project! (I really need access for my work PC for some info)

The nice thing about a text file, then, would be the ease of access. Code is stored in .au3 file, which is just text with a different label, or so it seems. Maybe ultimately an excel file isn't much harder to access. But it's less obvious to a beginner, like you and me. And you certainly wouldn't want your code to have to open excel, open the file, check the file and input into the code. I was thinking you'd have a simple text file, made in notepad. myinfo.txt. It looks like they usually define constants with Const_ as a prefix before the variable but this is just a convention. So you could simply have the lines above in that text and have your code refer to them.

HOWEVER, I found something new last night that might interest you. In ScIte-- the editor for scripts-- they have something called, "AU3 RECORDER." If you're not interested in learning to take broader advantage of autoit, but just want to deal with this annoying routine, you might just run this recorder while going through your login tedium. I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up with something pretty functional all at once. If you post the result here, I will try to make sense of it with you. (blind helping blind again, of course).

Be sure when you post, not to include any references to your UN and PW since your IT dept would not appreciate it.

You could substitute the variables instead, for example

I used to work for a similar bureaucracy before having to quit for health reasons. I can certainly empathize with both the annoying routines and the obstacles to changing them. Hope we can figure out something together.