Windows can run applications in a special mode called "Elevated". This is part of the Windows User Account Control (UAC) and enables users to do most of their work with their standard permissions to reduce the impact of possible malware, but then can be "elevated" on demand in certain situations if needed.
Since ServiceNow Robotic Process Automation (RPA) interacts with a user's desktop, this feature can impact the ability of the tool (and any automated bot processes) to work with applications if those apps are running as elevated and the RPA Studio (or the bot) are not.
Working with Elevated applications in RPA
By default the RPA Studio, and the vast majority of apps which you interact with, run in non-elevated (standard) mode. Generally you won't experience issues, but some applications (especially older ones) are configured to run in elevated mode by default for compatibility reasons and it might not be clear that this is the case in day-to-day usage.
Unable to select elements of an application
When this happens your non-elevated RPA Studio application cannot access the elements of the application which is running elevated. When you try to select the application it's as if it doesn't exist. You will go to Windows Connector, select a running app, click "Add Element" and then the selector just won't let you choose anything from that app.
You won't be able to take images snapshots either.
As you can see in the following image, with the Elevated instance on the left the add element selector cannot highlight the "Format" menu item, while the Non-Elevated instance on the right it is easily able to select the Format menu item and identify it as such.
Show running elevated apps from the Task Manager
To debug this and to verify the situation the first thing to do is to start your application and then go to the windows Task Manager. Go to the "Details" tab and right-click on the "Name" header and choose "Select Columns".
Find "Elevated" and add it to the list.
Now find your running application and verify if Elevated = Yes. If so you will need to run your RPA in elevated while working with this application.
Some organizations manage this centrally using Windows policies so that certain apps are whitelisted to always run elevated.
Start RPA Studio in Elevated Mode
Again--this is not ideal from a security perspective. Talk to your Windows and security staff to ensure that you understand the configuration of the RPA Studio, the RPA Bots and the application which you are trying to interact with.
Find the UTL.RPA.HOST.exe from your RPA Studio installation (usually in C:\Program Files\ServiceNow\RPA Desktop Design Studio).
Right click on the exe and choose "Run as Administrator". You may have to reconfigure your defaults such as the instance to connect to. You should now be able to use RPA to interact with other elevated apps.
If you wish to have two versions of the application, one which runs normally and one that always runs as elevated you may copy the exe (e.g. "UTL.RPA.HOST.ELEV.exe"). Then go to file Properties > Compatibility > and select "Run this program as an administrator". You may then add a shortcut to this file and it will default to elevated mode as well.
