Gets data out of systems with no export button
One repeatable route from a screen you can only read to a clean, typed Excel sheet, used across four internal systems.
What was in the way
An internal operations team needs a list that the system holding it will not hand over. The screen shows one record at a time, the export is missing or returns a dump nobody can work with, and what they need is spread across a nested tree, a week-by-week scheduling view and detail popups.
So somebody opens the app and retypes it. That takes days, it is stale by the time it is finished, and it has to happen again next quarter.
How it was built
The output contract stays fixed: one typed Excel sheet, real column widths, one row per record even when the source screen packs several into a single entry. Where a documented API exists, the script pages through it and lets the server join the related record. Where none exists, a browser walks the app the way a user would.
These systems sit behind single sign-on with conditional access, so a freshly launched browser fails before it starts. Four scripts, one technique applied four times. Each is small enough to read in an afternoon and change a column.
How it works
The session is borrowed, not recreated
Each run copies the browser profile the user is already signed in with, token store included, into a temporary directory. Conditional access passes because it is the same signed-in state, and the script never touches a credential.
The walker learns the UI at runtime
Element ids change every session, so the tree walker clicks one icon, watches whether the row count grows, and learns from that which icons mean a category. A record counts as extracted only once the detail panel's title actually changes.
An interrupted run costs nothing
Rows are written and saved one at a time, keyed so a rerun recognises them. The next run picks up at the last exported date instead of walking the whole range again.