My agent works in the Agent Builder but not in the Web Console

Sometimes you will encounter an agent that works in the Agent Builder but returns errors while running in the Web Console. This occurs because both components run in different environments—the Agent Builder runs on your computer, while the Web Console runs on Mozenda's cloud servers.

Timing differences

Differences in network speeds or in hardware resources available to the agent can cause timing differences. This can be compensated for by letting your agent wait longer for pages to load or elements on the page to be found.
See Deal with content that loads after the page.

Add "wait up to" seconds

Sometimes an agent performs an action before the web page has time to load, or before some necessary content is loaded. This leads to the agent capturing incomplete data, or throwing errors. In the Agent Builder, you can set the action to wait longer for its elements to be found.
See Add "wait up to" seconds.

IP address and location

Your computer is located on your desk and is connected to the internet through your ISP, while Mozenda's harvesting servers are located in Mozenda's data center environment. This introduces two potential issues, both of which can be solved by using Mozenda's Premium Harvesting feature. See Premium Harvesting.

Geolocation

The servers that Mozenda uses to run an agent are located in the United States. If you are from a location outside the US and the target website changes its content based on location, this might cause issues for your agent. There are different ways you can fix this:

1. Geolocation
   If the agent's site loads differently in the country you are located in than it does in the United States, you may need to use the Premium Harvesting geolocation feature.
   See Premium Harvesting/Geolocation.

2. Site Preferences
   Some websites provide the option to manually select the location, which should be built into the agent when available. Other websites include the location in the URL, which you can modify using the Load New Page action.

3. Cookie Stores
   Some websites use the geolocation information as a cookie. Use the cookie store action to restore your website geolocation, session information and preferences.
   See Use cookes with Mozenda agents

IP blocking

Mozenda is commited to good web citizenship and has many controls in place to avoid abusive traffic. However, due to the way our agents function, Mozenda is sometimes targeted by tools intended to deter abusive web-crawling programs ("bad bots").

The Premium Harvesting feature solves this problem by routing traffic through thousands of different IPs to more closely match normal browsing patterns.
See Premium Harvesting/Geolocation.

Request blocking and sequences

When an agent runs in a sequence, Mozenda automatically adds Level 1 request blocking to make it run faster if you haven't already added some request blocking expressions. This causes websites to occasionally function differently than they do in the Agent Builder.

Avoid disruptive automatic request blocking when running an agent in a sequence by adding some request blocking expressions to your agent. See Use custom request blocking.

Screen size

Many websites display content differently depending on screen size. This can cause issues in agents, especially when the site changes the HTML structure in an effort to accommodate mobile devices and the website interprets Mozenda's harvester environment or the Agent Builder test environment as a mobile device.

To rule out this difference when troubleshooting:

In the Agent Builder:

1. Open an agent.
2. Select Test Agent.
3. Select the Tile browsers box.
4. Select DONE.

In the Web Console:

1. Select Agents > Agents.
2. Select the name of an agent.
3. Select
4. Select Harvesting.
5. Select Advanced.
6. Select the Maximize the browser windows during processing.