Thank you for joining us on the 2nd of February for our Product Vision and Roadmap Update session. The content is available on-demand below.
We ran 2 sessions to cater for our global audience. The content is the same, the only difference is the content of the Q&A
As a reminder, the best way for you to influence the product roadmap is to:
- Submit and/or upvote ideas: all ideas over 15 votes get reviewed by the product management team as part of a set process
- Join the Product Research Program: this is the best place for you to raise your hand and let us know a bit more about how you want to get involved
Blue Prism Enterprise
Q: Are there plans to make environment variables mutable during runtime? I.e. set an environment variable (EV) during one run for the next run to be able to make use of the updated EV?
A: There are currently no plans to make EV editable during runtime - if not already raised please create an
idea for this on the community ideas portal and this can be considered as a potential item for our future roadmap!
Q: Are these upgrades going to be in the form of a patch (that won't disrupt operations) or a complete release that will require downtime?
A: Our new tooling is designed to make upgrades easier. For our next generation platform there will be continuous updates, with minimal downtime.
Q: Are there plans to have a report generation manager that has dynamic columns and search criteria for audit purposes?
A: This functionality is not currently planned. Please raise this as an idea on the
ideas portal and we can reach out to engage on this!
Q: Do you have plans to allow instances where you can run a specified object on exception? This is opposed to manually needing to add in an object prior to each exception.
A: This isn’t currently on our roadmap but please raise this as an
idea.
Q: Will you be improving the environment variables screen in the systems tab?
A: For the browser-based UI all areas are up for improvement, including environment variables. We are planning a new UX for all areas.
Q: Do you have web-based dashboards showing digital worker status, performance, uptime etc ?
A: Browser-based dashboards are available within Blue Prism Hub, which is an optional add-on for Blue Prism 7. By way of an example, the browser-based Control Room, first made available in May 2021, includes
Digital Worker Health overviews
Q: Will the thick client Control Room still be available to use?
A: Yes – the existing thick client Control Room remains with Blue Prism v7. However, the next generation platform is cloud-based so Control will be delivered through a web-based interface, initially controlling Digital workers that sit behind your own firewalls, so your secure applications and data remain local to you.
Q: With v7.2, can we have the control room in the cloud and have the digital workers on-prem?
A: We already have a browser-based Control Room as part of the already-released Blue Prism v7. Our next generation platform uses cloud-native architecture to provide a cloud-based control room that will manage digital workers deployed and operating locally on your own infrastructure.
Q: When will v7.1.2 be available?
Q: Are there any plans for a simplified multi-component Blue Prism Hub architecture?
A: Our forthcoming Hub 5 release will introduce our containerized architecture. This should significantly ease deployment and configuration.
Q: Do you have any plans for a mobile app for Control Room to allow for greater agility and control when not in front of a computer?
Q: Do you have plans to support programming languages such as Python?
A: We aren't planning currently to extend our language support to allow developers to create code stages that use Python. In our customer and partner interactions so far, there have been no use cases where code written in Python to achieve an objective cannot also be achieved in C#/VB without much more difficulty. As Python is still not a common language used in most development teams, we are yet to form a valid business case for this enhancement.
Q: Will you support “dark mode” in the future?
A: Yes, this is being considered for our web-based Design Studio, which is part of our next generation platform.
Q: With all the new features for Application Modeller, Smart Vision, Design Studio in the Cloud, do these new features require v7 of Blue Prism?
A: The new application modeller (equipped with smart vision) will be offered in v7 only, and is currently scoped to be delivered as part of Blue Prism v7.3 release. The web-based design studio will be part of our next-generation platform.
Application Modeller
Q: Will the new version of Application Modeller be available on-prem or cloud?
A: Both! The smart vision capability may have the computer vision and machine learning service hosted on our servers. We are working to enable more flexible configurations, namely, a customer-hosted cloud service.
Q: Can you take a screenshot in the Application Modeller of the item so you can easily see what’s in the module?
A: Smart vision (AI Surface Automation) capability within the new Application Modeller will store screenshots to aid backtracking previously spied applications. Not all spy modes will support this currently, but in the future, we are looking to enable this feature.
Design Studio
Q: Will the new Design Studio be available on-prem and cloud?
A: The new browser-based Design Studio is aligned to our next generation offering – more info on this later this year. We will continue to make improvements to the on-prem Design Studio, though.
Q: So, can we transition from the Blue Prism desktop Design Studio to the browser-based Design studio?
A: Processes developed with the Blue Prism Enterprise will be compatible with the browser-based Design Studio, however as the two will diverge over time, processes developed in the browser-based Design Studio will likely not be backwards compatible for on-prem. So, you'll be fine going from on-prem to browser-based, however, you won't be able to take things back from browser-based to on-prem.
We will be providing migration tools to help customers transition from our on-premise offering to the next generation Blue Prism platform.
Q: Is Design Studio independent from v7.1?
A: The next generation platform builds on our existing capabilities but delivered in a new way. The browser-based Design Studio is part of the new platform, so it won’t be available with your existing Blue Prism 7.1 installation.
Decipher and Document Automation
Q: Is Document Automation part of Decipher?
A: No, Document Automation is a separate offering.
Q: Are you looking to merge Decipher and Document Automation?
A: No, there are no concrete plans around merging the two offerings, at this time.
Q: Is Decipher still available?
A: Yes and it has its own release cadence.
Q: Does the Decipher v2.3 supports multi-threading?
A: Yes, it does.
Q: Are there plans to have an option to turn on/off class verification for different types of documents. Currently, we can only turn off/on at group rather than case level.
A: We are factoring this into the next release of Decipher.
Q: What are the differences between Decipher IDP and Document Automation?
A: We recommend you speak to one of our specialists so we can advise on the best solution for your needs. Generally speaking, however, Document automation is the better fit for customers processing structured documents – especially if they’re handwritten or have low-quality machine print. Document automation is also a cloud-only solution.
Decipher IDP is ideal for semi-structured documents, is available on-prem, and supports non-English languages.
Q: Can you process semi-structured documents with Decipher today?
A: Yes, and in multiple languages too.
Q: Will Document Automation support reading data from multiple tables within a document?
A: With the addition of the semi-structured document processing capability, it will be able to.
UX Builder
Q: Is UX builder available on-prem or cloud?
A: UX Builder is currently available on cloud.
Next generation platform
Q: Is this a Blue Prism Cloud offering?
A: Next generation is a new platform that will unlock a multitude of opportunities for us and our customers. The first release will be available later this year and will provide a Hybrid approach, where we provide the control in the cloud, working with locally deployed Digital Workers that “sit” on your own infrastructure, behind your own firewall.
Q: Will there be an option to save a previous version of a process/ object from the version history? Currently we can only view but not edit, or save as, a process.
A: Yes! This functionality will be a part of the Process Repository, which is an element of our next generation platform.
Q: Will the next generation platform support the option of a digital worker launching when an email arrives in an inbox?
A: Our next generation platform will incorporate orchestration based on events, such as emails landing in an inbox. However, this is not a capability that will be included on Day 1 and will be incorporated later. In the meantime, we suggest you also raise the request on the
ideas portal.
Q: Can business users view the new dashboards and create their own views?
A: Yes; this will be part of the next generation platform as we iterate over time. If there are key metrics and KPIs you’d like us to surface to the business user, let us know by raising an idea on the
ideas portal.
Q: Is the next generation platform Blue Prism v7.3 or another version?
A: The next generation platform is beyond v7 and will be delivered in a brand new, cloud-native, way. We’ll continue to support our customers and provide updates to v7 for the foreseeable future but we’d recommend you migrate to the new platform and benefit from the added value such as ease of updates.
Director
Q: Will Director solve current issues of processes that take too long to run - overruling other scheduled processes? For instance, if a process takes longer than expected to run, and another process was scheduled to run after, that process will no longer run (instead of ideally being postponed)
A: With Director, digital workers will work on the most important things, based on the priority and SLA of the work. With the initial release of Director (expected H1 2023), the digital workers pull in work (rather than be pushed to the workers). A future Director release will incorporate scheduled / timing work too. This removes the existing challenge of scheduling all workers without knowing how long things will take to run.
AI Surface Automation
Q: Is this available on-prem or cloud?
A: Smart Vision, our AI surface automation capability, is currently a hybrid solution - meaning that you have the front-facing editor installed locally and communication with our AI services is Cloud-based. We are looking to make this configuration as flexible as we can so that you can have a private cloud option, but at this time, we have a Blue Prism hosted server for these services.
We are currently scoping the addition of AI surface automation for Blue Prism v7.3 which is slated for release in the 2nd half of 2023.
Desktop
Q: Would desktop digital workers be used as a hybrid RPA and RDA solution?
A: With the forthcoming Blue Prism v7.2 release, a desktop digital worker (DW), can be deployed into the same environment as Enterprise workers and monitored from Control Center - no additional infrastructure is required. A hybrid DW is part of our next-generation platform, future roadmap updates will clarify our plans around hybrid Desktop DWs.
Integrations
Q: With the likes of Salesforce, and it's ability to be so heavily customised, how reusable do you see these integrations?
A: We are planning to expose out-of-the-box integrations that connect to the common APIs of these service providers (i.e. Salesforce Connect, Streaming API, etc.). Longer term, we are looking at incorporating more robust "iPaas" functionality, which would provide you with the capability for defining, testing, publishing, and consuming APIs that fit your specific use cases.
Q: Are there any plans to make Blue Prism products integrable with GIT as part of source control and Ci/CD pipelines?
A: Process Repository is our first step to build a digital thread of all automations artifacts end-to-end which paves the way for GIT integrations in the future.
Q: Will you support Kubernetes in the future?
A: Our current focus is on delivering Hub 5 in a containerized Kubernetes architecture. Our next generation platform is cloud-first, with the initial release supporting hybrid environments. Watch out for future roadmap updates on our plans around Blue Prism Enterprise.
Chorus
Q: Is there a trial version of Chorus?
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