topic RE: Co-working on process development in Product Forum

Co-working on process development

TomasKochan1 — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 07:18:00 GMT

Hello, do you have any tips on how to best work in team on BP process? At the same time, BP Process / Object is locked by 1 person for editing only. My first thought is to have a temporary process for each co-worker from which they paste stages onto master process. Or is Github - merging conflicts usable? I'm looking for "out-of-the-box" way without installing sotfware or setting another server.

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Tomas Kochan
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RE: Co-working on process development

BohyonHwang — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 02:26:00 GMT

How about making groups for master and branches. Making a group matches the action "make git branch" command. And saving Blue Prism processes/objects may be corresponds to "git commit" command. Finally coping an object from branch to master will become the same as "git merge" command.

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Bohyon Hwang
Director
블루프리즘
Seoul
+82262033950
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RE: Co-working on process development

acgreenwood14 — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:01:00 GMT

Hi,

What you mentioned around having temporary processes and objects and pasting into a master is typically how I've always done it in the past, sticking with the 'out of the box' approach.

If you are going to build like this frequently, I'd recommend breaking the objects required for the build down (potentially per application if there are multiple) and assigning different team members an application each. If the applications don't break down as a 1-to-1 per team member or the amount of steps to build in each application required is not evenly split (very much a perfect world scenario!). I'd split the applications down further into sections (screens for example) and the functionality assigned to those (providing you are working from the basis of an object-per-screen methodology) and assign team members to each. This can make the need for temporary objects and pasting into a master lessen for portions of a build or the entirety. With a process it is obviously a little more difficult and we try to tend to keep most of the actual process build primarily with one person to negate this, but if not possible or it is a very big process. I'd take the same approach with the process e.g. splitting it down into multiple key sections covering the key steps in the process and have people independently work on each before having someone bring it all together in the master process.

Providing you haven't ran any of these temporary processes or objects from control room it should then be fairly straightforward to delete them after they have served their purpose. If you have any issues deleting them, search the community for the error you are presented with and you should find a solution as I imagine it's a fairly common thing, if not reply here and I can assist. 🙂

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Adam Greenwood
Automation Development Team Lead
Blue Prism
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RE: Co-working on process development

PvD_SE — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 07:38:00 GMT

Hi Adam,

This issue, including Bohyon's suggestion, has passed this forum including Ideation before. Reading between the lines of your answer, I presume that any plans for a GIT-like solution for development in Studio are not under consideration in the foreseeable future?

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Happy coding!
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Paul
Sweden
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RE: Co-working on process development

TomasKochan1 — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 08:58:00 GMT

Thank you all for your suggestions!
I'm still open to Github way. My initial thought was that each developer runs a batch file that exports BP process into file (.bpobject), converts it to .xml and pushes to Github (no Jenkins or 3rd party software). Althought mark-up "shows everything", main down-side I see with it is inability to test/debug process in a text editor. Thus if someone has a better way dealing with single process in team and is willing to share it, I'll be glad to hear it.

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Tomas Kochan
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