Application Model Renaming Enhancement

[JarrickVan_Camp]

Being a developer using BluePrism, sometimes you just expect certain functionalities to be there. One of those is a renaming functionality that impacts all references to the component to be renamed. (Like in Eclipse for Java: refactor > rename ) Current situation: When renaming a button, or any component from an application for that matter, you have to search for broken references, since BluePrism does not update all existing references to the button. Therefore it can be a dangerous task to apply a naming convention when someone did not follow one, or if the team creating BluePrism objects did not yet decide upon one. My question to BluePrism would be if it is possible to have this included in future versions. It would make renaming and applying naming conventions a much less dangerous task, especially when processes are already running in production... Note that I'm specifically requesting this for Application Models. Kind regards, Jarrick Van Camp

[John__Carter]

Hi Jarrick - application modeller elements are referenced by an ID, not by name, and if you rename an element the references are not broken. References to data items and object pages however are broken when you rename.Here is a trick when you need to rename something with many references - export the diagram as an xml file, edit the file, then re-import. If you don't like the changes, go to process history, compare the current and previous versions, export the previous version and re-import it.

[SimenAakhus]

Good trick John, but as Blue Prism progresses, this sould be standard functionality I think. Simen

[JarrickVan_Camp]

Hi John, Above question was asked about a year and a half ago and in the meantime we still struggle with renaming / refactoring. When changing a name of any of the objects, we still have to look for all the references and then even above proposed solution feels as if I'm living in the 90's back again. Is there any update on this expected in the near future? To be honest, when changing a name of a variable, there is the same issue.. Calculation stages are not impacted by the change and will try to reference the old variable name. Same thing for objects in general... I think this is basic functionality and ease of use that should be enhanced. Many times customers will have changing requirements for naming conventions and we need to adapt without having to go through a process of days to just apply new naming conventions..   Thanks.

[JarrickVan_Camp]

Edit: I just found a recent answer of yours that contradicts what you have been suggesting to me in the past:   Blue Prism XML is not a development language and is not intended to be edited directly. Even if the XML was nicely formatted, there is no way that editing the XML of a large, complex production process would be better than using the diagram, regardless of any prior programming experience.

[Denis__Dennehy]

Johns quoted answer does not contradict his previous answer if you read that thread in full, you have simply quoted him out of context. I do not understand why you are renaming data items and objects so often to cause the issue you have reported above - that is not something other clients seem to be doing or reporting to us.    Maybe you could describe the use cases in your development methodology where you need to go and rename existing objects that are referenced by multiple items?  

[JarrickVan_Camp]

Hi Denis, Thank you for your reply. When you mention that I took the quote out of context, I am a little surprised. The topic, which I did read in full, concluded that whatever manipulations you want to perform on a Blue Prism process or object, has to be done in Blue Prism. I think I got that point very well from the topic, by reading it in full, even though I must admit that the question of that topic is not related to mine in any way, the conclusion stays very much the same.   As for the reason why I am renaming this many data items: new consultants don't always follow the development guidelines and thereby naming conventions. The lead developer has to rename everything manually in that case. Another, use case for this: when you have to use queries or .NET code, you will discover that spaces and special characters are not allowed, or at least will make it much harder for you and thereby increase development time. New consultants, or even intermediary consultants don't know that, if they have never worked with these scenario's. As for the reason I am pushing for this functionality: when you migrate the solution to the QA/UAT/... environment, you will discover that there are still some data items that you forgot to rename in all places. You will break the build or in case you changed the name of a process or object, even worse: you will break multiple builds.   The developers, especially lead developers, would gain a lot from having this functionality and to be honest, it doesn't seem like this is a complex functionality to add.   Thanks for your understanding.  

[RobinBerggren]

Yeah iIagree, BP should be able to handle such basic tasks as renaming in bulk or renaming an item reflected throughout the process. As an answer to Denis why this issue haven't been raised more often among us, as an RPA Developer in BP i simply stumble upon other problems in a huge variety of greater importance to the edge of totally breaking straight out software-bugs in BP. That's why at least I haven't raised my voice regarding this absence of feature.