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Blue Prism 6.9 Issues

david.l.morris
Level 15
Hi Everyone,

Blue Prism 6.9 had a lot of fixes and enhancements that I was excited about. However, after testing some of these, it's a bit underwhelming and I'd like to see if anyone else has the same concerns as well as if there are workarounds for some of these issues.

1. Browser automation is much slower now when using the Path attribute. Yes, I know the concerns about using the Path attribute, but I sometimes use Get Path and dynamically manipulate the Path attribute to iterate over a webpage when otherwise Blue Prism is too slow to interact with it. I've had a handful of other qualified developers confirm on the same websites that this is the only viable solution. My question is why is it slow suddenly and is there some other combination of attributes that should make it faster? (Match Index does not improve the speed in this case)

2. Blue Prism browser automation in 6.9 is still slow. Blue Prism does a lot of things well, but finding attributes quickly in a web page is not one of them. Other automation tools do not have this issue. I've tested this myself. One of the reasons it is slow is that Navigate, Read, and Write stages do not have implicit wait times to allow for elements to appear, so we have to use Conditional Wait stages to wait for an element to appear. But what do you do when it takes Blue Prism 10, 20, 30 seconds to find an element? If you use a Wait stage and then a Read stage, you're waiting double the time when a Read stage, for example, could have a condition inside of it to wait for an element to appear and thus be more efficient. Anyway, this isn't an issue in particular with 6.9, but I feel like it deserves a mention in case I've been using Blue Prism wrong these past few years. Also, we need Match Reverse in Chrome/Firefox/Edge.

3. The Hover action was one of the biggest reasons I was excited about BP 6.9, but upon testing it I found that it is not actually Hovering the mouse cursor. Instead, it is activating the element's Hover trigger, which is not the same thing at all. This addition is certainly a good thing, and I've confirmed it does work in some cases. I have yet to implement it in a full-speed, back-office automation and haven't tried it in a ton of situations yet. But is there really still not a way to simply move the cursor to a particular element without clicking on it? Again, this is a thing in other automation tools, and Blue Prism needs it too.

4. The new feature involving the Tracking ID sounds cool, but in practice it doesn't appear to be thought out fully. There are two issues I've already come across and I expect that there are more. First, the Attach action of a Navigate stage does not output the Tracking ID, which means we can only use this feature if we newly launch the browser session. Maybe this is required based on how it works, such as Blue Prism may need to set something in the session when creating. I've no idea, but without the ability to Attach to a browser and then identify it by the Tracking ID, I am hesitant to use the feature at all. Second, the Tracking ID feature has broken Detach stages. Some automations I've seen do have detach/attach in them, and this is broken immediately in 6.9. I've tested this in two separate environments. If you don't use a Tracking ID, Detach just doesn't work at all which is a code breaking change in Blue Prism that obviously has a workaround but it involves no longer using the detach stage at all as well as having to edit who knows how many objects.

5. This is a small thing but noteworthy, in my opinion. The Release Notes of 6.9 say that Document Loaded was added to Wait stages, but actually Parent Document Loaded was added instead. Document Loaded is not available in 6.9. Those are two different things available in IE automation, and personally I'd like to see Document Loaded added to Chrome/Firefox/Edge automation as well.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to respond and tell me I'm wrong. My goal is to be told "No, Dave, you're dumb. Here's the right way to do that" and then I can cry in my pillow but be excited that the feature actually does work as intended or w/e. 😃

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company
32 REPLIES 32

Thanks, Bruce!

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company

Awesome! Also, I would provide this kind of information more if I had an easy route to provide it through. Is the forum a fine place for this? I only have access to the ticketing system sometimes, depending on what project I'm associated with at the time and such.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company

Hi Dave,

You are correct we should get a platform or forum our inputs through testing. Now if you arise this using support ticket.
They will tell this is how it will behave, write in idea section.


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Amlan Sahoo
RPA Consultant
Equinix
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Regards,
Amlan Sahoo

MateuszBartczak
Level 4
I have also noticed 2 additional problems:
  1. I'm not able to Evaluate Expression on Collection Field (e.g in Calc Stage) although Coll field is defined properly (Object reference not set to an instance of the object error) but running through the stages is working fine. As the aftermath - it's quite hard to program embedded functions.
  2. After moving to 6.9 from 6.6 my 3 web-based applications objects stopped working. I noticed that app modeller which is not launching the application but is attaching to existing browser by using the wildcard '*'  is not able to see web page fields anymore, despite it state that bp is attached correctly. I realized that it started to working back when I determine the page URL in AppModeller wizard, but previously it was working without it. Pretty annoying when you are having an universal object for JavaScript fragment invocation.
Could you please check this issue on your side?

Thank you!

Edit: Just saw that both of this issues are already included in:
https://portal.blueprism.com/customer-support/support-center#/path/Upgrade-Expansion/Upgrade/1535133752/What-are-the-known-issues-in-Blue-Prism-Version-6-9.htm

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Mateusz Bartczak
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Hi Blue Prism Team,

Please fix Blue prism Browser extensions related quickly. Now we all are dependent on Chrome/ Edge browser. Because with IE we need to rework for everything.
In 6.9 there are bunch of issues with new browser extension which does not allow us to upgrade BP. Also one of the concern why for browser extension we need select Fixed port if you are providing a way around not to select the same.
There are bunch of issues related browser extension which is due to Fixed port. If blue prism provides automation for chrome then it should be as normal as IE browser. WIthout fixed port even if we are launching an URL then that URL has some extra IP.
These small issues are so frustrating sometimes. Why can't these be fixed to provide a complete solution for automation.

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Amlan Sahoo
RPA Consultant
Equinix
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Regards,
Amlan Sahoo

Hello Dave,

Following some investigations internally on the back of your original post we have identified an issue impacting the performance of the Blue Prism browser extension in version 6.9 which we believe to be responsible for the degradation seen in your first point. This has now been updated as "Confirmed" on the list of Blue Prism 6.9 known issues and we have raised BP-1598 in the backlog to rectify this. We are currently working with a group of affected customers to evaluate a potential fix for this and, should this prove to resolve the performance issue, we'll be looking to release a new version of the browser extension to the relevant stores.

Point 2 in your post is an interesting one - I think it would be beneficial if this could be raised on the ideas section of the Community (if it hasn't been already) so we can gauge interest from the user base and consider adding this to the roadmap for a future version.

We're taking a look at point 3 from your original post and initial indications that we may be able to make changes in future versions to make the hover action more robust. I don't have more information at this time, but I'd recommend looking out for more "hover" enhancements in the release notes of upcoming versions.

The issue described in point 4 in which the addition of "TrackingID" has caused issues with Navigate stages will shortly also be added to the Blue Prism 6.9 known issues article and we'll look to resolve this in the next version as well.

Our release notes have been updated in light of point #5 to correctly indicate that it's "Parent Document Loaded" that has been added to Blue Prism 6.9 and not "Document Loaded". On your point about needed both functions I would be really interested in discussing this with you, as I'd like to understand the use case in which "Parent Document Loaded" isn't applicable in more detail. I'll drop you a message about this directly if that's okay.


I hope this helps - once again, thanks for your detailed post!

Rob​

Any reference to future developments or releases is provided for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY and should not be construed as binding commitment. The timing, capability, license terms and cost of any product, feature, functionality, capability, development or release shall be decided at Blue Prism's sole discretion and is subject to change.

Please do not rely on this information in making any purchase decision.

Any feature, functionality, product or service described may or may not require a fee separate from other Blue Prism fees.



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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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Robert Nicklin Product Manager Blue Prism Warrington, England

Hello Mateusz,

The issue mentioned in your first point is listed on the Blue Prism 6.9 Known Issues list under the title "Error when evaluating stages referencing collections whilst debugging" - we have raised BP-1497 to address this in an upcoming version.

Though the description is not quite the same as I have seen before, I believe this may be a symptom of another known issue that has already been listed under the title of "Chrome, Edge and Firefox extensions do not establish a connection to Blue Prism when using ephemeral ports if a start URL is not specified". If my suspicion is correct and this is the same issue, we have raised BP-1408 to resolve this.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Rob

Any reference to future developments or releases is provided for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY and should not be construed as binding commitment. The timing, capability, license terms and cost of any product, feature, functionality, capability, development or release shall be decided at Blue Prism's sole discretion and is subject to change.

Please do not rely on this information in making any purchase decision.

Any feature, functionality, product or service described may or may not require a fee separate from other Blue Prism fees.



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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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Robert Nicklin Product Manager Blue Prism Warrington, England

Hello Robert,

Thanks for the update and great to hear there will be a new version of the Blue Prism 6.9 Browser Extension (we unfortunately also have seen a performance drop in our Edge Chrome automations).

Would you be able to provide us with an indication on when to expect the new version of the browser extension to be released. Furthermore will this new version be compatible with V6.9 of Blue Prism or will a version upgrade be required?

Thanks in advance!

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Arthur Philippa
RPA Developer
Port of Rotterdam
Europe/Amsterdam
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Hello Arthur,

Sorry for the delay in my reply, I was off all of last week and am just catching up now.

We've completed our planned evaluation and regression testing and have published the new version of the Chrome extension to the store this morning. Users already on Blue Prism 6.9 should see the extension automatically update the next time that Chrome launches and is able to determine that a new version is available on the store - no update to the core Blue Prism platform is required for this to occur.

The new version of the extension is going through regression testing for Edge and Firefox and I would expect this to be published on the relevant stores mid-end of this week.

Regards,
Rob

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Robert Nicklin
Senior Product Owner
Blue Prism
Warrington, England
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Robert Nicklin Product Manager Blue Prism Warrington, England

Hi Rob,

I tested Chrome and it does look like the slowness issue is fixed. I have a couple of questions though.

Why wasn't the Chrome extension version increased (such as to 2.2.1)? If they are different versions, it seems like the version numbers ought to be different, even if all the documentation says 2.2.0.

Is there a way to subscribe to specific issues? I'd like to be able to receive communications about specific issues. If I'm in a holding pattern for something like this, I'd want to know the moment I can go test a new version or whatever.

Edit: We use Firefox and Chrome in the same automations, so I'll be watching for the Firefox update as well. I cannot proceed without it.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company