Blue Prism latest versions and Backward Compatibility

[GaneshSanthanam]

Blue Prism Backward Compatibility

Hi
We are looking to upgrade from our current 6.4 to 6.5.1 (or 6.6.1).
I wanted to seek this forum's help with two points:
(1) Has anyone done such migration? If yes, then which version did you choose to go with?
(2) Are both 6.5.1 and 6.6.1 backward compatible? Or, did you have to change your current automations to make it compatible?
(3) What has been your experience with 6.5.1 or 6.6.1?
(4) Is there full backward compatibility?
In one of the forum postings I read that "there may be some subtle changes, handling of queue retries logic on session end, which was changed in 6.5 and reverted in 6.5.1 I think.."
https://community.blueprism.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=253&MessageKey=272399f5-1f70-4ce8-a7e6-d743b1f09053&CommunityKey=efee3494-8a01-4798-9b11-4370e0257314&tab=dig...
In another post I read "BP 6.6 and above have changed the way XMLs are stored".
https://community.blueprism.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=301&MessageKey=6ce0262a-e667-406e-a972-3195741e87ee&CommunityKey=fa047dc0-20a4-4608-af34-ae6578160b33&tab=dig...

I will appreciate if folks here share their experiences and provide some answers to the above.

Thanks
Ganesh

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Ganesh
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[wleung]

Hello Ganesh,

Hope this finds your well. Let me help answer one of the general question in your post.

(2)In general, Blue Prism will be backwards compatible. By that I mean Blue Prism Processes and VBOs created in an earlier version (6.5.1) of Blue Prism should work on newer (6.6.1) Blue Prism environments. However, if you are considering an upgrade, we would still highly recommend (as general upgrade best practice) to run a representative set of regression tests. This is because, while Blue Prism functions are almost always compatible and supported in new versions, there could be dependency changes that may require modification of the Processes and configurations. For example, newer versions of Blue Prism may come with updated Utility VBOs or external dependent libraries such as Tesseract. These changes that are outside of the Blue Prism process automation can still cause change in the behavior when that process is executed. Other than that or just outright defects, there will be backwards compatibility.

One more point about enhanced utility VBOs. It is best practice when building Blue Prism releases to include all dependent VBOs for this reason. It is possible for Utility VBOs to be updated between releases (especially if the version difference is large) so in order to make sure a Process is self-contained and much more likely to run on import, it is recommended all dependencies are included as part of a business process release.

Hope this answers some of your questions/concerns


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Wing Ling Leung
Senior Product Consultant
Blue Prism Professional Services
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[wleung]

Please ignore this reply. Somehow posted.

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Wing Ling Leung
Senior Product Consultant
Blue Prism Professional Services
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