Creating an object from xml rather than studio

[SahilRaina]

I am looking for a way to create objects/process by altering some xml template (since these are stored as xml files) without having to open studio.
It's an ambitious attempt towards automating the development itself.

Has anyone had any luck with this in past, or someone who can guide me in the right direction.
Under the hood, creating an object should require 2 things (I maybe wrong here)

1. Inserting the data in some Tables in DB.
2. Generating XML config for the Object/Process which again maybe inserted to some Table.

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Sahil Raina
RPA Engineer
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[ewilson]

You can learn the XML schema of BP processes and objects by simply reviewing a few exported processes/objects. Once you understand the schema it's pretty straightforward to develop your own library to generate new processes/objects from code.

From there, you can use command line calls to AutomateC.Exec to import your new processes/objects in to the database. I would NOT recommend that try inserting them into the database manually.

Having said this, please be aware that the XML schema periodically changes as new features are added or optimizations are made.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Partner Integrations for Digital Exchange
Blue Prism
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[ParasPabari]

I have not tried, but logically seems possible. I remember during one of the demo, RPA consultant presented their product which was doing something similar. They mentioned idea was just to give head start in development but once initial skeleton is created you will need to go to studio to modify or input the logic.

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Paras Pabari
Financial Officer
International Monetary Fund
America/New_York
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[david.l.morris · Accepted solution]

I think it'd be more trouble than it's worth if you're trying to fully develop an object outside of Blue Prism. It makes sense for creating various templates or inputting some initial pages/actions. I believe Thoughtonomy did this to some degree and likely some others. But trying to develop an object that includes an application model and then importing into Blue Prism seems like way too much effort.

I've done it some before for funsies, and I'd definitely suggest to follow Eric's advice to use the import feature of Blue Prism (by CLI or UI) rather than inserting directly into the database. Blue Prism has some validation logic built in when you use the import feature and it 'should' tell you if somethings wrong with the schema. In any case, I'm sure you'd want to open the object/process afterward to verify.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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[SahilRaina]

The aim is NOT to fully develop an object outside Blue Prism, but to get a head start to save development time. Would you have any leads as to what Thoughtonomy did, or any pointers based on your experience.

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Sahil Raina
RPA Engineer
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[david.l.morris]

Basically, when creating objects, you just don't create them inside of Blue Prism first. You go into a tool outside of Blue Prism and input the name of the object, actions that you need, and input other details, and then it would automatically generate a new object for you using those details. And then on each of the actions it generates for you, it would include a wait stage at the beginning and have maybe a note stage where a navigate/write/read stage would go or something like that. It wasn't super extensive, but it is a good feature to have if you want to make it easier to enforce standardization.

I imagine Blue Prism Cloud has this now so you could try a trial version of it and see if it's there. I've still been focusing on the use of Blue Prism Core so I can't confirm if the trial version has it or not.

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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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