Stages overlapped while importing process

[SanjayShrestha]

Hello folks,
Have anyone experienced same issue or have any solution to this.
While importing a xml process and opening the file in BP Process Studio, the stages, data items, notes all of them are overlapped or dumped on top of each other. Please refer to screenshot attached.
It can be a variance in Ver but is there any solution to it rather than untangle manually?

Thank you in advance.


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Sanjay Shrestha
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[DaveMorris]

This can happen if the process was exported from BP 6.6+ and then imported into a BP version lower than 6.6 because the XML schema changed at 6.6. Is that what you did here?

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Dave Morris
3Ci @ Southern Company
Atlanta, GA
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[AntonHosang1]

Hi Sanjay, as Dave says, it's a change in the XML elements for display.
In all previous versions display was like:
<displayx>20</displayx>
<displayy>20</displayy>
<displaywidth>20</displaywidth>
<displayheight>20</displayheight>
last 2 optional
BUT in 6.6, it is now like:
<display x="20" y="20" w="20" h="20" />

What we did was to build a little tool that parses the XML, and replaces that new style element with the old-style elements.

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Anton Hosang
RPA Developer
Smart Automation Services
Europe/London
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[SanjayShrestha]

Dave,
Thanks for replying, that's exactly wats happening here. Do you know of any solution here?

Thanks,
Sanjay

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Sanjay Shrestha
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[SanjayShrestha]

Anton,
That makes sense, but there should be some built in fix in BP. Don't they have addressed this yet?

Thank you,
Sanjay

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Sanjay Shrestha
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[DaveMorris]

The problem is that they came up with this more efficient XML schema in only later versions of BP. So, the only solution they could implement that is in-built in BP would be to release a minor update for previous versions, which means they'd basically have to make a minor update for every single Blue Prism version before 6.6.

I agree with you that Blue Prism shouldn't have updated like this without giving us an easy way to convert XML back to the pre-6.6 version. However, I'm guessing Blue Prism does not expect anyone to be creating releases/processes in 6.6+ and then importing in lower environments. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to convert it using a scripting language. I'd probably just make a PowerShell or Python script to convert XML files. I just haven't analyzed the XML beyond what Anton pointed out, so I'm not sure if the display elements are the only changes.

Maybe we'll get lucky and someone has already written up a conversion script for us and they'll provide it here =). If the display elements are the only change then it shouldn't be bad.

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Dave Morris
3Ci @ Southern Company
Atlanta, GA
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[AustinDuke]

Hello Sanjay,

My team and I faced this issue as well and we ended up writing a powershell script to fix this and I would like to offer it to you as it might help but please know that we wrote it for our team and our needs so it is not an official Blue Prism tool and as such has no assurance of support but I think it can help you so please have a look at it. 

To make it work you will need two files:

1) The original 6.6 export file

2) The 6.5 (or lower) import file (the one that is all messed up) and to get that just create a new export after you import it and it breaks. 

The script should throw up a dialog box and prompt you for both of those bprelease files.

They must be bprelease files and not the .xml files you get if you just do an export.

The script will work with either a process or an object but only one at a time so if your release file contains within it multiple processes and objects you will need to modify the script to handle this but it should be fairly straightforward if you know powershell.

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Austin Duke
Senior Innovation Specialist
Blue Prism
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[AustinDuke]

Hello sir,

I have a response to Mr. Sanjay that might interest you, please feel free to look at it.

Thanks,

Austin

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Austin Duke
Senior Innovation Specialist
Blue Prism
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[SanjayShrestha]

Thank you Austin, that's of great help. I will use the fix and let you know. Thank you again.

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Sanjay Shrestha
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[AnkitaKarnany]

Hi Austin,

Thanks a lot for your message above.
I tried and replicated the steps mentioned above but could you specify the end steps, please.
Does the following steps generate another xml or release file? 
I tried importing the initial release after running the power shell script but was not of much help.

Thanks,
Ankita

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Ankita Maheswari
Consultant
Agilisys
Asia/Kolkata
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