Hello members of the community,
I am pleased to announce the release of "IE Mode Conversion Assistant" utility to the Digital Exchange.
Background
Migration out of Internet Explorer is a burden for many organisations. While there exists a path to migrate to a modern browser variant, and this is in fact the recommended path forward for any RPA programme, the efforts involved may be seen as prohibitive for COEs with a large collection of IE objects present. Microsoft Edge Internet Explorer Mode (IE Mode) is perceived as a shortcut that would allow a much shorter project timeframe, involving much less resources, while ensuring the underlying browser can still be supported by Microsoft in the foreseeable future. This leads to the urgency in offering assistance to such customers in migrating to the IE Mode.
IE Mode Conversion Assitant
This is in fact the exact reason why we have built this utility. It offers out of the box conversion capabilities for the following areas:
- IE usage found in Application Modeller
- IE usage found in Attach/Launch stages
- IE usage found in "Utility - Environment > Kill Process" action
- Attributes replacements for certain Win32/AA/UIA elements in scope
We recognise that the above conversion features will not likely give you an object fully operational under IE Mode after conversion, there are in total 5 reports (see below) can be used to expose additional areas where manual interventions may be required to retrofit the object to work in IE Mode. It works hand-in-hand with our official IE Mode documentation found here.
Please note that there will be some setup/configuration work needed to get IE Mode to work initially. The converted objects will require such work to have been completed in your environment before they can be operational under IE Mode.
Disambiguation
While Application Modeller Conversion Tool, found on Blue Prism Digital Exchange (DX), can be customised to achieve similar conversion capability as this utility, a decision was made to create a different utility for IE Mode conversion from the ground up, mainly due to the need of incorporating unique reporting requirements, which are difficult to fulfil by the Application Modeller Conversion Tool in its current design. A specialised utility ensures users can benefit from the research work done by the Blue Prism team on IE Mode to minimise manual efforts in investigations and remediations.
In short:
- Migrating to modern browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) from Internet Explorer: Application Modeller Conversion Tool
- Migrating to Microsoft Edge Internet Explorer mode: IE Mode Conversion Assistant
Suggestions and Feedback
While this is not a Blue Prism officially supported asset, we would love to hear your suggestions and feedback. Please feel free to add to this thread or start a new thread on the DX Commuity and we will look at responding them in due course. This will help us in improving the utility and reduce the amount of manual work required.
------------------------------
Bruce Liu
Senior Product Consultant, Professional Services
Blue Prism
Australia/Sydney
------------------------------
