v6.5 - Actions Stages Load Slowly

[BrentonWestwood]

​Since an upgrade to v6.5, new action stages added to a process load slowly.   When selecting an action from a business object, the details of the action take around 20 seconds to load.   The action will hang until the input and output parameters finish loading.   This happens for actions with no inputs or outputs as well as ones that have a few inputs and/or outputs.

Note:  Our DV environment has a brand new database and thus, the normal suggestion of creating a new database need not be addressed.   Also, we do not have that many objects or processes.   Additionally, this happens on another environment in which we have v6.5 installed.   So, it seems that v6.5 introduced this performance issue.   I wonder if it has to do with something in v6.5 with the update to automatically name the actions as the object::action.

Some of the above paragraph's statements were in reference to this article: https://portal.blueprism.com/customer-support/support-center#/path/Operational-Support/Performance/1137418802/Why-is-Studio-slow-to-save-or-view-certain-stages.htm​

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[JeffMills]

Us too! :)  I wish the delay for us was only 20 seconds; it is somewhere between 30 and 60, usually closer to 60 than 30.

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Jeff Mills
System Analyst
Bechtel
America/Phoenix
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[si_hoon_young]

The same issue here, 

However, after developing for some time (~1 hour), the objects have been noted to load quickly again.

It is important to note that I have not yet experimented with how this impacts a running resource.

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Harry Young
Senior Associate, Business Process Design and Automation
Sydney, NSW
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[david.flores]

Hello, 

Here is another helpful KB link for you to reference: https://portal.blueprism.com/customer-support/support-center#/path/Automation-Design/Interactive-Client-Automation-Design/1332229212/Why-is-My-Interactive-Client-running-slowly.htm

Also, here are a few other recommendations to consider:

 - First suspect is always the database. So please try running the housekeeping scripts (Open Support ticket with Blue Prism and request housekeeping scripts). Making changes so you keep a smaller number of rows in the tables, since it is not recommended to have millions of rows in the Log and Session tables.

  - another recommendation is not having a Runtime Resource running in the same machine you are running the Blue Prism to work with the Processes. It is not recommended that an Interactive Client has any other function running in the same machine.

  - another recommendation is to be sure to un-check the option for "automatic validation" when opening processes, please see attached image. This should improve the time needed to open processes

  - please make sure you don't have a printer installed in this machine; some printer drivers' conflict with the Blue Prism Software.

  - Please make sure you created exceptions in your Antivirus software, so it doesn't block Blue Prism actions.

Hopefully this helps. 

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Regards,

David Flores
Sr. Product Consultant
blue prism
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[JeffMills]

David,
  Thanks for the suggestions.  As Brenton suggested above, this only started happening with 6.5, and specifically when selecting the object/action.  The new BP feature of pre-populating the Action stage name with the object/action name surely has something to do with this; maybe your development team should be made aware if they haven't already.
Jeff

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Jeff Mills
System Analyst
Bechtel
America/Phoenix
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[BrentonWestwood]

Hi David​,

Thanks for the list of things to try.   I tried the not having a Runtime Resource running in the same machine as well as the un-checking the option for "automatic validation" when opening processes in the Audit - Design section.   These did not change the behavior.   If I add an Action stage and select an Object, the first Action loads quickly.   If you select another Action, that Action takes 20 seconds to a minute to load.   Yet, what I have noticed since my original post is that is after I let the Object load completely (wait a minute or so), I can select another Object and any Action and any Action will load quickly.   Also, I can add more Action stages and am able to quickly select any Object.Action available to me in the environment.   So, it seems as if the first attempt to add an Action stage will load all Objects and Actions in the entire environment.   Is that what is happening now in version 6.5?  

Also, know that if I click the Reset button, all of the Object data in memory appears to be discarded and I am back to the very slow initial loading of actions for an Objects as I go to add a new or update an existing Action stage.   Thus, if I were to add all of the Action stages I needed in a process in one attempt to put together a process, I would be able to quickly select the second action through the last one I needed to call.

The database is brand new - just created and so, that step basically was done as well.

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[BrentonWestwood · Accepted solution]

Hello all,

It appears that Blue Prism v6.5.1 was released on Sunday, 8/12/19, and it addresses this issue of the Action stage loading objects and actions slowly.   I plan to upgrade my evaluation environment and test out the fix.    Version 6.5.1 also has a fix for the issue where processes get marked as unpublished when imported to another v6.5 environment.​  

From the v6.5.1 release notes:   Reference item bg-3388:  When adding an action stage to a process, making a selection from the Action drop-down no longer causes Blue Prism to become unresponsive if a stage name has not been entered prior to selecting the action.  This issue affected clients that were connected to an application server where the database contained a large number of objects and only occurred the first time an action stage was opened in an instance of Process Studio.

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Brenton Westwood
Systems Analyst
Southern Company
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[RafaelRomero]

Thanks David, the validation settings helped out tremendously - minimal reset time now.  Using V6.6 .​

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Rafael Romero
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