Backward Compatibility

[Vinodh__Kannan__Krishnan]

Blue Prism has frequent releases with very little gap between releases. To add to this agony the releases are not backward compatible.

BP 6.7 client cannot talk with a BP 6.8 App/DB Server, it is also vice versa - BP 6.8 client cannot talk with a BP 6.7 App/DB Server. While we can understand a compatibility issue between BP 5 and BP 6, compatibility issues within a major release (BP 6.6,6.7 with 6.8) exposes poor product architecture/design.

Request to consider the following:
1. Have a fixed release pattern - twice a year with 6 months  gap in between gives ample time for clients to plan/prepare
2. Redesign the product so that there is backward compatibility.

Without these two, clients will not be able to keep themselves abreast with the product innovations eventually leading to moving off to other RPA tools.

Uploading BP 6 Release dates for reference of frequency.

[_Amlansahoo]

Much needed feature I guess.

[HarshitRawat]

couldn't agree more

[JerryLI]

From the Enterprise Robotic Process Automation software point of view, this is one of "must have" feature.

[GleydsonFerreir]

There are other tools out there that have multiple version compatibility AND you can upgrade your robots centrally, without going to the VMS themselves... THAT is an enterprise level. For now I can just hope BP sees this as opportunity, because it is a pain to migrate/upgrade versions.

[MelanieGiuliani]

Hi Vinodh, 

Thanks so much for submitting your idea! We are moving it into the Under Consideration status while we route the idea through our internal review process. 

We will update you as your idea moves along the lifecycle.

Thank you!
Melanie 

[LubosGurka]

@MelanieGiulian1 it is nice BluePrism finally recognized this as a valid idea. Shame it wasnt noticed when I posted it 9 months ago. BluePrism clients able to connect to older versions

[MelanieGiuliani]

HI @LubosGurka,

The way our ideation review process works is that any ideas that receive more than 15 points are reviewed by an internal team and then advanced along the idea lifecycle. Is it possible your idea didn't receive enough votes to be reviewed?

Please feel free to send me a dm or an email at melanie.giuliani@blueprism.com if you'd like to discuss the specifics of your idea!

Thank you,
Melanie ​

[StefanPappalard]

Additionally we are currently facing other backward compatibility issues in the current change from BPAv6,7,1 to BPAv6.10.1.

• Language and Locale after adding German UI support
• Private local Runtime Resource starts automatically at default

And in the change before from BPAv5.0.24 we had to skip some releases (i.e. 6.3 and 6.4) due to performance issues.

Recommendation to Blue Prism Limited: Please add the possibility to use the well known way the customers use BPA. When adding new features try to offer a phase where the old and the new feature can be used for a while with a warning that it will be turned off in a future release. The same is with existing features that were modified in a way that they will provide a massive change to the usage before. The deprecation warning will give the clients the possibility to plan and implement the changes in their own pace. It's also nice for Blue Prism to get reports for features that can already be used by their clients without the pressure for a fast fix, because the client will be able to fall back to the old version of the feature. 😉

[robert.nicklin]

Hello @Vinodh__Kannan__Krishnan,

Having reviewed the detail of your idea, it has been determined that this enhancement will not be something that we will be providing in Blue Prism Enterprise at this time. There are two points I would like to call to attention:

1. Release cadence - a new minor version of Blue Prism Enterprise is now released every 9-12 months on average as we recognize that quarterly releases, though valuable for some smaller organizations, are harder to consume by our larger Enterprise customers. We issue patches for recent releases on a more regular basis, but these are done based on feedback from customers rather than on a set cadence.
2. Depending on the nature of a patch release, it is possible for us to allow updated versions of clients and resources to connect to application servers of the same minor version, but whether or not this possible is contingent on the issues resolved within the specific patch. We describe a patch which cannot connect to previous releases of the same minor versions as a "full patch", and ones that can attach to previous versions are "simplified/simple patches". The nature of the patch can be seen in the associated release notes.

Based on this update, I'm going to update this idea as Not Planned.

Regards,

Rob