Showing ideas with status New.
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The usability of the scheduler entry will be more appropriate if we are able to change the order of the tasks
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It would be great to have a native PowerPoint VBO with all functinality and expansion from Blue Prism itself on digital exchange for the PowerPoint.
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Actually looking for a more effective way in searching for objects together with its actions. Ideally we can filter for the object name in the studio then have to open it manually and look at all the actions.
Another way is maybe keep a tracker of all objects via Excel or SharePoint. Is there an existing solution to this?
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Hi folks, In our shop, we write the ticket number and short free text in the Process Information stage on the main page of every process. This in an attempt to improve traceability for future developers working on the process. In BP 6.5, when trying to save a process that had too much text written in the Process Information stage on the Main Page, the save would crash and you change was gone. No, I do not have an exact value for 'too much'. This crash could easily be avoided by one of the following: - do not write text in the Process Information stage (bad idea) - cleanup some of the older texts in the Process Information stage as not to exceed the 'too much' limit In BP 6.10, this problem seems to have been partially fixed. As a developer you can add as much text as you want without the 'too much' limit being broken. Happy days! Not so much happy days in production though. When implementing/deploying the process in Production, the 'too much' limit is checked again, and when exceeded the release cannot be imported. The solution to this implies removing superfluous text in development and then redoing the whole release/ticket exercise, which is quite time consuming. I can conclude to be more happy with the BP 6.5 situation than I am with the newer BP6.10 situation. Now for the possible solution: - Can we remove any limit to the text-size of the Process Information stage on the Main Page of processes? If this is not possible: - Could we have a warning if we try to save a process where the size of the Process Information stage exceeds a certain value? - Can we make sure that the maximum size of the text in the Process Information stage is lower when saving a process than when importing a release? Happy coding! --------------- Paul Sweden
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Idea: I'd like to suggest the customization / expansion of the code-linting (aka Design Controls in design studio) capabilities that design studio currently has by allowing users to create and add their own rules. An organization should be able to customize design controls that fit their own organization's best practices (eg. verify that spied elements follow a specific naming convention) and code styles (eg. all START stages have to be font color = green) background: Most modern IDEs (eg. vscode or vs) have the capabilities to allow developers to create custom code-linting rules that fit their organization's best practice and coding styles. These rules help standardize code within an organization which can lead to improved code maintainability, improved performance, and minimize bottlenecks development (eg. code reviews). other information:
Currently, it is possible to export Design Control settings to an XML file and share it with anyone. So, it should make it possible for organizations to share their best practices with anyone, allowing new developers to benefit from the knowledge of more experienced developers. Essentially, making it possible for new organizations adopting Blue Prism to copy design controls from experienced organizations who have been using Blue Prism for years.
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For out-of-the-box functionality there should be no excuse for missing descriptions. The Work Queues:Set Data action (image below) is a perfect example. This is a highly useful function but even if you've been using BP for a while, who knows what it does? Frankly, it is lazy product development not to have descriptions for standard functions when the facility to display descriptions is right there. Importantly, they should be useful - not just the obvious "This action sets data in a queue" but detail of how you do it, so someone developing their skills can understand. For example "On Get Next Item this action writes the data in the output Queue Data Collection back to the queue..." or whatever. Perhaps you provide a facility to crowd source the descriptions and have a panel choose the best?
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https://university.blueprism.com/certification/ Certification exam codes are not mentioned on these exam details pages. Can we please include the exam code in the certification details as well? On the Pearson portal, we can see the below codes -
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We can add a new stage named like Dialogue box or something which will pop up a window and ask the user to enter the value of a specific data item. Such a stage can come in handy for attended automation where the user is expected to enter some value during the run time.
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Web services provided by other systems can be integrated as actions to Blue Prism. This integration provides status code and return values... but only when the request was successful. In case the request fails no information is available but exception details only. Information such as status code has to be parsed manually from the exception details text. The idea is to not raise a critical exception when the request fails but utilize the existing action return values (status code, message, ...) to pass through the information coming from the web service. An option is to add a flag similar to what is available in File Management VBO that either have an exception raised or 'ignores' the error and provides the structures response of the service provider
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Situation for BP v6.9 After each release import the information of exposed processes as web service gets lost and it is necessary to manually expose the processes again. The release file should contain the information if and how a process is exposed as web service. Similar information is already considered in release files: like Web API, SOAP Web Services, ... which reflects the consumer part of services but the provider part (expose as WS) is missing.
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A client wants to calculate the savings which the automated process brings. As Interact is part of the end to end automation the client asked whether it is possible to measure how much time a user spends on an Interact form activities. At this moment there is no way how to get this information. It would be useful for reporting purposes to have something like that available.
The closest solution could be taken from AuditDB database and table Audit. There is a timestamp when the form is created (by the robot) and when the form is submitted by a user but if the user does not work on the form immediately when the robot creates it there is a time gap which can't be identified.
Thanks.
Regards
Zdenek
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It took us some time to understand the intention behind how Active Queue works and I think there are options for improvements that greatly enhance AQs.
The ideas is to enable continuous processing triggered by new queue items and without occupying a runtime resource al the time while doing nothing.
Short summary on how AQ currently work (please see documentation for general description):
The assigned processes have to have a Poll loop that keeps the process active all the time even when there are no queue items available. This is necessary since the runtime resource is removed from the Target Resource definition when the process stops.
Various AQ can share the same Resource Group and resources can be assigned by de-/increasing the number of Target Resources and AQ will take care of starting the correct processes.
The ideas for improvements:
Most important: AQ Target Resource definition does not decrement when a process stops working but stays as it was defined. This removes the need of the empty Poll loop but processes are started by AQ when needed. (And does not use a license for just polling and waiting)
Nice to have: Adding thresholds for parallel processing. Something like 'active one resource for each x numbers of items'. Meaning, if x=100, one resource should be used if there are less than 100 items in the queue. If there are <200 two resources should be used and with <300 three resources asf. This will increase efficiency for low amount of processes and very quick processes. Instead of spawning the process, opening the applications, possible login, or navigating to the correct windows... the resources with all the technical basics already done can focus on business related steps.
Nice to have: Assign Target Resources dynamically. This could be in combination with the parallel processing idea. Here the point is to set a min / max Target Resource value. min would set the number of resources being reserved for this AQ. Although there might no process running on this resource, it will not be used for other processes to ensure the queue will never be blocked completely. max sets the max number of concurrent processes of this queue running in parallel.
Nice to have but tied to the prev point: Dynamic assignment of Resource Groups. The idea is to allow the total number of max Target Resources be greater than the actual available resources. With resources are made available again when there is nothing to process this setting would create an automatic dynamic assignment of resources for most efficiency. All resources not claimed by an AQ (Target Resource min setting) are moved to a common pool. AQ takes resources from this pool in peak times and returns them at off-peak times, making them available for other AQ.
Nice to have but tied to the prev point: AQ prioritization. In times when several queues are processed and there are not enough resources to meet their max Target Resources demands, the AQ with the highest prio should create an event to a lower prio AQ to free a resources. This freed resource then can be claimed by the higher prio queue.
The first point is the most important one that would enable a lot of customers the use of Active Queues.
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Hi Team, The Problem: Our team maintain ODI for particular processes and a global ODI for all processes. However we face challenge updating these documents as developer spend time on development and testing the automations. As a result these documents are not always up to date and sometimes cause issues with duplicity of objects being developed. The Idea: I would like to request an ODI tab where we can go and see all the objects that are developed for an given application. This will allow us to actively reuse these already developed objects. For this to work we should ask for application name while developing the modeler. So that all the objects are grouped under the same application on the ODI tab, further it should be easy to check the actions and their input output for each tab along with their description. Do let me know if you have doubts or any other solution that can help us. Thanks
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Currently, there is no option to archive Audit logs/Audit events from the System Manager tab. Over the period of time, this DB table is supposed to grow and the team will need someone from the DB team to run a query to clear this table. Instead, we should have the option to delete/archive audit logs similar to process logs in the System tab itself.
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the new idea is to enable to determine the type of field for each column in the table like: text, Date, number, upload, list. and enable to create Regex to the fields in the table.
I need this idea, because in one of process that I work, I need to create form for request medical insurance, and in this form, the person can add any number from his family without certain limitation. and we can use the table for this because no limitation for the number of rows that we can add. but we can not add regex or type for the fields in table.
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Hi,
there is a client requirements that some fields should be repeated on several Interact form pages. At this moment we have to create such fields for each page which is not very convenient and well managed way of fulfilling such a request.
The requirement is to be able to define a global field which can be shared throughout all the pages in the form but it is just one automation id.
Regards
Zdenek
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This is probably somewhere in the connection of the Process and the Control Room, but it would be nice to set some 'Startup' parameters as required (must be populated before the Process can be started).
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We are using 6.9 and more recent versions of BP might have different possibilities.
In 6.9 the configuration of Archiving is limited to specify a target directory.
There is no option to define the preferred RR the archiving should run.
There is no option to specify the Windows account that should be used
And there is no possibility to specify the date/time when automatic archiving should start.
This causes certain challenges in a multi RR, multi BP instance, multi Windows account environment.
.) The target directory is only set per RR. We have to set the directory on each RR to ensure the files are saved in the same directory.
Each BP instance / environment has to have its own target directory otherwise restore will very likely fail or will be wrong. When moving a RR from one environment to another environment also the local archiving directory has to be set manually local on the machine.
.) Preferably, all archiving files should be saved in the same central location and not local on each RR. This can be achieved by having a network share mapped on all RR.
Since we cannot know what user is currently logged on to a RR when archiving kicks in, all robot Windows accounts have to have the share mapped and have to have full access to those folders.
This rises security concerns as logs needed for audit purposes can be altered by anyone who happen to have access to robot Windows accounts.
.) There is no information and no check if the target directory is the correct one since there is no information that would uniquely and easily identify the environment.
In case archiving was done to the wrong target directory, correcting the error needs huge amount of manual effort. (basically going through all directory tree as RR is at the very end of the structure:
- Year - Month - Day - Process name - Runtime Resource name
)
It is always much more difficult to configure something like archiving on workplaces as they tend to be more volatile than servers. The best solution would be to have archiving executed as part of the application server service.
But also the RR side way of archiving could be greatly improved by:
storing target directory not RR local but centrally in repository
being able to specify the RR that should be used
being able to create schedules (intervals, start times, ...) to run archiving
Another general improvement would be to add environment information to the archiving folder / files. Either more like for informational purpose when connection name is used or some new information as not-changeable name for the BP instance / repository. (I will create another idea for this identifier)
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It would be great if there would be an option to automatically create a package for a process (ideally from the process itself) which includes all dependencies (objects, credentials, environment variables, etc.)
The package should then be customizable, so that I can remove unwanted components and add others (although I don't really see a use case yet why I would add anything which is not used by my process...).
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Hello,
The messages displayed in Blue Prism control could be made more helpful so that users may avoid unneeded troubleshooting channels.
Here is an example from the screen shot below. The message states that the "Machine is too busy to run that process".
This message is very generic and even misleading. It gives an impression that:
something is wrong with the machine
something is wrong with the Enterprise license
After ruling out reason 1, I had to spend considerable time to rule out reason 2. I have Enterprise licensing that allows me to run 5 concurrent sessions. From the screen shot you can see that I was able to run 2 sessions, and when adding a third process I got a generic message from Control stating that the machine is too busy.
After several days of troubleshooting, I came to realize that it was neither the machine nor the license that was the problem. Rather, it was the process itself. The process I tried to add used a Blue Prism VBO that was marked as Exclusive instead of Background . And this caused my process from executing concurrently.
However, the message box displayed had no indication of the true underlying cause. And the concept of setting VBOs to Background mode is not that obvious to most developers.
Which brings us to the idea.
Idea:
Please enhance the messaging to align more towards the the actual cause.
Example: In this context, messages like these could have helped fast track the troubleshooting process in the right direction.
This process you are trying to execute is not designed to run in a concurrent session
or
Check your process to ensure that any of the objects are not set as Exclusive
or
Make sure that the objects used in your process are set for Background execution
Theoretically and technically speaking, if BP Control can stop a process marked for exclusive execution from running, then it must be in a position to output a message that more accurately communicates the cause.
Thank you for giving this idea your due consideration.
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