Blue Prism 6.10: November 2020

When a single environment is configured with multiple application servers which have scheduling enabled, if multiple application servers attempt to execute the same schedule, one server takes the schedule and it is skipped on the other servers. This is now logged as information on the application server that has skipped the schedule. Previously, a Unique Key constraint error was logged in the scenario when a second server correctly failed to start a duplicate schedule.

To capture and view these log messages, the Server.NLog.Config file must be updated to record messages at the Info level:
<logger name="*" minlevel="Info" writeTo="app-logfile" />
<logger name="*" minlevel="Fatal" writeTo="app-logfile" />
The "Fatal" level is included in the file by default. Insert the "Info" line above it.

The following performance improvements have been made to the Resources tree view in Control Room when displaying high volumes of resources:

• Users are now briefly prevented from interacting with the screen while the Resources tree view is initially loading or when refreshing. This addresses an issue where interacting with the screen while very large volumes of resources were still loading caused the screen to freeze and required the interactive client to be restarted.
• Connections between the interactive client and active runtime resources are now fully closed when the user signs out of Blue Prism. This addresses the unnecessary use of memory caused by the connections not fully closing, which could previously only be resolved by shutting down the interactive client.

To improve performance of the Active Queues area in Control Room:

• All active queue data is now taken from the same dedicated database table, which results in faster data retrieval and display.
• Only the required data is retrieved from the server. Additional, unused data is no longer retrieved, improving the time taken to load the screen.

A performance issue has been fixed where a pending connection between the Blue Prism interactive client and a runtime resource could not be established because of the processing of pending messages for an already established connection. These tasks are now processed in parallel instead of in sequence so the issue no longer occurs.

Business objects created prior to 6.9 now display validation warnings rather than errors when using the following stage and action/condition combinations without a tracking ID configured:

• Navigate > Detach

• Navigate >Terminate

• Wait > Check Exist

Users can resolve the warnings by clicking the Repair All button. Once the repair has completed, a tracking ID parameter is added to the actions/conditions for the user to set if required, and the validation warnings no longer display.

Tracking ID was added as an optional parameter to various stages in Blue Prism 6.9 to allow users to restrict spying to a specific browser window when browser instances of the same type are available. Using actions such as Detach and Terminate without a tracking ID will attempt to perform the action on all open instances of the browser rather than targeting a specific instance.

When creating or modifying a release package, the option to select dependencies now displays all relevant direct and indirect components. Previously, the list only displayed those directly referenced. Only components to which the user has access will display.

Additionally, new Apply Changes and Cancel buttons are available when using the Select Dependencies feature.

Users can now edit an expression directly on the Expression Test Wizard window which displays when clicking the Evaluate Expression button in a stage property window. The expression in the stage property window will be refreshed once the edits have been made. Previously, users could only enter test values into the Expression Test Wizard window and had to return to the stage property window to make the actual changes to the expression.

The search term and date range used when performing a search in System > Audit - Audit Logs now displays at the top of the search results so users can clearly identify the filter that is currently applied.

In System > Resources - Management, it is now possible to retire multiple resources (or groups of resources) at the same time. When retiring groups of resources, all resources within the group will be moved into the retired resources pane but the folders in which the resources were located previously will be retained as empty folders.

Users can now identify which runtime resources are connected to which application server at start up without having to log into each of the runtime resources. The name of the application server to which a runtime resource is connected and the port on which it is running now display in the Environment Summary system report (System > Reporting > Environment Summary > Generate report).

The system setting Save environment data for clients, runtime resources and servers to the database must be enabled for this information to be recorded and populated in the Environment Summary system report.

To prevent accidental deletion, users are now asked to confirm before deleting a Blue Prism server custom configuration.

To improve performance, when opening a process or object in Process and Object Studio only the names of available environment variables are loaded and cached locally. Further details are only loaded for environment variables referenced in the process or object. Previously, when opening a process or object in Process and Object Studio, all details for all available environment variables were loaded into memory.

If an environment variable has been deleted since the process or object was loaded, users are notified via an error message and the environment variable is removed from the selection list. On refresh, only the environment variables referenced in the process or object, and the names of available environment variables are reloaded.

Field names in complex nested collections now correctly display as the column headings on the Initial Values tab of the Collection properties dialog. Previously, navigating within such collections could lead to column headings not displaying, preventing users from adding data to new rows.

An about:blank URL is now opened when no start page URL has been provided as part of an application model and the Use fixed browser extension port (31294) only option has not been selected in System - Settings.

Previously when using the Application Modeller to launch a browser-based application in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox, the browser extension did not successfully establish a connection with Blue Prism if a start page URL had not been specified and the Use fixed browser extension port (31924) only option was not selected in System - Settings.

Previously, when attempting to open an exported work queue log file using Excel 2003, an error message incorrectly identified the log file as a SYLK (Symbolic Link) file. This occurred when the log file contained references to "ID" in the column names. Any ID reference now displays as "Id" throughout the log files so the issue no longer occurs.

A Windows application event log is no longer incorrectly created when an interactive client running on Windows 7 closes. Previously, a null tree reference incorrectly triggered the intermittent creation of an Object reference not set to an instance of an object error log.

When displaying the Resources tree view in Control Room, the interactive client no longer attempts to connect to active private runtime resources that do not belong to the current user. Previously, connections were incorrectly attempted to all active private runtime resources, regardless of ownership.

All active private runtime resources continue to be visible in the tree view, depending on permissions as per existing behavior, and connections will still be attempted to private runtime resources belonging to the current user.

Font size information is now correctly saved, regardless of whether the font color has changed when editing a process or business object in Process and Object Studio. Previously, if the font size of a stage name was changed but not the font color, the new font size was not saved.

Users are no longer prompted to save their changes a second time after they have indicated that changes should be canceled on the following screens, and have navigated away from the tab or signed out of Blue Prism:

• System > Security - User Roles
• System > System - Scheduler

• System > Objects > Web API Services - Connection Strings

Processes containing a Navigate stage with a Verify action that has the Highlight input parameter set to True now run successfully. Previously in this scenario, the process could potentially lock on the Navigate stage and enter a warning state. This issue affected processes started from Control Room only and did not impact processes that were started from Process Studio.

The Blue Prism application server is now responsible for generating the audit event log entry when configuration changes are applied to the Archiving mode. Previously, it was generated by the interactive client and was susceptible to being suppressed.

If an interactive client fails to establish a connection with a runtime resource due to the use of an invalid SSL certificate, the resource now closes the connection. Previously, some active connections remained open, which resulted in multiple unused active connections.

In the Session Log Viewer, accessed from Control Room, users can now search when using the List view type. Previously, an error incorrectly displayed when a user entered a search term when using the list view.

The number of locked items in each work queue is now stored in a new column called locked, which has been added to the BPAWorkQueueItemAggregate table. This is preparatory work for use in a future release, the statistics displayed for work queues are unchanged in this release.

The following improvements have been made to the BPDiagnostics tool, accessed from the Blue Prism Automate folder C:\Program Files\Blue Prism Limited\Blue Prism Automate\BPDiagnostics.exe:

• The Generate Support Information option now generates the required information for the user. Previously, it returned an unhandled exception error.
• The Browse DDE Services option has been removed as it is no longer used.