Blue Prism 6.9: September 2020

The following enhancements have been made to the way users authenticate in Blue Prism:

• Administrators with access to a single-authentication Active Directory environment can now convert this to a multi-authentication Active Directory environment. The conversion can be initiated via the System > Security – Sign-on Settings screen and is irreversible. All single-authentication user accounts in a Blue Prism environment are converted to multi-authentication user accounts by automatically mapping roles to individual users based on their Active Directory security group membership (after which managing Blue Prism user permissions using Active Directory group membership is no longer available in Blue Prism). Before starting the conversion, administrators must back up their database, stop all processes, and log all users and runtime resources out of the environment. After closing down any runtime resources, the administrators will need to wait for two minutes before starting the conversion.

• On the Security – Sign-on Settings screen, if the Start with a default login name setting is selected and the Using the previous user name option is selected in the drop-down, the previous user name is automatically placed in the username field on the login page only if the last user who logged in was a Blue Prism native user.

• The username used when creating a mapped Active Directory user in a multi-authentication environment is now the user's UPN (User Principal Name – the name of a system user in an email address format). Previously in 6.8, the administrator could apply any username. If the UPN of a user is updated in the external Active Directory, the user must be manually remapped in Blue Prism.
• Web service requests to processes or objects exposed as web services in Blue Prism can now be authenticated based on the authentication type of the user provided in the web service request. Previously, web service requests in a multi-authentication environment could only be authenticated using credentials of a Blue Prism native user account. Mapped Active Directory users in a multi-authentication environment can now authenticate against exposed web services using their Active Directory UPN and Windows password. Active Directory users in a single-authentication environment can continue to make web service requests using their Active Directory UPN and Windows password.

See theAuthentication in Blue Prism andSingle sign-on help pages for more details.

The following enhancements and fixes have been made to the System - Audit Logs area:

• A new search by date feature has been added to the Audit Logs which reduces the time taken to open the screen by only returning the last seven days of logs by default. The logs recorded for a particular date range can also be filtered by a search term specified by the user. Sorting by date has also been made easier by allowing users to sort by ascending or descending dates in a drop-down field.

• If a user opens the Audit Log Viewer from System > Audit - Audit Logs and then signs out of Blue Prism, the window now closes automatically and an error no longer occurs.
• If a user opens the Audit Log Export wizard from the Audit Log Viewer and then signs out of Blue Prism, the opened wizard now closes automatically. 
• Previously, the file location path in the Audit Log Export wizard defaulted to a desktop location and did not add a file extension to the log file name which triggered an error message. The file location path is now empty prompting the user to browse for a path.

The following improvements have been made to the performance of the Active Queues area in Control Room when displaying high volumes of queues and resources:

• A single call is now made to retrieve data for all active queues. Previously, individual calls were made for each active queue.
• A single server process now calculates a snapshot of the active queue data every 30 seconds and stores it in a new BPAWorkQueueItemAggregate table. Previously, each interactive client calculated the same data from the BPAWorkQueue and BPAWorkQueueItem tables individually. This enhancement also improves the responsiveness of the active queues screen.

In the System > Processes - Management and System > Objects - Management screens, double-clicking active processes or objects now retires the item and moves it to the retired panel. Similarly, in the System > Resources - Management screen, double-clicking offline resources that are not in pools now retires the resource and moves it to the Retired panel. As per existing behavior, users can unretire an item by dragging it into a folder in the Active panel.

The following enhancements have been introduced throughout the Blue Prism interactive client to further improve the general accessibility of Blue Prism:

• The mouseover state has now been added to number fields.
• The mouseover state for buttons, text boxes, radio buttons, and number fields is now removed after the item has been selected.
• The keyboard navigation in the Studio tree view has been improved to ensure that the order of the navigation is now in a standardized sequence and reflects the order shown on screen.
• In Object and Process Studio, the keyboard navigation in stage properties dialogs has also been improved to ensure that the order of the navigation is now in a standardized sequence and reflects the order shown on screen. Improvements to the keyboard navigation in Write stages, the Data stages calendar, and drag and drop are planned for a later release.

The following enhancements have been made to improve accessibility in Studio:

• Two new file extensions, .bpprocess and .bpobject, are now automatically associated when installing Blue Prism. This allows processes and objects to be imported into Blue Prism simply by double-clicking them in Windows Explorer. When exporting processes and objects they are now saved as BPPROCESS files and BPOBJECT files, respectively.

  The .xml file extensions for processes and objects are still supported and the permissions around importing have not been affected.

• The layout of the left-hand navigation pane in the Studio, Control, Analytics, and System tabs will now be retained when users move away from a tab and open it again later.

The time taken to open an object or process in Studio has been optimized by removing an unnecessary review of the specified names used for each stage.

In Object and Process Studio, a warning highlighting the potential for performance issues has been added to the Batch Size input parameter in the Add To Queue action for the Work Queues business object. The warning displays when saving a batch size value that exceeds 25000 and also during process validation for existing actions that contain a batch of this size. The warning message is advisory only does not prevent users from continuing.

To add flexibility to WCF connections, a number of advanced configuration options are now available as follows:

• A new Ordered Sessions setting, enabled by default in the Connection Configuration dialog when selecting the Blue Prism server connection type with a WCF connection mode, allows users to control whether WCF connection sessions must be transmitted in order or not. Disabling this setting will reduce the amount of time a Blue Prism interactive client takes to connect to a large number of runtime resources.
• The maxtransferwindowSize and  maxpendingchannels options can now be defined via the Automate.config file (C:\ProgramData\Blue Prism Limited\Automate V3). These settings should only be used by advanced users under the guidance of Blue Prism Support.

The number of undo/redo steps in Process and Object Studio has been increased and set to a maximum of 20 per process/business object and cannot be configured in the Automate.config file. This is to control memory consumption when editing large processes and objects.

In Object and Process Studio, creating Write stages that take an initial value from a collection field but have no current value set no longer generates a validation error.

In Process Studio, re-clicking the Step Over button before an action that calls a business object has completed no longer results in an error.

An error introduced in 6.7, where users were prevented from moving and creating processes and objects in groups that share the same name as each other in the Studio tree view, has been addressed.

Runtime resources now recognize new business objects that have been added to an environment regardless of whether a session on that runtime resource has already been run. Previously, when new business objects were added to an environment the runtime resource had to be restarted if a session had already been started or completed.

Improvements have been made to diagnostic functionality introduced in 6.7. These improvements resolve potential intermittent connection issues with runtime resources in environments where reverse DNS information could not be resolved. When the issue occurred runtime resources were unable to receive connection requests, resulting in connectivity errors.

To improve performance when refreshing the resources view in Control Room:

• Debug runtime resources are no longer retrieved.
• User context is only retrieved for runtime resources that are not operating in public mode.

Any errors that occur while updating runtime resources in Control Room are now written to the server’s automate log file. Previously, these errors did not display.

Pools displayed in the Resources panel in Control Room now correctly display the offline status if no online resources remain in that pool. Previously, the online status continued to display indefinitely when the pool no longer contained any online resources, even after logging out and back in again.

Quickly switching to another screen from Control Room > Queue Management before the queue data has fully loaded no longer results in an error.

After the controller resource has been removed from a pool, sessions are now assigned to the next available resource in that pool. Previously, sessions were still being assigned to the controller resource if it was still online, even after it had been removed from the pool.

The start and end times for certificates used to encrypt the Blue Prism application server configuration files are now validated against the local time zone rather than the UTC time zone. Previously, the BPServer displayed a Certificate has not been activated error when attempting to apply a certificate if the start time of the certificate was earlier than the current UTC time.

If the SQL Server instance hosting the Blue Prism database is stopped while sessions are still running, once the application server has re-established its SQL connection, runtime resources connected via the application server re-establish their connection. Previously in this scenario, runtime resources did not attempt to re-establish a connection to the Blue Prism application server and needed to be restarted manually.

In System > Security - Users, the lock icon, which indicates that a process is locked for editing, now displays as soon as the process is opened by another user. Previously, the lock icon only displayed when the screen was refreshed.

An issue has been fixed where the Create User option in System > Security - Users was still incorrectly selectable from a user's context menu after the user had already been created.

Previously, changes to the Name, Description and Username fields in System > Security – Credentials made via the Blue Prism user interface were not saved if no other fields had changed. All changes made to credentials via the user interface are now saved correctly.

Previously in System > Resources - Management, when a user attempted to create a new group with the same name of an existing group, the user was prompted to rename the group however this change was also applied to the pre-existing group. This has now been fixed so group names are no longer incorrectly overwritten by updates made by other users.

When importing a BPRELEASE file into a Blue Prism environment with a regional locale setting of Chinese or Japanese, any referenced fonts that are included in the release are now listed in the Advanced Find > Explore Dependencies tab in Process and Object Studio. Previously in this situation, any referenced fonts were not listed.

Using a Global Send Key Event action in a Navigate stage to send the right CTRL keyboard key now sends that key. Previously in this scenario, the left CTRL keyboard key was incorrectly being sent.

The double click option has been removed from the Navigate stage when used on radio button and checkbox web elements in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox browsers.

Previously, when spying a web element in a Chrome. Edge, or Firefox browser using only a unique XPath attribute via the Application Modeller, a warning incorrectly indicated that multiple elements had been found. This has now been fixed so the relevant element is returned without a warning message.

Attempting to activate a SAP 7.60 client now consistently brings the application to the foreground and puts it in focus. This resolves an issue in which performing the Activate action could result in an error on SAP 7.60 clients.

The Get Cell Value action in Read stages can now be used for spying SAP data grids as it now correctly uses the underlying column name. It was previously configured incorrectly.

The Get Table Items action in Read stages has been updated to retrieve data from a single table with a varying number of columns in the same table when automating applications in Chrome, for example when the table includes rows that contain merged cells that span multiple columns.

An error is no longer displayed when attempting to save changes to Data Gateways System settings following a Blue Prism upgrade. In 6.7 onwards, an error displayed even though the amended settings were successfully applied.

Applications now successfully launch when external Application Manager modes are used to launch the application, regardless of whether the Windows language setting is different to the regional locale setting of the interactive client. Previously, applications did not launch if the Windows language setting and the regional locale setting of the interactive client were not set to the same language.

Compatibility with 64-bit data grid controls has been improved when reading data from a 64-bit grid view via the Win32 spy mode.