Blue Prism in-product maintenance

The Blue Prism software includes a number of maintenance capabilities which are predominately focused on removing old information from the database to prevent ongoing database growth and expansion.

Archiving

Blue Prism Archiving is used to extract specific data types of a certain age from the database for the purposes of retaining historic data externally for prolonged periods of time without requiring ever-increasing amounts of space within the SQL database.

The facility to re-import archived data is provided which allows the Blue Prism GUI to be used to view and traverse the historic information.

The following data is currently affected by archiving:

  • Session logs are extracted into a compressed XML file and removed from the database.
  • Process alerts that relate to the sessions logs being extracted are permanently deleted.

The process of archiving relies on the SQL database and therefore manual archiving should be performed under controlled conditions to limit the impact of this action on other users.
Additionally the SQL actions performed by archiving will cause SQL transaction logs to be generated and therefore it is recommended that, if the database is set to Full Recovery Mode, that a log backup is taken shortly after large archiving operations have completed to reduce the log size within the file.

Blue Prism recommends that a centralised archive location is defined and configured for appropriate access by the relevant users and resources that will be responsible for archiving. The permissions granted for the location will need to include the ability to create folders, and read/write files.

There are three options for archiving:

  • Manually via the user interface.
  • Automatically via the user interface.
  • Using the command line (automatec.exe).

The automatic and command line archiving actions provide the advanced option to permanently delete the applicable data without first extracting the data to folder location.

Within Blue Prism the logs are displayed using a tree structure based on the:

  • year, month and day that a given process was started.
  • name of the process.
  • runtime resource which executed it.
  • time at which it started.

Manual archiving is initiated by navigating to the Archiving tab (System Manager -> System -> Archiving) and ensuring that manual mode is selected.

The user can select a number of individual items or branches in the tree for export, as well as the destination folder where the archived information will be stored. Blue Prism creates a folder structure within the target location representing a similar structure to how the data is presented via the Blue Prism user interface.

Scheduled archiving is configured by navigating to the Archiving tab (System Manager -> System -> Archiving) and ensuring that automatic mode is selected.

With automatic mode there are a number of configurable options:

  • Resource – The name of the resource that will be used for the archiving operation.
  • Mode – Provides the option to either: export and archive the files prior to automatically removing the data from the system; or alternatively to permanently delete the data without archiving.
  • Archive folder – The location where the archived data will be placed. Blue Prism creates a folder structure within the target location representing a similar structure to how the data is presented via the Blue Prism user interface.
  • Archive older than – A configurable value that indicates what age the data must be to be processed by the scheduled archive action.

The frequency at which archiving procedures are initiated is automatically determined by Blue Prism to encourage frequent, low-volume, archiving rather than occasional processing of larger amounts of data.

A command line method of AutomateC.exe can be used to trigger an archive. Archived files exported using the command line will be placed in the folder location specified on the Archiving tab within Blue Prism System Manager.

If configured for single sign-on the command to archive data older than 3 months is:

AutomateC.exe /archive /sso /age 3m

If configured for native authentication the same command is:

AutomateC.exe /archive /user "username" "password" /age 3m

When triggered by the command line the archiving process is carried out by the resource on which the command is executed. It is therefore necessary for the chosen resource to have full read/write/execute access to the folder location specified within Blue Prism.

If there is a desire to simply delete the archived information rather than storing it to a folder location, the /delete switch can be used:

>AutomateC.exe /archive /sso /age 3m /delete

AutomateC.exe /archive /user "username" "password" /age 3m /delete

Use of the /delete switch permanently deletes the data and therefore removes the ability to retain or re-import the archived information at a later time.

Audit logs

There is currently no in-product mechanism for deleting audit logs. The tables are generally quite small and grow slowly, except for the inclusion of historic versions of process and business objects.

Database updates

Periodically Blue Prism software updates also require updates or changes to the Blue Prism database. Such database updates can be manually driven from within the product, or alternatively SQL scripts can be provided to allow the updates to be applied manually on the SQL Server.

It is recommended that a full database backup takes place and is subsequently verified prior to any manual database updates or modifications.

Session logs

There are a number of options for managing and deleting session log information:

  • Using the Archiving feature (recommended) – This includes manual, automatic and command line archiving (or permanent deletion) of session logs and can be aligned with the organisation’s data retention policy.
  • Via the User Interface – Within Control Room, select the items to be deleted and choose to Delete.

Work queues

Historic work items can be permanently deleted using any of the following methods:

Via the User interface – Within Control Room, select the items to be deleted and choose to Delete Worked Cases.

Using a Blue Prism process – A custom Blue Prism process can be configured to review and delete the appropriate items using the Delete Processed Items action.

Command line – AutomateC.exe includes a /queueclearworked command which can be used to permanently delete worked items.

It is important to ensure that work items are not required as part of a data retention policy prior to deleting them as there is presently no facility for archiving or re-importing them.