Using the help

Access the online help from the Blue Prism user interface

To help you understand and use Blue Prism, an online documentation system is available. The easiest way to access the help system is to press F1 from anywhere in the Blue Prism client. The online help will open at the topic relevant to the area of Blue Prism you are currently viewing.

More options are available from the Blue Prism help menu:

  • Show Help Topic – The same action as pressing F1 – displays the topic relevant to the current screen or dialog.
  • Open Product Help – Opens the documentation system at the home page.
  • Acknowledgements – Provides access to details of the third-party software that is included in Blue Prism with associated license information.
  • Guided Tour – View a short tutorial to get you started with Blue Prism.
  • API Documentation – Access the documentation for the installed visual business objects.
  • Request Support – Access the fault reporting topic and to find out how customers with appropriate support packages can contact us.
  • About – View our copyright information and check which version of Blue Prism and .NET framework is installed.

Search the documentation system

To find information in the documentation system, enter text in the search field in the page header and press Enter or click the search button.

You can search from any topic in the documentation system.

Search for keywords, such as runtime resource rather than questions or sentences. The search returns all topics that include the keywords and each keyword is highlighted when a topic is accessed from the search results. If a matching result is found in drop-down text, the drop-down is automatically expanded when the page is accessed.

To make a topic easier to read, click the remove highlight button on the topic toolbar.

The easiest way to find what you're looking for is to search for information as described above. However, there are a number of other navigation methods to help you to access the content you require and navigate through the system.

Table of contents

Select the required topic from the table of contents menu on the left side of the page.

The topic displays. The example below shows that:

  1. The topic is highlighted in the table of contents. This topic is contained under a parent topic, which is expanded providing access to other related topics in this section.
  2. A mini table of contents displays to the right side of the topic. This displays the top-level sections in the topic. Click on a section title to jump to that area of the topic.

If you have reduced your browser window width, the table of contents is accessed from a menu icon in the top corner of the screen.

The mini table of contents is not available in this view. A toolbar with navigation controls appropriate to mobile devices and other smaller screens displays at the bottom of the page in this view.

Previous/next topic

Move back and forward through topics in the order they are listed in the table of contents.

View the PDF guide

To give you the flexibility to choose how you access our information, we make much of our content available in both HTML and PDF formats.

If the topic is included in a PDF guide, you will see the PDF button on the toolbar. Click this to open the PDF in a new tab. Once opened, you can download and save the PDF locally so you can access the content when you need it.

Email us

We are always interested to receive your feedback or comments regarding our documentation and how we can improve it for you. If you can't find the information you need, or if you notice something that is incorrect or that could be explained better, click the email button and drop us a message.

Please note, if you are requiring product support, please contact the Support Team direct. To raise a support ticket, log in to the Blue Prism support portal.

Use the documentation system offline

If you are unable to access the internet or want to provide the product documentation via an internal system, shared drive, or on individual machines, the files can be downloaded and made accessible by specifying the location in Blue Prism's system settings.

  1. Download the files from the Blue Prism customer portal.
  2. Extract the ZIP file to the required location. The documentation system can be hosted on an internal network, a shared directory, or placed in a folder on a local machine.
  3. In the Blue Prism interactive client, click the System tab and select System > Settings.

  4. In the Offline Help section, select the check box and enter the URL or folder location of the parent directory of the documentation system files.

    The files in the specified location are now accessed when called from the Blue Prism user interface.

To revert back to using the server-based help, deselect Enable Offline Help.

Troubleshooting the documentation system

A documentation site is not available and a Not Found message displays

This can happen when we are publishing a documentation site. Depending on the size of the documentation site, publishing can take up to 10 minutes during which time all pages for that documentation system will not be available and such a message will display in your browser.

If you cannot access one of our documentation sites, please go to our home page and select another version of the documentation for the product. Although there will be differences between versions, much of the information you seek will be available.

If the issue persists, please contact us at [email protected].

Page is not available

The following message displays when changing the version or language of the documentation system you are viewing and the current page does not exist in the version you have selected:

This often means that the page was only introduced in the version you are currently looking at – perhaps it is a new feature or you were viewing the release notes for the latest release. If you still want to access a different version, view a different page, such as the home page, and then change the version or language.

There are display issues with the documentation site I am trying to view

After we publish a new version of a documentation system, particularly if there have been changes to the design, you may notice some anomalies with the display, such as the table of contents area being blank or some of the images not displaying. This can happen when the files are being overwritten on our server. These issues are normally fixed by refreshing your browser or clearing your cache by pressing CTRL + F5.

The search hangs and no results are returned

Occasionally when searching one of the documentation systems, something goes wrong and the progress icon displays continuously and the search does not complete. Again, this usually happens following a re‑publish and is normally fixed by refreshing your browser or clearing your cache by pressing CTRL + F5.

I keep getting asked to confirm I'm human

To ensure we keep our systems safe and to prevent them being spammed, we check for unusual activity on our documentation systems. This means that you may occasionally be asked to enter some characters to prove you are not a bot.

I want to know when a documentation system has been updated and what has changed

At the bottom of each of our documentation site pages is a Last updated link. This shows you the date the current version of the documentation was published and if you click the link, it will take you to a summary of the changes in that version.