DocsBlue Prism Desktop 1.2: December 2023
About this release
The table below summarizes the core components that need to be installed in a dedicated SS&C | Blue Prism® Desktop environment. This environment will then be accessed from users’ machines via the Desktop client.
Download the installers from the Blue Prism Portal via Product > Related Products > Blue Prism Desktop.
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Blue Prism Desktop |
1.2 |
This release of the Desktop client application. |
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Blue Prism Enterprise |
7.3 |
This release requires Blue Prism Enterprise to be this version, with a Blue Prism Desktop license applied. For details of this release of Blue Prism, see Blue Prism 7.2 release notes. |
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Blue Prism API |
7.3 |
The Blue Prism API version installed must always be the same as the Blue Prism Enterprise version number to use the API. See Blue Prism API for details of enhancements and improvements to the API reference and functionality. |
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Digital Worker API |
7.3 |
The Digital Worker API version installed must always be the same as the Blue Prism Enterprise version number. |
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Authentication Server (Hub) |
4.7 |
The Desktop 1.2 release requires this version of Authentication Server for users to log onto Desktop. See Authentication Server for details on enhancements to the Authentication Server functionality. |
Known issues
A list of any prominent issues with this release is maintained in the knowledge base – click here for more information.
Secure development policy
SS&C Blue Prism’s secure development process is a market-leading, embedded security culture, focused on delivering security excellence through four key principles:
- Education – Providing up-to-date knowledge, information, and training to the development team.
- Evaluation – Regular reviews of our products using industry standard frameworks and security tools.
- Elimination – Remove potential threats through the evaluation of standards, compliance, and performance.
- Evolution – Continued improvement of our security program, ensuring alignment with our product technologies and by reacting effectively to new and emerging threats.
SS&C Blue Prism secure development is based on OWASP ASVS, ISO 27034 and GDPR Article 25 standards and practices. For more information, see SS&C Blue Prism's comprehensive secure development process.
Desktop enhancements
The new features and enhancements introduced in this version of Blue Prism Desktop cover the following areas:
Desktop client
For further guidance, see the Desktop user guide.
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Description of change |
Reference |
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Desktop users can now run sessions from multiple virtual machines configured on a single machine. This is to enable users to run multiple, concurrent Desktop sessions. |
BP-16747 |
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An issue where opening the Desktop client application could take more than a minute the first time the application was launched has been fixed. The issue was caused by simultaneous requests being sent to the Blue Prism and Digital Worker APIs. |
BP-16443 |
Blue Prism Enterprise – environments with a Desktop license
The following changes have been made to environments that have a Blue Prism Desktop license applied, to enable users to manage their processes appropriately. These include Desktop-only environments, and those with both a Desktop and an Enterprise license applied (dual license environments).
Process and Object Studio
The following changes have been made to Process and Object Studio when a Desktop license is applied. For more information, see Process and Object Studio with a Desktop license applied for details.
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Description of change |
Reference |
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The licensing model for Blue Prism Desktop has changed in this release. A Desktop license is now used per session, rather than being applied to a Desktop client installation on an individual resource, or per user. This means that available licenses can now be consumed on demand by any combination of users and machines, and it is no longer necessary to retire a resource in order to free up a license. If a user attempts to run a process and the number of available sessions has been reached, a message displays and they are returned to the Library tab. To support this enhancement, a new Concurrent Blue Prism Desktop Sessions dashboard view has been added to the Analytics screen in Blue Prism Enterprise. The dashboard shows the total number of concurrent Desktop sessions available, the number of sessions currently in use, and the number of sessions not currently in use. Existing licenses applied to Desktop version 1.0 or 1.1 will be automatically converted to the new license model upon upgrade, provided the Desktop license period hasn't expired, in which case a new license is not required. For more information, see Desktop licenses. |
BP-16399 BP-16406 BP-16883 |
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Sessions that exceed the eight hour session time limit are now automatically terminated if the user that started the process attempts to log into another Desktop instance. |
BP-16762 |
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A new Work Queues - Desktop internal business object, which includes an Add To Queue action, can be used in a Desktop process to add data, collected through Desktop, to a specific work queue in Blue Prism Enterprise. The output can then be taken from the resulting collection and fed back into the Desktop process. This business object is only available for Action stages if the Desktop debug mode is enabled. For more information, see Process development for Desktop. |
BP-13555 |
Control Room
The following changes have been made to Control Room when a Desktop license is applied. For more information, see Control Room with a Desktop license applied.
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Description of change |
Reference |
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Users with Desktop administrator permissions can now terminate sessions in Control Room using the Immediate Stop menu option. This enables administrators to stop crashed sessions from unnecessarily consuming a session license. To ensure the available sessions are correctly reflected, the session status displayed on the Control Room is checked against the Blue Prism database every five minutes. |
BP-16675 BP-16765 |
Fixes and minor improvements
The fixes and minor improvements included in this release cover the following areas:
Desktop client
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Description of change |
Reference |
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Desktop processes now run successfully, regardless of the time zone set in the environment. Previously, Desktop could not write session logs in environments with time zones that were eight hours ahead or behind GMT, such as Australia and New Zealand, which prevented processes from running. |
BP-15365 |
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The version of Electron used in the Desktop client has been upgraded to 22.3.24. This is to address CVE-2023-4863, which flags a potential heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability found in earlier versions of Electron. |
BP-16803 |
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An issue has been fixed where clicking the Back button on the History > Unable to load group page only refreshed the page. Now the user is taken back one page to the Unable to load Library page. |
BP-14233
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The database performance of Desktop has been improved in environments with a large amount of processes/objects, by ensuring that when a process is loaded, Desktop now only loads the process dependencies for that specific process. |
BP-12567 |
Blue Prism Enterprise (environments with a Desktop license)
The following changes have been made to environments that have a Blue Prism Desktop license applied. These include Desktop-only environments, and those with both a Desktop and an Enterprise license applied (dual license environments).
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Description of change |
Reference |
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The Last Time Logged In filter in the Control Room > Resources panel, which is only available for users that have a Desktop license applied, now works as expected. Previously, this filter did not return any results. |
BP-14180 |
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An issue has been fixed where the mechanism (triggered when a user logs into Desktop), which is intended to clean up sessions based on username and resource name, was only using the username. This resulted in running sessions left in a running state being incorrectly terminated. |
BP-16671 |
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In environments that only have a Blue Prism Desktop license and not a Blue Prism Enterprise license, any AutomateC commands that are related to areas of the system only available to Blue Prism Enterprise are now disabled. The following AutomateC commands will now return an error if an attempt is made to run them in a Desktop-only environment:
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BP-5793
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When a process is run, Blue PrismDesktop now only loads the process dependencies (including sub-processes and objects) for that specific process, and stores them in a cache. Previously, all objects for all processes were loaded. This improves the database performance in environments with a large number of processes and/or objects. |
BP-12567 |
| The date/time format in the Output stage now matches the format in the startup parameters and mid-process parameters in Desktop (this is controlled by the user's Windows settings, and the default is DD/MM/YYYY. Previously, dates/times in the Output stage always displayed as YYYY/MM/DD. | BP-14273 |
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Because the underlying functionality is not currently available for Desktop, the SOAP Web Services business object is no longer available for selection in Action stages for Desktop processes. |
BP-17375 |
Digital Worker API
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Description of change |
Reference |
|---|---|
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The Digital Worker API has been updated to fix an issue where it failed to successfully return a process’s dependencies from any sub-processes, or if two objects were dependent on each other. Such dependencies are now accurately returned. |
BP-13171 |
