Capture 4.0: March 2023

Solution Designer

Solution Designer enables users to group branches into zones to create a typical RPA solution design. When Solution Designer is enabled, users can arrange branches and decision points into zones in the same way that you can arrange groups of steps into branches. The resulting process is easier to use in Blue Prism, as zones, branches, and groups are organized into separate sub-pages that are added as Page stages on the Work page. The Solution Designer mode is disabled by default.

When the Solution Designer mode is enabled, users can organize processes into an unlimited number of zones, where:

• Zones can be renamed or deleted.
• Branches can be connected to decisions inside a zone.
• Zones can be connected to decisions outside of another zone.
• Zones can be saved from one process and loaded to another.
• Each zone is automatically given a unique number to help users identify it within a process.
• The number of zones in the process is added to the Process Information screen.

for more information, see the online documentation.

When Solution Designer is enabled, the following elements have new individual context menus:

• Zones
• Groups (and multiple groups when more than one group is selected)
• Branches
• Decision points inside a zone
• Decision points outside of a zone

The options available in each menu are specific to the element where the context menu was opened.

When Solution Designer is enabled, the following export options are available:

• Capture process (.json)
• Blue Prism release (.bprelease)
• Blue Prism business objects only (.bprelease)

Other export options are not available for use with Solution Designer, because they relate to Capture processes created without the use of Solution Designer.

Export

A new Chorus BPM (.bpmn) option has been added to the Export options, allowing users to export a Chorus BPM^TM (Business Process Management) file.

The Blue Prism best practice process template is now applied to the BPRELEASE export by default and cannot be disabled, unless a new custom template is uploaded (see CAP-3669). All features related to the best practice template have been updated to reflect this enhancement.

• The option to apply best practices to the BPRELEASE export has been removed from the Export settings.
• Any branches or connections excluded from the BPRELEASE export are no longer highlighted on the Edit decision screen and do not display in orange on the main process screen.
• The warning message that displays when a connection is excluded in the BPRELEASE export has been reworded to better reflect the default best practice layout.

It is now possible for users to upload an existing Blue Prism process to use as a custom process template in the Export settings. This ensures that processes recorded in Capture are consistently displayed when opened in Blue Prism, and that all processes meet users' company requirements. When a custom process template is uploaded, it replaces the default Blue Prism best practice process template. A Work page is required in uploaded template so that Capture can populate the BPRELEASE file.

The following enhancements have been made to the exported Process Definition Document (PDD):

• Hours and minutes (HH:mm) have been added to the PDD version history table so that users can see the time difference between versions of the PDD that were exported on the same day.
• A maximum height limit has been implemented for screenshots to improve the look and readability of the exported PDD.
• Hyperlinks to pages in the exported PDD document have been added to make the PDD easier to navigate. These include links from the Decision point page to the relevant group, and links from the Step page to the relevant Decision point page.
• The pages in the Process diagrams section of the PDD have been set to landscape for better readability.

When Create object is enabled for a step action, Navigate and Wait stages are included in the auto-generated object information for that step. Navigate and Wait stages are automatically added to the business object when the BPRELEASE file is imported into Blue Prism, so users do not have to add these manually.

Settings

The following options have been added to the Settings tabs:

• Clean up BPRELEASE file on export – Automatically removes actions that contain interactions with the Windows Search Application on export.
• Automatically add Launch actions – Automatically adds launch action steps as the first interaction with each application.
• Custom process template – Allows users to upload a custom BPRELEASE template.

General

To improve usability, the general user interface (GUI) has been improved, as follows:

• Visual ports have been added to decision points, zones, and branches to help users to easily make connections between them.

• Connections can be drawn from the top and bottom ports of decision points, as well as from the right port, which helps to create a clearer view of the process.

• Users drag and drop elements on the process map, and the elements automatically snap to the grid.

• When users reposition any element on the process map, they can undo and redo the action.

• Users can lock the drag and drop functionality to prevent accidental repositioning of elements.

• Users can click and drag anywhere in the process map or mini-map to bring different parts of the process map into view.

• A Zoom to fit button has been implemented which brings the whole process into view.

• A new Auto-layout button has been added which allows users to automatically reorder the elements on the process map to create a clearly organized layout. Auto-layout is applied when opening any processes that were created in earlier versions of Capture.

Step actions

When users perform the same action multiple times during a Capture recording, such as pressing Enter, each individual press is added to the Step actions pane as a unique step action. To differentiate them, an incremental number is added to the end of each business object action name after the first occurrence. For example, if the user pressed Enter multiple times, the first occurrence would be named PressEnter, the second PressEnter1, the third PressEnter2 and so on.

Export

The export time is now displayed in the 24‑hour format in the exported PDD. Previously, it was incorrectly displayed in the 12‑hour format.

A minimum width and height has been implemented for the crop area of step action screenshots to prevent users from creating an invalid image. Previously, if an image was cropped too narrowly, the image became invalid and the PDD export failed.

An issue has been fixed related to the condition names displayed in the exported process map (PDF). All conditions are now displayed correctly in the exported process map for each connection. Previously, only one condition displayed.

The BPRELEASE export no longer fails if either of the phrases Initialise or Clean Up appear in an action name. Previously, the export would fail because these phrases were reserved as names for default pages in the business object.