Blue Prism Release Notes 6.2.1

Release Notes and Upgrade Guide
Release Notes
Version: 6.2.1
Document Version: 1.0
For more information please contact:

info@blueprism.com | UK: +44 (0) 870 879 3000 | US: +1 888 757 7476
www.blueprism.com
Contents
Contents 2
Trademarks and Copyrights 3
Introduction Blue Prism version 6 4
Upgrading Blue Prism 5
Reviewing Upgrade Notices 5
Applying Updates 6
Migrating from .NET remoting to WCF 6
Database Upgrade 7
Release Notes 9
Version 6.2.1: May 2018 9
Version 6.2: February 2018 12
Version 6.1: October 2017 16
Version 6.0: September 2017 21
Update notices 28
Upgrading from versions prior to 3.5.25 28
Upgrading from versions prior to 6.0 30
Invalid upgrade paths 31
Commercial in Confidence Page 2 of 31

Trademarks and Copyrights
The information contained in this document is the proprietary and confidential information of Blue Prism Limited and should not
be disclosed to a third-party without the written consent of an authorised Blue Prism representative. No part of this document
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying without the
written permission of Blue Prism Limited.
© Blue Prism Limited, 2001 – 2018
®Blue Prism is a registered trademark of Blue Prism Limited
All trademarks are hereby acknowledged and are used to the benefit of their respective owners.
Blue Prism is not responsible for the content of external websites referenced by this document.
Blue Prism Limited, Centrix House, Crow Lane East, Newton-le-Willows, WA12 9UY, United Kingdom
Registered in England: Reg. No. 4260035. Tel: +44 870 879 3000. Web: www.blueprism.com

Introduction Blue Prism version 6
Effective digital strategies require a connected Enterprise where technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning
and sentiment analysis easily integrate with business operations to deliver value. The Blue Prism v6 series serves as the
“Operating System for the Digital Workforce” to bring your digital strategies to life fast and securely with Robotic Process
Automation (RPA) that is:
• Intelligent - Robots that understand context, derive meaning & anticipate change
• Connected - Bringing people, machines & processes together with “best of breed” technologies
• Easy-to-Control - Flexible 24/7 capability with full visibility, control & absolute compliance
Our approach enables Blue Prism to provide the backbone of your digital strategy. Blue Prism v6 has been developed alongside
over 400 customers, leveraging best-of-breed technologies to provide a digital workforce that offers the most productivity,
adaptability, scalability and security. The following serves as the Release Notes and Upgrade Guide to the first of the Blue Prism v6
series, v6.0.

Upgrading Blue Prism
The Blue Prism update process is designed to be both flexible and simple and as such it is possible to upgrade directly from one
version of Blue Prism to a newer version without needing to step-through each intermediate update. E.g. a system can be
updated directly from v4.2.5 to the latest version.
Applying updates to Blue Prism should include the following steps prior to updating production environments:
1. Review the associated Release Notes, available via the User Portal. The notes contain a summary of the fixes and product
enhancements included in a given release.
2. Using the Release Notes, verify if there are any special notices relating to the upgrade path being followed (e.g. if there
are known actions that are required as part of the upgrade being applied; if a new license key is required; if an update to
Login Agent is required; or any known implications).
3. Take a backup of the Blue Prism Database(s).
4. Apply the update to Dev and Test environments to validate the appropriate processing of designed processes (functional
and non-functional verification is recommended). Non-functional testing could include reviewing the average handling
time of core processes before and after the update has been applied.
5. Optionally, and where relevant, update existing processes to take account of new or improved features if these are
desired and carry out appropriate testing. Where this includes importing the latest version of provided VBOs, all
processes which reference these should be re-verified.
If assistance is required, please contact Blue Prism Product Support (support@blueprism.com).
Reviewing Upgrade Notices

Special considerations are required when upgrading from versions prior to those listed below:
• 3.5.25
• 4.2.16
• 4.2.35
• 5.0.5
• 5.0.23
• 5.0.24
• 5.0.29
• 6.0
For example, if a deployment currently running 5.0.21 is being upgraded to Version 6.1 it is essential that the information for
updates prior to 5.0.23, 5.0.24, 5.0.29 and 6.0 are followed.
Full information on the considerations for these versions is provided within the Update notices section within this document.

Applying Updates
The recommended procedure for applying updates to a given environment is as follows:
1. Stop any currently executing processes or schedules.
2. Close or exit all connected Blue Prism clients (e.g. Interactive Clients, Runtime Resources, Blue Prism Server).
3. Back up the database (data files and transaction logs).
4. Install the new version by executing the supplied MSI installer on all devices. Commonly there is no requirement to
remove a previous version first - review the Update Notices to verify if the upgrade path being followed does require the
previous version to be uninstalled prior to a new version being applied. Subject to use of application distribution software,
this task could be fully automated.
5. If there are database changes for the upgrade path (this is indicated in the Release Notes) these can either be applied via
an in-product option, or through use of SQL Upgrade Script that is applied manually.
The database changes will need to be applied to each environment affected by the update. (See following section for
details).
6. Once the database changes have been applied (if required), on one client use the various connections to log into each of
the Blue Prism environments to validate the install and that there are no further on-screen messages.
7. If Login Agent is used within the environment and it is necessary to apply an updated version (this is indicated in the
Release Notes) it should be installed by executing the supplied MSI installer on all appropriate devices.
Once Blue Prism has been installed the Login Agent installation files can be found within an Installers folder within the
Blue Prism install location.
8. Following the update of Login Agent, install the updated Login Agent Blue Prism Release into the relevant environment
and ensure that the relevant processes reference the updated Login Agent VBO.
9. Start the Blue Prism Server service on each Blue Prism Server and resume all Blue Prism clients.
Migrating from .NET remoting to WCF

After a successful upgrade to v6, it is strongly recommended that the server communication method is changed to WCF. To
complete this process, the following steps should be taken:
1. Select an appropriate WCF communication method which aligns with the deployment architecture.
2. If using a WCF method with Transport Encryption, generate the required server certificate per server.
3. Stop all component devices.
4. Make the necessary server configuration changes.
5. Start the server.
6. Update the connection settings on all components.
A successful upgrade must be completed and verified prior to updating the server communication method.

Database Upgrade
The database upgrade can be applied either via:
• An in-product option, or
• Through use of SQL Upgrade Script that is applied manually.
In-product upgrade
On a single client (typically the Application Server), click File > Connections. Ensure the relevant connection is selected and click
Upgrade Database.
The connection to the database will require necessary database permissions to carry out the required changes.

Directly executed SQL Script (advanced)
The SQL upgrade script for the relevant Blue Prism version must be applied against all databases which are to be upgraded.
Once the database upgrade script has been executed against the relevant databases, the following command must be run against
each of the affected Blue Prism environments from a single client (typically the Application Server).
• Single Sign On - automatec.exe /refreshdependencies /dbconname “[DBConName]” /sso
• Blue Prism Native Authentication - automatec.exe /refreshdependencies /dbconname “[DBConName]” /user [Username]
[Password]
• DBConnName - The name of the Blue Prism Connection (as displayed within the client interface on the device
where the command is being executed).
• Username - The username used to log into the environment accessed using the specified Blue Prism Connection
(only required where not using single sign-on for the Blue Prism platform).
• Password - The password used to log into the environment accessed using the specified Blue Prism Connection
(only required where not using single sign-on for the Blue Prism platform).

Release Notes
Version 6.2.1: May 2018
Notices
Database This release requires the Blue Prism database to be version 234.
Changes
Login Agent The version of Login Agent that is provided with this release of Blue Prism has the same functionality as the
version provided with Blue Prism 5.0.33.
Important This patch release is built on version 6.2 of Blue Prism and forms a valid upgrade path to future production
Notices releases.
Certifications
This release has been verified as complying with the below standards by Veracode – an independent application security
organization.
Static Code Analysis VL4. Veracode Score: 100/100. Further information

PCI DSS PCI DSS Version 3.2 compliant in sections 6.1, 6.3.2, 6.5, 6.6, and 11.3.2
PCI PA-DSS PCI PA-DSS Version 3.2 Sections 5.1.4, 5.2, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, and 7.1.3.
OWASP Further information
SANS Top 25 Further information
CERT Secure Coding Further information
A compliance highlight summary report is available upon request via Product Support.
Fixes and minor improvements

The following fixes and minor improvements are introduced with this version.
Description of change Reference

A fix has been applied whereby, following an Application Server service restart, scheduled jobs failed to run. If the bg-1350
schedule was restarted manually using the Run Now feature, the scheduler reinitializes. This has now been fixed so
that all schedules restart as expected.
A schedule configured to run a number of tasks in sequence was attempting to start all tasks simultaneously, bg-1134
resulting in a KeyNotFoundException. This error is now prevented and the schedule executes jobs correctly.
An issue that may have caused an upgrade failure if the default dbo schema was not used in the database has been bg-1327
addressed by removing hard-coded references to this schema within the 6.2 database scripts. This issue only
affected environments created using or being upgraded to version 6.2. Database objects, incorrectly created with a
dbo schema when upgrading to 6.2, will be automatically updated to use the appropriate schema when applying a
database script containing this fix.
When carrying out a database upgrade, the error reporting has been improved to provide greater visibility of the bg-1337
specific change that is presenting the issue.
A fix has been implemented to address a prolonged connectivity issue between the Resource and the Application bg-1592
Server which caused the Resource to stop attempting to re-establish the connection. This made it unavailable
within the Blue Prism environment until the Runtime Resource is restarted.

A fix has been applied so that Runtime Resources correctly reconnect following a SQL Server Database restart. bg-1438
Previously, an issue introduced in 6.0, meant that when a Resource attempted to reconnect to the database either
directly or via an Application Server, an error reported that the listener was offline and tried to restart every two
minutes even though it was already online.
The following improvements have been made to WCF connectivity: bg-1482
• The data packets generated when creating or updating schedules over a WCF server connection have been bg-1555
optimised to improve performance and reduce the potential for SQL timeouts.
• An update to the re-connection mechanism has been applied to cater for situations where, following an
interruption in the connection between a Runtime and the Application Server, the Runtime reported that it
was unable to calculate the run mode of certain processes.
An issue that was preventing some Resources reconnecting following a network outage on the Application Server bg-1598
has been fixed. The Resources failed to authenticate and log in after a network outage of 90 seconds or more
between the Resources and the Application when using Blue Prism native authentication. The following error was
produced on affected resources:
Failed to shutdown Login Agent Resource on Port:0
Unathorized: User not logged in
It is now possible to select the parent region when using a relative search mode with a coordinate-based region. bg-1556
It is now possible to alter the process behavior when applying updates to a collection that was copied from an bg-1321
inner, or nested collection. This optional change affects the relationship between the original and nested collection
as data is passed by value, rather than by reference, so that changes are not reflected in the original collection. This
is implemented on a per process basis and requires a manual update to the process XML, via export and re-import.
For advice on applying this change, see the associated Knowledge Base article.
When using Active Accessibility, it is now possible to select any item from a combo box drop-down list irrespective bg-1315
of whether the item is not currently visible due to being presented within a scroll list. Prior to this fix, if scrolling
through the drop-down was required to locate an item, an error occurred.
The attribute named Match Index is now available when modelling UI elements using UI Automation Navigator. This bg-1440
aligns it in line with other spy modes that provide this option.
Login Agent
The installers for the latest version of Login Agent, at the time that this Blue Prism release was made available, are provided
within the Installers folder within the Blue Prism install location.
The version of Login Agent that is provided with this release of Blue Prism has the same functionality as the version provided
with Blue Prism 5.0.33 and all previous versions of Blue Prism 6.

There are no applicable changes with this version of Blue Prism
Login Agent Sample Processes and Visual Business Object updates
There are no applicable changes with this version of Blue Prism.

Visual Business Object Updates
A number of Visual Business Objects (VBOs) are provided within the Blue Prism release but changes are only applied when a
specific VBO is explicitly imported.
Any use of these VBOs should be re-verified following an import to ensure compatibility with any change of behaviour.
Object - MS Excel VBO

This VBO was added in error in 6.2 and has now been removed. The functionality provided in this VBO duplicated bg-1310
that of the Object - MS Excel.
Object - MS Excel
The help text for this VBO has been updated to clarify appropriate use of the Show action with Office 2013 & 2016. bg-1310

Version 6.2: February 2018
Notices
Database This release requires the Blue Prism database to be version 233
Changes
Login Agent The version of Login Agent that is provided with this release of Blue Prism has the same functionality as the
version provided with Blue Prism 5.0.33.
Important None.
Notices
Certifications
organization.

Enhancements
The following new features and enhancements are introduced in this version of Blue Prism.

This version of Blue Prism has been certified for use with the Office 2016 editions of Excel and Word. At the time us-1334
of release, Office 2016 is the version that is provided as a local install when using Office 365. us-1335
Native support for UIA has been introduced with the addition of a dedicated Spy Mode and Application Navigator ep-19
which can be used when creating application models in Object Studio.
The UIA Application Navigator offers three tree-view displays of the automation elements available within the
target application, in descending order of detail presented on screen: Raw, Control and Content.
• Raw displays the full tree of automation elements which closely follows the native programmatic structure
of an application. This is the most detailed view available
• Control displays elements which show information to the user or enable the user to perform an action.
• Content contains elements which convey information in a user interface, including UI elements that can
receive keyboard focus.
UIA offers improvements in speed, accuracy and resilience over Active Accessibility (AA) when creating
automations. AA remains as supported spy-mode.
It is now possible to import Releases via the command line. Releases that are imported programmatically will use us-1505
pre-configured defaults to resolve environment import conflicts. This functionality is intended for use by advanced
Blue Prism users.

The automation design validation can now be set to warn or error if a Process or Object contains an exception type us-1194
that has not previously been used in the enviroment. This provides an elevated ability to ensure that only pre-
determined exception types can be used. When using this functionality, the following points need to be
considered:
• The list of exceptions currently in use in the enviroment is only generated once the Scan Business Objects
action (or Scan Processes) has been performed.
• Exception types now used or imported in Objects and Process are automatically added to the validated list
of permitted exceptions.
A new capability is provided to release database locks which can occur during archiving. The lock can be released us-909
by selecting 'Release Archive Lock' from the Archiving screen within the System panel. Once selected, the lock is
cleared from the database and an audit entry is created.
When a Resource first initializes, if an archive lock is in place, the Resource will automatically attempt to clear it.
Users with the Security - Manage Credentials permission can now create and update credentials using two us-1663
additional AutomateC command line actions - /createcredential and /updatecredential. By default, new
credentials will be created with 'all processes', 'all resources' and 'all security roles' permissions. The values of
existing credential properties can also be set and updated by using a /setcredentialproperty action.
A number of options have been introduced when exposing Processes and Objects as web services: us-1499
• Document/literal encoding can now be enforced when exposing a web service in the user-interface and us-1350
also via the command line with a /forcedoclitencoding switch. This will force all actions (including Initialize bg-1034
and Cleanup) to use the specified format. If this enforcement is not selected, the Initialise and Cleanup
actions will use RPC encoding, and the encoding for custom actions will be determined based on whether a
collection data type is defined as an input or output parameter.
• The web service address location that will be displayed within the WSDL of the service can now be
optionally configured with an override address. This option is configured through use of the
/wslocationprefix command line switch when starting a Runtime Resource. If no location is set, the
Resource will continue to be addressed either by the machine (short) name or FQDN as configured under
System Settings. The web service address location of a Resource can now be specified via an optional
/wslocationprefix command line switch. If no location is set, the Resource will continue to be addressed
either by the machine (short) name or FQDN.
• When calling a Process or Object which has been exposed as a web service, outputs that are simple types
no longer have an empty xml namespace (xmlns=""). For backwards compatibility, users can specify that a
Processes or Object using RPC encoding should continue to use legacy name spacing when first exposing
the Process or Object.
It is now possible to specify that a Runtime Resource should not start a HTTP end-point by applying an additional us-1500
/nohttp switch to a /resourcepc command. This option should only be used where the Resource is not required to
expose any Web Services and does not need to be controlled via the HTTP interface. Once set, HTTP requests to
the resource will not get a valid HTTP response.
An additional dashboard tile has been provided (License Information) which measures and displays license us-1491
entitlement vs usage for Concurrent Sessions, Published Processes and Resources. Only data relevant to the
deployment license is displayed.
The Runtime Resource HTTP End-point logging capability primarily provided to support Splunk integration has been us-1480
expanded to allow basic HTTP authentication. This is in addition to token-based authentication.
Downloading or exporting Audit or Session logs now results in an Audit Log entry. us-1063
us-1064

The following fixes and minor improvements are introduced with this version.

The responsiveness of several screens and controls has been improved when there are many Objects or us-1608
Proccesses present within an enviroment, such as when opening an Object or Process within the designer or
interacting with the tree-view in Process/Object Studio. A new loading modal has also been introduced.
The Runtime Resource start-up procedure now ignores invalid characters within the SSLCert value to address bg-971
issues whereby copying the thumbprint from the Certficates Store resulted in certificate errors being reported
within Blue Prism. Where invalid characters are found, a warning will be written to the event logs on the local
device.
Blue Prism licenses are now unloaded from memory when the user account is signed out of the Interactive Client. bg-1073
This resolves an issue whereby switching between environments causes the environment to report an incorrect
license allocation to that user.
An infinite loop no longer occurs when a schedule has been configured with an execution interval greater than the bg-440
available window of operation.
Calenders with no working days defined no longer generate an infinite loop when determining the next scheduled bg-1150
execution time.
An issue has been addressed whereby the import of large releases containing calenders and schedules over an bg-1042
Application Server connection would fail.
An exception no longer occurs when serializing or deserializing collections with large numbers of fields over an us-1505
Application Server connection that uses a WCF connection mode.
The Unlocking Wizard can now be used to successfully unlock failed Processes over an Application Server bg-1168
connection that uses a WCF connection mode.
From and To entires in Audit Logs now display correctly and are converted from UTC to Local time when displayed bg-1174
in the Audit Log viewer (which displays information in the viewing users Local time). This addresses an issue
whereby log entires would be incorrectly displayed across different days when viewed in the Audit Log viewer.
The Blue Prism installer now correctly checks that .NET 4.7 has been installed on the device before proceeding. us-1689
Image Regions are now successfully detected at run-time even if the top and bottom padding of the image location bg-1020
has been set to 0. Previously, the region would not be successfully located unless the padding was set to a value
greater than 0.
List Regions can now be utilized with the Relative Positioning location search method in Region Editor when bg-1019
creating process automations with Surface Automation techniques.
Element match values are now limited at 32,000 characters, this prevents UI crashes when using the Active bg-1084
Accessibility spy-mode to capture application elements.
It is no longer possible to assign a retired Resource to a credential. Retired resources are still visible when editing bg-1179
credentials to which they are currently associated.
Schedule startup parameters can now only be created and edited by users with the corresponding Create and Edit bg-947
Schedule permissions.
An issue where using the List View to view Session Logs caused the data to be displayed incorrectly has been bg-1027
addressed.
Group names are now ignored when looking up an Object in the group structure by name. Prior to this change, bg-1071
Processes/Objects calling an Object with the same name as the group it was part of would display a Missing Action
error in the Action drop-down.

A performance improvement has been made to improve the behavior when passing large data sets (i.e. 40+ fields bg-1109
in a collection) to the following actions: Add to Work Queue, Set Data, and Get Next Items. This improvement
affects use of these actions on a device that is connected to a Blue Prism server using a WCF connection mode.
Processes exposed as Web Services are no longer hidden when configuring Process Alerts. bg-1196
Login Agent


Object – MS Excel
The VBO has been certified for us with the Office 2016 Edition of Excel.
Object – MS Word
The VBO has been certified for us with the Office 2016 Edition of Word. -
Utility – JSON
A compiler error message is no longer presented when editing the VBO. bg-1056
Utility – Split Collection

An issue has been resolved whereby the Split Collection Action was not able to successfully split the data from one bg-1096
column of the source collection into multiple target collections.

Version 6.1: October 2017
Notices
Changes
Login The version of Login Agent that is provided with this release of Blue Prism has the same functionality as the
Agent version provided with Blue Prism 5.0.33.
Important This version requires all Blue Prism devices to be configured with .NET Framework 4.7.
Notices The information and guidance provided under the heading Upgrading from Versions prior to 6.0 must be
reviewed as part of the upgrade procedure. This version is built on 6.0.
Certifications
organization.


Enhancements
The following new features and enhancements are introduced in this version of Blue Prism.

This version of Blue Prism has been certified by Veracode as PCI DSS Version 3.2 compliant in sections 6.1, 6.3.2,
6.5, 6.6, and 11.3.2 and PCI PA-DSS Version 3.2 Sections 5.1.4, 5.2, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, and 7.1.3.
Runtime Resources that secure inbound connections are now configured to use TLS 1.2 by default, this includes us-1191
instructional and web service connections in addition to outbound HTTPS connections.
Session log data for external consumption introduced in 6.0 is now directed to a new event log - BP Analytics. This us-1151
enables analytics from multiple services on the same machine to be differentiated by using the event source.
Event sources are created for each server config in the format BP Analytics Service - {server config name}.
A number of updates have been made to the audit codes used by Blue Prism when recording audit events: us-1018
• Release Manager audit events now use a code prefix of E. Previously, Release Manager events shared the us-1021
code prefix of R with Resource events.
• Scheduler audit event codes now increment using 4 digits, rather than 5, which makes them consistent with
other audit event code patterns.
A new MainframeSendKey capability is provided within a Navigate stage of new Business Objects associated with an us-1274
Application Model configured to use a HLLAPI or .NET API mainframe connection. This provides a new mechanism bg-293
for sending ASCII text and control characters such as {enter}. The help has been updated to provide additional
information.
A new option named Generate Support Information has been added to the BPDiagnostics utility that will allow an us-1272
elevated user to manually generate a package of diagnostic information within a zip file.
The zip file contains information about the configuration of Blue Prism and associated utilities on the local machine
such as:
• Blue Prism installation and configuration information (inc. Login Agent and MAPIEx)
• Operating system and local security setting configuration
• Applications installed and running on the device
• Networking configuration
• Event logs
Release manager now supports the inclusion of the newly introduced Published Dashboards within a release us-1188
package to allow the porting of these between environments. It is necessary for users who wish to import a
Published Dashboard to be granted the Import Published Dashboard permission. Users who have the Import Global
Dashboard role at the time the update is applied with be auto-granted this new role.

The following of fixes and minor improvements are introduced with this version.

Several improvements have been made to the UI when using the Interactive Client with a Japanese locale. Issues bg-911
which have been addressed include: bg-915
• An over-extended label which previously prevented use of the Number of Attempts at Writing a Log Entry bg-916
in Logging Options field under Process Information. bg-918
• The Control Room UI not being displayed correctly when re-sizing the screen.
• The edit user form re-type password value being incorrectly unpopulated.
• Layout of the start and end stage forms to appropriately present the intended fields.
The Collect Utilization and Productivity Statistic setting can now be enabled and disabled without having to restart bg-815
the Application Server for the setting to take effect.
The default Encryption Scheme method is now set to AES-256 AesCryptoService when configuring a new bg-908
Encryption Scheme via the Server Configuration utility and the Interactive Client.
This aligns with the default setting applied when using command line options.
The mechanism used to load groups into the Resources-Management and Workflow-Queues tree-views in System us-1179
Manager has been made more performant when handling large numbers of records.
Importing a release now occurs as a background operation to improve performance and provide a progress bg-950
indication when importing over a WCF connection
The background calculation process for determining the next run time of a schedule in the Scheduler has been bg-944
made more efficient. This primarily affects scenarios where there is a large volume of schedules set to run bg-826
concurrently.
The region mode searching logic has been updated to prevent a memory AccessViolationExeption being presented bg-1011
when using searching for a region that is configured with a position type of relative. The error was presented when
the location of the parent region was such that the expected position of the associated child region is outside of the
acceptable search area.
The 64-bit installer has been updated to address a dependency issue that affected the managedspylib functionality us-1251
and prevented it from loading.
Auto-archiving has been updated to automatically delete orphaned sessions to reduce the likelihood of a Specified bg-529
Cast is not Valid exception being presented that indicated that users need to manually delete these records
(BPASession records where statusid=6) prior to using archiving functionality.
Blank lines in the results of the capabilities (caps) command no longer results in an exception being presented. bg-909
Runtime Resources which have been configured to be private are now only controllable by the allocated user bg-907
when using telnet.
Additionally the telnet capabilities (caps) command has been restricted such that it is only available to
authenticated users.
An issue introduced in 6.0 whereby session logs were not generated by an executing process if that process bg-951
featured a sub-process has been addressed. The action of the sub-process exiting and returning the parent process
caused the session logs to stop being capture.
An issue has been addressed whereby Blue Prism would crash when trying to launch or attach to the RUMBA bg-876
mainframe emulator application.

Changing the name of a user in Active Directory no longer results in an unhandled exception when refreshing the bg-906
user list in Security - Users.
An issue has been addressed whereby passwords were being submitted using an incorrect format to Java bg-834
applications when using a Write Stage to write a password from a data item set as Text.
Users signing out of the Blue Prism Client when process alerts are configured will no longer receive an error if they bg-828
select to allow alerts to continue to be received.
The logic used to ensure that there is always a system administrator account defined in an environment configured bg-963
to use Blue Prism native authentication has been updated to address a scenario where the action of deleting a non-
system admin user was incorrectly prevented.
An update has been made to the designer validation logic so that adding an un-configured Navigate stage no longer bg-967
results in an error being reported.
An error is no longer presented upon disconnection from the AttachMate Extra emulator. bg-974
The mechanism used to determine the application directory has been updated to be based on a library rather than bg-1015
an executable.
Login Agent


Object - MS Excel
The input parameter used for the workbook name for the Is Read Only action is now set to a Text datatype rather bg-895
than Number. This avoids the error which occurred previously when using the action. bg-864
The Save Workbook action has been updated to address an issue which resulted in dates being saved in the format bg-978
MM/DD/YY. Dates are now saved in the locale specific format of the system being used.
The mechanism used when Excel is instructed to exit has been updated to address a scenario where Excel is slow bg-995
to fully exit.
Utility - File Management

Previously, the Get Files Action retrieved the Created, Last Accessed and Last Written entry of each file in UTC. The bg-846
entries were then handled as Local datetimes and converted to UTC when outputted as part of a Collection.
The DateTime mode of columns containing datetimes are now set to UTC and outputted as UTC.
This change is now reflected within the v6 Data Sheet – Date and Time Handling.
Utility - Strings
Redundant columns are no longer added in the output when using the ParseCSV action which improves bg-900
performance.

Version 6.0: September 2017
Notices
Changes
Login The version of Login Agent that is provided with this release of Blue Prism has the same functionality as the version
Agent provided with Blue Prism 5.0.33.
Important This version requires all Blue Prism devices to be configured with .NET Framework 4.7.
Notices The information and guidance provided under the heading Upgrading from Versions prior to 6.0 must be reviewed
as part of the upgrade procedure. This version is built on 5.0.33.
Certifications
organization.

Enhancements
A number of new features and enhancements are introduced in this version of Blue Prism.
Enhanced Surface Automation
Surface Automation techniques have been extended and enhanced to simplify the building of resilient processes when using
Blue Prism Surface Automation techniques to interact with applications. Optimizations are also provided that improve the
performance of these processes as they execute.
Region Editor
The mechanism for defining how to locate regions has been extended. It is now possible to:
• Easily select whether the region should be found based on coordinates or an image match.
• Select the search area for a given region (e.g. anywhere on the screen, fixed position, or relative position to another
region).
• When using image matching and a fixed position, a search area around the position can be defined to cater for situations
where the image may be out of position within a defined tolerance.
• When using relative positioning, the run-time search area for the region will be dynamically adjusted based on the actual
location of the parent item(s).
• Set an RGB colour tolerance range for image regions. This allows for variance in the RGB values of the image pixel colors
at run time.
• Create a grey-scale comparison of an image region. This improves the resiliance of region detection when an RGB colour
tolerance alone cannot be relied upon.

Process Development
Process studio includes improvements to reduce the complexity when building resilient processes:
• A new check exists condition can be used in Wait stages to check that an image region is present before continuing.
• An interval can be set between actions within a navigate stage.
• An interval can be set between individual keystrokes in Send and Press Key actions within a Navigate Stage. (Global Send
Keys, Global Send Key Events, Window Press Keys, Window Press Keys with Alt).
Improved Control Room
A number of improvements have been made which provide greater visibility and ease of management of the workforce. These
improvements include:
• The Session Management pane now provides multi-select filters for Processes and Resources, and subject to being
enabled, the session management pane is now auto-filtered based on user selections in the Processes and Resources
panes.
• It is now possible to set a maximum time that a process can spend on a given stage before entering a warning state. The
warning is configured on a system-wide basis with the option to define an override value per stage.
• The latest stage that was started in a process (along with the start date and time) is now clearly indicated within session
management.
• Navigating away from the Control Room no longer causes the selected resource session view to be reset.
• A more promient indication of which resource is the current Resource Pool controller.
• The Workforce Availability tile has been updated to more accurately reflect the status of all resources, including data on
how many are logged out, working, idle, missing and offline.
The Resources panel in the Control Room now contains more detailed information about each Runtime Resource. The changes
include:
• A new mechaism for displaying the state of the Resource such as whether the runtime is idle, running, offline, missing; as
well as the number of sessions that are running on each device. This is derived based on Runtime Resources proactively
providing relevant information on a regular basis.
• Resources which are unexpectidely offline are now shows as missing, and the total time that has elapsed since the last
successful connection is displayed with an upper limit of 5 minutes.
• If a Resource has been set to Private, the user account which to which it is assigned is displayed.
• The conection state information that indicates whether a direct (instructional) connection can be established from the
control room to a given Runtime Resource is now within the right-hand columns in the pane.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
The connection modes available when configuring a Blue Prism Server; and when configuring a Blue Prism client to connect via a
Blue Prism Server have been extended to offer Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) options in addition to .NET
Remoting. This offers increased control over the encryption that is applied to the communication channel.
The new options include:
• WCF: SOAP with Message Encryption & Windows Authentication
• WCF: SOAP with Transport Encryption & Windows Authentication
• WCF: SOAP with Transport Encryption
• WCF: Insecure
This work includes additional command line configurability for setting the connection mode through use of the /connectionmode
switch.

Analytics
Session logs and configurable metric information can now be directed to external systems for cross-environment monitoring
purposes. To accommodate this new functionality, the following changes have been made:
• The Dashboard tab has been renamed to Analytics. The corresponding user permission group nomenclature has also
been changed to Analytics.
• A new concept of Published Dashboards have been provided. Tiles added to published dashboards will be periodically
executed behind the scenes on appropriately configured Blue Prism Servers and the results will be logged into the local
event logs on those devices.
• A new Design Published Dashboard permission has been provided. This restricts whether users can create and edit
Publish Dashboards. System Administrators and users with the existing Design Global Dashboards permission are granted
this permission automatically.
• A new Application Server config setting Enable Published Dashboards is provided. When enabled, the server will
periodically retrieve data associated with the tiles on each Published Dashboard and write the information to the
Windows event log in JSON format for consumption by external applications.The tile with the longest refresh interval will
be used to determine whether or not to refresh all the tiles on the dashboard and output their results to the log.
Exception Screen Capture
Exception stages can now be configured to automatically save a screen capture of the Resource. The screen capture is saved with
the date and time of the exception, the name of the Resource which took the capture and the process or object in which it
occurred. When using this feature, the following points should be considered:
• The functionality is enabled/disabled via a system-wide setting.
• Screen captures can only be viewed by users with the appropriate permission.
• The screen capture functionality requires that a default encryption scheme has been configured and is valid.Only the
latest screen capture per Runtime Resource will be stored.
Multi-Lingual UI
Key areas of the user-interface can now be displayed in Japanese when the client is run on a machine with a Japanese locale.
.NET 4.7
The platform is now configured to natively use .NET Framework 4.7. This will require all devices where Blue Prism is to be
installed to be configured with this version of the .NET Framework. Additionally this provides support for using features of this
framework when developing Blue Prism code stages.

Server Configuration
Several changes have been made to the Blue Prism Server configuration interface to improve usability:
• When configuring a server service, if a valid Windows Service has not already been configured, the user is alerted via the
configuration interface.
• If a Windows Service had not previously been configured for a server profile, the user is given the option of using an on-
screen Create Service button.
• When creating a server profile, the configuration utility now detects if a duplicate name is already configured.
• The sever profile named Default cannot be renamed or deleted.
• It is no longer necessary to use the save configuration button on the configuration home screen to save the changes
which have been made.
• Server event log options are now grouped under a dedicated Logging tab.
• If the server service is configured as a WCF endpoint, an alert is presented if the service logon on account does not have
the appropriate permissions. Functionality is provided that allows an administrator to add the logon account to the
appropriate access control list (ACL).
• An interface is provided for associating a locally installed certificate with the Blue Prism server service for scenarios
where a WCF connection mode with transport encryption is selected.
Server Deployment
• The Blue Prism Server service now operates as a 64-bit process when deployed on a supported 64-bit operating system.
• When using the AutomateC /serverconfig command to set up a new server deployment, the encryption scheme which is
automatically created is now labelled 'Default Encryption Scheme'. Previously, the scheme was labelled 'Credentials Key'
by default.
Mainframe Emulators
Support for interactions with mainframe emulators in multiple locales has been extended. The following changes have been
introduced:
• When using the Generic HLLAPI connector, it is now necessary to select the API code page that the emulator is
configured to use. This enables interactions with emulators configured to use a wide range of locales, including those
which contain double-byte character sets. Existing processes will default to the ASCII encoding translator.
• Interactions with mainframe emulators which display text in a Right to Left (RTL) order has been enhanced with the
introduction of a RTL spying option. When enabled, the location of the spied elements will be calculated based on the
target RTL display.
Tesseract Optical Character Recognition
Tesseract V 3.05.01 is now installed with Blue Prism. Language packs from previous versions will no longer work and new
language packs must be installed. Directions on how to complete this step are provided in the product Help.

A number of fixes and minor improvements are introduced with this version.

This version of Blue Prism is certified Veracode Level 4 and is OWASP security compliant. us-1050
When passing a Collection back from a Code Stage, if the DateTimeMode property had not been specified, the us-867
DateTime objects were being treated as being local time and subsequently being converted to UTC. By default, bg-610
DateTimes that do not have a specified DateTimeMode property will now be set to UTC when passing a Collection
to a Code Stage. This prevents unexpected time zone conversion.
Session logs are now saved and viewed using the local time of the resource, and not the local time of the database us-879
server. When viewing the logs, a tooltip translates the resource local time to the viewing user local time and also us-999
provides a UTC offset. The Session Management overview in Control Room is presented in the Local time of the
viewing user.
The message presented when the context under which a Runtime Resource is started does not have access to the bg-755
private key of a configured certificate has been updated to be more meaningful. This benefits situations where the
Runtime Resources are started using the /sslcert switch but where the user has not been explicitly granted
permissions to the private key.
A number of changes have been made to ensure that in environments configured using Blue Prism Native bg-354
authentication, the last System Administrator user cannot be deleted. It is no longer possible to delete any user
that currently has a System Administrator role; and it is no longer possible to remove the System Administrator
role from a user if this would leave the system without an active user with these rights.
Any Runtime Resource error messages that were previously displayed in a pop-up window are now re-directed to bg-548
the event log when not running in interactive mode. This primarily applies to Runtimes started by Login Agent prior
to being logged in.
Resource pools can now delegate work to pool members when used in an Active Directory environment. This issue bg-745
was introduced when changes were made to how anonymous resources were authenticated in v5.0.30 and has
now been resolved.
Triple DES has been retired as an encryption scheme mode. It continues to be provided for backwards us-1139
compatibility. No action is required for upgrading customers who have this encryption method configured in
existing encryption schemes.
When deleting a user role in Security - User Roles, inactive user accounts are no longer counted in the message bg-660
which confirms how many user accounts are assigned to this role.
An improvement has been made to how usernames are edited in user tree-view in Security - Users. Previously, bg-587
deleting characters from the username when making an edit resulted in the user account losing focus.

Login Agent


Object - MS Excel
A solution has been provided which prevents processes from hanging indefinitely when Actions are being utilized bg-723
and Excel has become unresponsive. If an Action cannot be completed, the VBO will now timeout. A list of Actions
with the new timeout functionality is detailed below:
• Attach
• Attach to workbook
• Open Instance
• Close Instance
• Open Workbook
• Save Workbook
• Save Current Workbook
• Save Workbook As
• Save Current Workbook As
• Close Workbook
• Close Current Workbook
An issue has been addressed whereby the Attach, Attach to Workbook and Open Instance Actions would not bg-822
function correctly when used with a specified workbook name.

Utility JSON
The JSON VBO now uses an updated Newtonsoft.JSON.dll. If this version of the VBO is used, the following points us-1184
need to be considered when using the latest copy of the VBO with existing processes.
• When binary data is used in the Collection to JSON Action, the data is now converted to
"Binary":"MTAxMDA=". When this data is used in the JSON to Collection Action an output of the type 'text'
will be created, containing the value MTAxMDA=.
• Time and DateTime data are now returned from the JSON to Collection Action using the following formats
"Time":"2017-09-26T00:00:16Z" and "DateTime":"2017-09-22T10:32:17Z".

Update notices
Please review the following notices according to the version of Blue Prism which you are upgrading from.
For example, if a deployment currently running 5.0.21 is being upgraded to Version 6.1 it is essential that the information for
updates prior to 5.0.23, 5.0.24, 5.0.29 and 6.0 are followed.
Upgrading from versions prior to 3.5.25

Manually disassociate certain security roles prior to upgrade
If upgrading from a version prior to 3.5.25, there are a number of security roles that must be manually disassociated from any of
the users from within the Users area (System Manager – Security) prior to carrying out the upgrade. The roles which much be
disassociated are: Process Designer, Business Object Designer and Observer
The Blue Prism Server service must be manually deleted

If a Blue Prism Server has been deployed as a Windows Service, it is also necessary to delete the Blue Prism Server key from
within the registry on that machine.
• Launch the registry editor, REGEDIT
• Search for: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog
• Locate the Blue Prism Server Key
• Delete that key and all sub-keys

Previous License keys will not work
This version introduces a new format of license key therefore a new key must be obtained prior to upgrading. These can be
requested via your Blue Prism Account Manager.

Blue Prism Web services need to be re-exposed
This version introduces a new method of exposing processes and objects as Web Services. Therefore, if upgrading from an
earlier version it is necessary for any Blue Prism Processes or Objects which should be available as a web service to be explicitly
exposed using the new methods following the upgrade.
Guidance is provided within the Blue Prism User Guide – Web Services, available from the Blue Prism Portal.

Recommended steps:
Prior to applying the update, generate a Roles report – this may be useful if there is a requirement to verify user permissions
variation prior to and following the update. (System > Reports > Roles: Generate).
Required steps:
• Blue Prism v5.0 is built on .NET Framework 4, and therefore all components (Interactive Clients, Runtime Resources, and
Application Server) will require .NET 4 to be installed as a pre-requisite.
• A new license key will be required. This can be obtained via your Blue Prism Account Manager.
Control room permissions are automatically enforced for the command line
Blue Prism v4.2.43 introduced an optional setting that would enforce control room permissions when interacting with Blue Prism
processes via the command line. In v5.0 this option is enforced meaning that when interacting with processes programmatically
via the command line the user requires the permission named Full access to session management.
Dashboards require users to have increased SQL permissions

Where the SQL account used for user access to the database has restricted access (i.e. where it is not a dbowner or similar), the
security permissions for this account may need to be extended for the Management Dashboards to function correctly as these
leverage stored procedures. Blue Prism provides a number of SQL Security roles which provide the execute privilege for the
necessary stored procedures which can be allocated to these users if appropriate. These roles are: bpa_ExecuteSP_DataSource_
bpSystem, bpa_ExecuteSP_DataSource_custom, bpa_ExecuteSP_System.
Increased SQL disk space is required and Unicode logging is disabled by default
Blue Prism version 5.0 provides the capability to store information presented in any language by introducing support for storing
Unicode characters within the database. Unicode characters require increased amounts of disk storage in comparison to ASCII.
Users with a large number of work queue items in their database may wish to review their storage requirements prior to
upgrading due to the increased storage space required.
Unicode support is enabled automatically throughout the product with the exception of Session Logging (i.e. the logging which
takes place as processes execute). If Unicode support is required for Session Logging this can be enabled manually within System
settings.
Prior to enabling Unicode support for the Session Logs, the amount of available disk space should be considered in line with the
current log retention and archiving strategy. Additionally, features such as SQL Unicode Compression (if available) can be utilized
to minimize the disk space required.
Previous License keys will not work

This version introduces a new format of license key therefore a new key must be obtained prior to upgrading. These can be
requested via your Blue Prism Account Manager.
Requires .NET Framework 4

Blue Prism v5.0 is built on .NET Framework 4, and therefore all components (Interactive Clients, Runtime Resources, and
Application Server) will require .NET 4 to be installed as a pre-requisite.

Login Agent should also be upgraded
While they continue to be supported, it is strongly recommended that previous versions of Login Agent are replaced with Login
Agent 5.0.23 when using Blue Prism 5.0.23 to enable the features provided in Login Agent 5.0.23 to be realized.

Single sign-on settings need to be re-verified.
When upgrading from a previous version that was configured to use Blue Prism Single Sign-on it is necessary to re-validate the
single sign-on settings once this version has been installed.

Downgrading to earlier versions will require reconfiguration.
Downgrading a device that has been installed with 5.0.29 (or above) to an earlier version will result in Blue Prism being unable to
correctly read local configuration files. The re-configuration will require manual intervention.
Upgrading from versions prior to 6.0

Requires .NET Framework 4.7
All components (Interactive Clients, Runtime Resources, and Application Server) will require .NET 4.7 to be installed as a pre-
requisite.
Introduces WCF (Windows Communication Foundation)

Alternative server communication methods have been introduced, in addition to .NET remoting. Following a successful upgrade,
it is recommended that one of the new WCF communication methods is chosen. WCF connection modes require session
persistence to be enabled. If existing load balancing is configured that does not apply session persistence, re-configuration will be
required.
Dates are now processed using different logic

The logic used to interpret dates and times has changed and it is important that all processes that use date and times, particularly
those that use collections with code stages are re-validated and updated accordingly. See the release notes for details, and the v6
Data Sheet – Date and Time Handling available on the portal for full information on the changes and implications. Aesthetic
changes are also included. For example: Session Logs are now saved and displayed in Resource Local time; and the Process Alert
history is now stored in UTC and displayed in Client Local time.
Pending or Running sessions should be completed or cancelled prior to upgrade

Process automations that are in a running or pending state should be completed or otherwise stopped or cancelled prior to
upgrading to avoid issues resulting from updated date/time handling logic. Tesseract language packs will need to be updated on
all devices
Tesseract Language Packs that are compatible with Tesseract 3.05.01 will need to be deployed to all devices that use Tesseract
with language packs. The files can be downloaded from the Tesseract product site: https://github.com/tesseract-
ocr/tesseract/wiki/Data-Files

Invalid upgrade paths
Occasionally features are made available both within the latest version of Blue Prism and also previous editions of the software.
Where the changes have certain characteristics, it is necessary to prevent certain upgrade paths to protect data integrity.
The restriction is applied when applying the database update. The user carrying out the action will be advised that the database
cannot be upgraded as it is newer than the required database.
Applies to
environments Notes
currently using
4.2.56+ The minimum Version 5 upgrade is 5.0.11 which is the first applicable version which contains the
Encryption Schemes and AES-256 support provided in this version of 4.2.
4.2.57+ The minimum Version 5 upgrade is 5.0.12 which is the first applicable which contains the option to
configure the inter-component communication to use FQDN host names.
4.2.61+ The minimum Version 5 upgrade is 5.0.18 which is the first applicable version which contains aligned
work queue optimizations.
5.0.34+ The minimum Version 6 upgrade is 6.1 which is the first applicable version which contains a number
of items also featured in 5.0.34.

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Release Notes and Upgrade Guide

For more information please contact:

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Reviewing Upgrade Notices

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Migrating from .NET remoting to WCF

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Static Code Analysis VL4. Veracode Score: 100/100. Further information

Fixes and minor improvements

Description of change Reference

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Fixes and minor improvements

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Object - MS Excel VBO

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Static Code Analysis VL4. Veracode Score: 100/100. Further information

Description of change Reference

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Description of change Reference

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Fixes and minor improvements

Visual Business Object Updates

Utility – Split Collection

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Static Code Analysis VL4. Veracode Score: 100/100. Further information

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Description of change Reference

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Description of change Reference

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Fixes and minor improvements

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Utility - File Management

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Static Code Analysis VL4. Veracode Score: 100/100. Further information

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Description of change Reference

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Fixes and minor improvements

Visual Business Object Updates

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Upgrading from versions prior to 3.5.25

The Blue Prism Server service must be manually deleted

Upgrading from versions prior to 4.2.16

Upgrading from versions prior to 4.2.35

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Dashboards require users to have increased SQL permissions

Previous License keys will not work

Requires .NET Framework 4

Upgrading from versions prior to 5.0.23