Blue Prism AD01 - Blue Prism Accredited Developer Exam

Analysis of the Launch Action:

The action involves launching an order processing application, which brings up a login screen requesting the user's login details.

The flow in the question shows a 'Launch' stage and an 'End' stage with no intermediate stages.

Blue Prism Best Practices:

According to Blue Prism best practices, after launching an application, it is essential to verify that the application has loaded successfully and is ready for further interaction.

This verification is typically done using a wait stage to check for the presence of specific elements that confirm the application is ready, in this case, elements on the login screen.

Reasoning for the Wait Stage:

The Wait stage ensures that the login screen has fully loaded and the elements are available for interaction.

This prevents the automation process from proceeding to the next steps too quickly, which could lead to errors if the elements are not yet ready.

Implementation:

Insert a Wait stage immediately after the Launch stage.

Configure the Wait stage to check for a specific element on the login screen, such as the 'Staff Number' field or the 'Sign In' button.

Only proceed to the next stages (entering login details, etc.) once the Wait stage confirms the presence of the required elements.

References:

Blue Prism Developer Documentation: Best Practices for Wait Stages

Blue Prism Training Material on Login Automation Procedures

The process will move to the 'Close Down' page directly from the 'Stop?' Decision stage under two conditions:

The specified Stop time has passed: This condition checks if the current local time exceeds the configured stop time. In the provided Decision Properties, the condition LocalTime() > [Stop After Time] evaluates if the current time is beyond the stop time.

'Request Stop' received from Control Room: This condition is checked by the IsStopRequested() function. If the Control Room sends a stop request, this function returns true, causing the process to move to the 'Close Down' page.

Other conditions like Stop After Items and an immediate stop request from the Control Room are not mentioned in the process depicted in the exhibits. Therefore, only the two conditions mentioned above apply.

References:

The Decision stage properties and conditions as shown in the provided exhibit.

Blue Prism documentation on Decision stages and Control Room interactions for stopping processes.

Understanding the Process Diagram:

The diagram includes a calculation stage named "Get Date of Previous Day" and a data item named "Result Date".

The Calculation Properties window shows the expression Yesterday() used in the calculation stage.

Analysis of the Calculation Stage:

The Yesterday() function is used to get the date of the previous day.

The result of this function is stored in the "Result Date" data item.

Data Type Considerations:

Option A: This option is incorrect because there are correct statements regarding the process diagram.

Option B: If "Result Date" is configured as a Text data type, a 'data type mismatch' Internal Exception will indeed be thrown because the Yesterday() function returns a date, not text.

Option C: If "Result Date" is configured as a Date data type, the Yesterday() function will correctly set "Result Date" to the previous day's date.

Option D: This option is incorrect because the Yesterday() function is valid and will not throw a 'Failed to evaluate expression' Internal Exception if used correctly with a date data type.

Conclusion:

The correct statement is:

C. If the 'Result Date' data item is configured as a Date data type, then the 'Result Date' data item will be set to the date of the previous day on execution of the Calculation stage.

References:

Blue Prism Developer Documentation: Date Functions

Blue Prism Training Material on Calculation Stages and Date Manipulation

Following best practices for Blue Prism development, it is essential to keep validation logic separate from the core business process to enhance maintainability and clarity. This approach ensures that validation is modular and can be easily updated or reused.

Process Studio, a separate page within the process containing validation logic (Option B): This is the best practice for implementing validation logic. By creating a separate page within the Process Studio, the validation logic remains organized and distinct from other parts of the process. This approach allows for easy updates and debugging.

The other options are less ideal for the following reasons:

Object Studio a business object dedicated to validating the form (Option A): While this is a valid approach, it is generally better to keep validation within the process logic rather than creating a separate object solely for validation.

Process Studio: an action on the main page calling a Business Object's Validation page (Option C): This complicates the process unnecessarily by involving an additional business object.

Object Studio a separate page within the create request object containing validation logic (Option D): Keeping validation within the Object Studio ties it too closely to the specific object, making it less flexible and reusable.

ReferencesRefer to Blue Prism's best practices documentation on process design, which emphasizes modularity and separation of concerns.

Best Practices for Production Release:

A. Disable unnecessary stage logging: This is a best practice to reduce data storage and improve performance.

C. Alerting Mechanism: Including an alerting mechanism helps notify Process Controllers of critical issues, which is crucial for maintaining process health and quick issue resolution.

D. Zero Validation Errors: Ensuring there are no validation errors before deployment helps avoid runtime failures.

Handling Business Exceptions:

Using retry loops to handle business exceptions for work queue items is not recommended as it can lead to unnecessary retries and may not address the underlying issue causing the exception. Instead, business exceptions should be handled by sending them to an exception queue for further analysis and resolution.

References:

Blue Prism documentation on best practices for process development and deployment.