Blue Prism Developer Exam Notes AD01

Here are the notes that I created to study for the AD01 exam. No guarantees that any of these actually appear on the exam but hopefully someone will find these useful.

• Detailed understanding of Blue Prism native functions and their correct application.

• Date Functions: DateAdd() DateDiff() FormatDate() MakeDate() Now() Today()

• DateAdd(interval, number, date): interval 0 1 4 5 (0 year, 1 week, 4 quarter, 5 month)
  DateAdd isn’t used for days, hours mins secs. use MakeTimeSpan for that
• MakeDate(d,m,y) integers
• Now(Datetime), Today(date)

• Environment Functions: IsStopRequested()

• works with sessions and right click request stop

• Text Functions: Concatenate() EndsWith() Mid() Left() Len() Right() StartsWith() Trim()

• indexed at 1 and not 0
• concatenate is just the & symbol
• Booleans are True False with capital

• Datatypes: different datatypes and casting data of one type to another type using a calculation stage.
• Debugging: stepping in, stepping out, to breakpoints, what happens when exceptions are thrown when stepping over or stepping out of subpages.

• The exception just gets thrown? What else would happen?

• Environment and session variables: when to use them, where they are created, how can they be amended, how are they assigned and when is a change affected in a process.

• Env vars between dev/test/prod (found in System-> objects -> env vars), in obj or processes
• session variables in control panel, can be changed during runtime (stop after this item, stop by x time)

• Exception handling: throwing exceptions and correct use of recover, resume stages. Exception types, detail and preserving detail. Correct use of blocks.
• Process flow through decision, choice stages and sub-pages.
• Wait stages: how to use them, when to use arbitrary waits.
• Correct use of action retrying from a process as per Blue Prism standard template. (See portal template and process creation tutorial).
• Knowledge of Blue Prism process templates and their structure and flow.
• How to keep sensitive data out of session logs and Control Room

• Process exposure to Control Room. How to control exposure and under what conditions will processes not be exposed?

• Correct use of attributes to ensure consistent identification of elements. Which attributes are best for helping make element attributes unique? And which are not? Causes of previously spied elements suddenly not being found. Use of dynamic attributes, correct setting in application modeller and how to set attribute parameters from Blue Prism stages. Use of regular expressions to identify elements.

• Correct use of Global Send Keys and Global Send Key Events.

• Try Send keys (higher level interface, supported by Windows) before SK Events (lower level interface)
• SKE for citrix
• Window must be activated “activate application”, text input must be focused
• Short delays between activating windows, clicking, typing must be added
• Send Key special keys syntax is different than Send Key Events
• SK: shift +, ctrl ^, alt % || SKE: {SHIFT} {CTRL} {ALT}
• Send Key events can hold keys down “<” and release key “>” EX: <{SHIFT}b>{SHIFT}lue
• Send Key can repeat the amount of key presses {HOME 10}
• Send Key Events can pretty much simulate any key on the keyboard like media buttons, mouse buttons

• Object exposure: correct understanding of the differences between background, foreground and exclusive modes and their effect when attempting to create sessions in Control Room

• Shrareable model: a flag that lets you share the application modeler elements to another object
• Foreground: only ever ONE instance of this object running at a time on a single resource
• Background: many of these objects can run on the same resource at a time
• Exclusive: ONLY this object can be running at a time on a resource

• Collections and Loops; correct flow, correct syntax in decisions and calculations, nested collections and nested loops

• Work queues; creation and administration. Functionality in Control Room. All work queues internal business object actions, filtering syntax, case management and the correct use of tags.

• Creation: inside the settings in the control room
• Use a work queue by: action stage, Business Object: Work Queues. Add Tag and status based on the Item ID
• Filtering Syntax: “+Abc sdf;-no nonono;Card Visa“
• Semicolons mean And. if you want or u need to invert the logic and use -abc;-hyh
• You can use wildcards * (multiple chars) or ? (one single char). You can escape a star using **, cannot escape ?

Item priority, default 0, range 0-7. Lower number = higher priority. 7 is lowest priority
The data held by each work item is stored in plain text on the database by default. Encrypt the work queue to hide the data

• Delivery lifecycle

• IPA initial process analysis – like a project charter
  By: BP analyst
  For: The sponsor
• PDD Process Definition Document
  By: The client
  For: BP analysts

Describes the manual process to be automated. Lots of detail, diagrams and screenshots. BP analysts will design based off this document

• Process Walkthrough. Use the PDD to work through cases manually. May lead to changes to the PDD and redoing the walkthrough
• Functional Requirements Questionnaire – other non process requirements like SLAs
• Solution Design Doc – Build from PDD and FRQ. Describes what will actually be delivered. To be approved by the client.
• Operational Impact Document – What the org needs to change to accommodate the robots
• Solution walkthrough for SDD and OID.
• Process Design Instruction PDI – The actual BP processes that will be built
• Object Design Instruction ODI – the Objects to be built in BP