Blue Prism Pro Developer flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Business Exception

An expected, data-driven failure that will recur on the same input. It is not retried; the queue item is marked Exception with a clear reason and the process moves on.

System Exception

An unexpected, environment-driven failure such as an application crash or missing element. It may succeed on retry, so it is retried up to a configured limit before escalation.

Recover stage

A stage that catches an exception into the current page, making its Type, Message, and Detail available as data so the page can clean up and decide whether to resume or re-throw.

Resume stage

A stage that retries execution from the stage that raised the exception. It is only safe when the failed action is idempotent or has been cleaned up first.

Queue item states

New, In Progress, Completed, Exception, and Deferred. Only New and Deferred items are returned by Get Next Item; Deferred items return after their defer-until time.

Get Next Item

A queue action that returns the highest-priority, oldest available item, sets it In Progress, increments its attempts counter, and loads its data into a collection.

Item key

A deterministic, unique identifier for a queue item, derived from source data. Duplicate keys are rejected at add time, which prevents duplicate processing on re-runs.

Deferred item

A queue item postponed until a specified date and time. It leaves the active set and returns to the queue automatically after the defer-until timestamp.

Spy modes

Win32 for standard Windows controls, Accessibility for Java and .NET trees, HTML for browser DOM, Region for image matching, and UIA for modern applications.

Element match attributes

Properties used to identify a UI element. Match on stable attributes such as ID, Name, or Class; never on coordinates, row counts, or labels that change with data.

HTML mode spying

Browser DOM spying that matches on id, name, or a stable CSS selector. Spy inside iframes separately and wait for the element to exist after AJAX actions.

Citrix surface automation

Region-mode image matching plus Send Keys and Click Center, used when the accessibility tree is not exposed. Keep the window maximized at a fixed resolution and pin the theme.

Control process

The process layer that fetches the next queue item, calls the performer, and marks the item Completed or Exception. It contains no application interaction itself.

Page-per-action rule

Each page performs one reusable action. A page that both navigates and reads cannot be safely retried or reused, so the two actions are split.

Idempotency

A property of an operation that produces the same result when repeated. Before creating a record, query for an existing match using the item key and skip creation if found.

Master/worker pattern

A master process splits work into queue items and N worker sessions consume the queue concurrently. Workers must hold no shared mutable state.

Decision stage

A stage that evaluates a single boolean expression and routes to one of two labeled links. Every outcome must be handled explicitly or the page will not reach End.

Loop stage

A stage that iterates a collection with a Current Row data item, or runs infinitely with an explicit exit condition. Every loop must have a guaranteed exit path.

Collection functions

Built-in operations including Contains, Count Rows, Filter, Sort, Merge, Remove Duplicates, and Get Next Row. Row indexing is 1-based in Blue Prism expressions.

Data item scope

Local to a page or global to a process. Global items persist across pages and are the primary cause of state leaking between work items.

Block stage

A stage that groups other stages for readability and provides a single point for exception handling, with its own Recover and Resume stages.

Attach vs Launch

Attach connects to an already-running application instance; Launch starts a new one. Prefer Attach where possible and always wait for the application to be created.

HTTP status handling

Treat 2xx as success, 4xx as a Business Exception (client error, not retried), and 5xx as a System Exception that is retried up to the configured limit.

Session states

Starting, Running, Stopping, Stopped, and Terminated. A session is one running instance of a process on one runtime resource.

Stop vs Terminate

Stop requests a graceful shutdown at the next checkpoint. Terminate kills the session immediately and may leave the application in an inconsistent state.

Resource pools

Groups of runtime resources that a schedule can start on. Pools provide load balancing across unattended machines and failover if one resource is unavailable.

Environment variables

Named values holding environment-specific settings such as URLs, file paths, and credential references. The same release package runs in Dev, Test, and Prod with different values.

Credential store

An encrypted store in the Blue Prism database. Processes reference a credential by name, never a plaintext password, so rotation requires no code change.

Role-based access

Permissions are granted to roles such as Developer, Controller, or Administrator, and users are assigned to the least-privileged role needed for their job function.

Release package

A signed bundle of processes, objects, and referenced environment variables. It is imported into the target environment and its variables are mapped on import.

Circuit breaker

A recovery rule that stops retrying after repeated failures on the same application and raises a System Exception to alert operations instead of looping indefinitely.

Retry with backoff

Increasing the wait between attempts, for example one second, then five, then thirty, to avoid hammering a system that is still recovering.