For legacy mainframe applications (often terminal emulators), Win32 Mode is typically the most robust choice. It spies on the underlying window controls and is generally less susceptible to superficial changes in the UI compared to Region or AA modes, making it more reliable for high-volume, stable environments.

The most common cause for sporadic ‘No element matching the query was found’ errors is that the process is attempting to interact with an element before the application or page has fully loaded or rendered. Introducing a ‘Wait’ stage before the ‘Read’ or adjusting the stage’s timeout/wait properties is the standard fix.

The standard pattern is to use a Loop stage. Inside the loop, a ‘Find Element’ or ‘Get Element’ action is used with an index (e.g., [row]) that increments with each iteration. The loop continues until the action fails (element not found), which is caught by the loop’s exception handling to exit cleanly after the last row.

Blue Prism advocates for a modular design where objects contain small, discrete, and reusable Actions. A single large Action (a ‘monolithic’ design) is difficult to understand, test, debug, and maintain. It also reduces reusability, as other processes cannot call specific sub-tasks within the giant Action.

Storing sensitive information like passwords in plain text within process or object Data Items is a critical security risk. This data can be exposed in logs (e.g., Process or System logs in Control Room) or within diagram exports. Credentials should always be stored securely, such as in the Blue Prism Credential Manager or an external encrypted vault.

Blue Prism’s Environment Variables are the designed feature for this exact purpose. They allow you to define variables (like URLs, file paths, thresholds) with different values for each environment (Dev, Test, Prod). The process references the variable name, and Blue Prism automatically uses the value specific to the environment it’s running in.

The Process Log for a session records every stage execution with a timestamp. By reviewing the sequence of log entries and the time difference between them, you can pinpoint exactly where a long delay occurs. A large gap between two consecutive log entries indicates the process was waiting or working on the stage that follows the gap.

Blue Prism’s ‘Lock’ feature is designed specifically for this scenario. It allows you to define a named lock (e.g., “LegacySystemX”). The process acquires the lock at the start of the critical section and releases it at the end. If another bot tries to acquire the same lock, it will wait until the first bot releases it, ensuring exclusive access.

For Java applications with custom components, the Java Access Bridge (JAB) is often the solution. When enabled on the system and paired with Blue Prism’s Accessibility Mode spying, it can expose the underlying accessibility tree of the Java application, allowing for the identification and interaction with elements that standard modes cannot see.

For legacy mainframe applications (often terminal emulators), Win32 Mode is typically the most robust choice. It spies on the underlying window controls and is generally less susceptible to superficial changes in the UI compared to Region or AA modes, making it more reliable for high-volume, stable environments.0