Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has emerged as a key technology that enables organizations to streamline their business operations, reduce costs, and improve productivity. Blue Prism is one of the leading RPA platforms that is widely used by organizations across different industries. As the demand for Blue Prism professionals increases, so does the demand for Blue Prism certifications. The Blue Prism Developer Certification Exam is one such certification that validates the skills and knowledge of developers working with the Blue Prism platform. The exam is designed to test the developer’s proficiency in various aspects of Blue Prism, such as automation design, development, testing, and deployment.
Blue Prism Developer certification program prepares candidates to deploy and support Blue Prism. The certification program helps you achieve a high level of proficiency for development and administration tasks. You will gain information on the new Blue Prism features, the latest updates on security technologies, as well as components used by our solution and best practices for its deployment. The purpose of this certification is to verify that you are technically skilled and experienced in the use of Blue Prism software. The exam evaluates your ability to design and develop solutions using the available features and functions. It covers areas such as process modeling, BPM Studio, logic modeling, forms design, workflows, and process configuration.
In this blog, we will delve deeper into the Blue Prism Developer Certification Exam, its structure, difficulty level, and tips to crack the exam.
Glossary for Blue Prism Developer Terminology
- Blue Prism: A Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software platform that enables organizations to automate business processes.
- Process: A series of steps that are taken to accomplish a task or goal.
- Object: An element in Blue Prism that represents a real-world item or entity.
- Action: A specific activity that can be performed on an object.
- Input Parameters: Data that is passed to an action or object.
- Output Parameters: Data that is returned by an action or object.
- Stage: A container for actions and objects that represents a specific part of a process.
- Control Room: The central management console for Blue Prism that provides a dashboard for managing bots, processes, and resources.
- Bot: A virtual worker that performs automated tasks in Blue Prism.
- Work Queue: A list of work items that need to be processed by bots.
- Credential Manager: A secure storage location for sensitive information, such as usernames and passwords.
- Process Studio: A development environment in Blue Prism that is used to create and edit processes.
- Object Studio: A development environment in Blue Prism that is used to create and edit objects.
- Action Stage: A stage in Blue Prism that is used to perform a specific action, such as launching an application or sending an email.
- Decision Stage: A stage in Blue Prism that is used to evaluate a condition and determine which path to take in a process.
- Calculation Stage: A stage in Blue Prism that is used to perform mathematical calculations.
- Loop Stage: A stage in Blue Prism that is used to repeat a set of actions or objects multiple times.
- Data Item: A variable in Blue Prism that holds a specific piece of data.
- Process Flow: The sequence of stages, actions, and objects that make up a process.
- Exception Handling: The process of dealing with errors or unexpected situations in a process.
Preparation resources for the Blue Prism Developer exam
Blue Prism offers a range of official preparation resources for the Blue Prism Developer Exam, which includes training courses, practice exams, and study materials. Here are some links to help you get started:
- Blue Prism Developer Exam page: This page provides an overview of the exam and links to the other preparation resources. It also includes the exam objectives and sample questions.https://www.blueprism.com/certification/developer/
- Developer eLearning: This self-paced online course covers the key concepts and skills needed for the Blue Prism Developer Exam. It includes video lectures, interactive exercises, and quizzes.https://www.blueprism.com/learning/developer-elearning/
- Developer Accreditation Exam: This practice exam is designed to help you prepare for the real exam by testing your knowledge of the Blue Prism platform and development concepts.https://www.blueprism.com/learning/developer-accreditation-exam/
- Blue Prism Developer Guide: This comprehensive guide covers all the topics that are tested in the Developer Exam, including design patterns, solution architecture, and exception handling. https://docs.blueprism.com/bp-devguide/home
- Blue Prism Community: The Blue Prism Community is a great place to connect with other developers, ask questions, and find resources. There are forums dedicated to the Developer Exam, as well as a library of resources, including code samples and best practices. https://community.blueprism.com/
Blue Prism Developer Exam Format
To know the exam better, you have to start by figuring out the format of the exam. This includes length, type of questions, scoring pattern, exam fee, and other similar aspects of the exam. Also, once you know the format of the exam, it will be easier for you to plan out an effective strategy to prepare accordingly.
The Blue Prism Developer exam is a 60 minutes exam. You will be facing 60 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions in total. That means, you’ll have one minute for each question, so you need to maintain a pace in solving them. Further, you need to know the minimum passing score for the AD01 Exam. You need to score 70% or above to pass the exam. This means, out of 60 questions, you have correctly answered at least 42 questions. With this knowledge, you can pick and choose the questions that you can solve during the exam. The tougher ones can be left for the last, and your primary should be to get over the minimum passing scores. Lastly, the exam fee for AD01 is $65 + taxes.
Blue Prism Developer Course Outline
The Blue Prism Developer exam mainly focuses on the following topics –
Objective 1: Understanding Flow within a Process (15%)
Designing a new process using Process Studio is simple and powerful. Using the components provided within the toolbox, complex business processes can be automated, and process control and flow elements easily implemented.
Task 1.1 Organize logic by creating Sub Pages
Task 1.2 Construct logic by building Decision & Choice Stages
Task 1.3 Explain Layers of Logic and Flow by integrating of within a process
Objective 2: Configuring Objects (25%)
Along with web services, business objects provide the means of interacting with external systems from your process flow chart in Process Studio. Business objects provide a series of actions that can be called a process.
Task 2.1 Explain the Importance of Object Best Practices while building Objects
Task 2.2 Comprehend an element’s attributes in Application Modeller
Task 2.3 Identify how Global Send Keys and Objects can interact with each other
Objective 3: Datatype Variables – How Data flows through the Process (5%)
The properties dialog for the data item allows you to change various constraints for the data that is contained within it. SS&C | Blue Prism® Enterprise has several built-in data types.
Task 3.1 Construct loops by using Collections and Loop Stages
Task 3.2 Cast data from one data type to another
Objective 4: Error Management how to manage Exceptions (20%)
Exceptions occur during the running of a process for various reasons. Usually, when an exception occurs, the process stops, and its status in Control Room shows as Terminated. Sometimes, it is not desirable for the process to stop when an exception is encountered. In certain contexts, we can handle the exception and continue with processing.
Task 4.1 Employ Retry Loops to minimize Exceptions
Task 4.2 Construct unhappy paths considering how Exceptions are thrown
Task 4.3 Employ Recover and Resume stages in Process Building
Task 4.4 Explain the importance of Preservation of Exceptions
Objective 5: Case Management – Dealing with Work Queues (17%)
Work queues provide a mechanism for modelling the queueing, locking, and reporting of work items within a SS&C | Blue Prism® Enterprise environment. Work queues are managed from the Workflow section of System Manager. This includes searching for, creating, deleting, renaming, and configuring queues.
Task 5.1 Understand how Work Queues are built (Creation & Administration)
Task 5.2 Demonstrate the basics of Work Queues functionality
Objective 6: Calculations & Functions – Data Manipulation (8%)
Expressions can be created in a variety of ways. They can be typed directly into the Expression Editor or can be built up by dragging and dropping items from either the Function List or the Data Item List. The Function List shows all the functions available in the SS&C | Blue Prism® Enterprise.
Task 6.1 Describe the basic functionality of using Calculations
Task 6.2 Recognize the importance of Environmental Functions
Task 6.3 Utilize Text Functions within the building of processes
Objective 7: Debugging – Error Identification & Removal (3%)
The debugging facility allows you to simulate the execution of your business process or business object from within the process studio or object studio. All the while, you can watch which path the execution takes along your flow chart, query the values of data items, amend your flowchart during execution and jump to areas of interest.
Task 7.1 Integrate Stepping during the debugging Process
Task 7.2 Comprehend the use of Breakpoints while Debugging
Objective 8: General Items (7%)
Items under this Objective do not fall under any other objective and can range from items like Environmental Variables, Control Room, Templates, and the Application Modeller.
Task 8.1 Understand the Control Room’s functionality
Task 8.2 Demonstrate the use of Environmental Variables
Task 8.3 Understand the importance of Standard Templates
How difficult is the Blue Prism Developer AD01 exam?
Now we come to the main question, how tough is it to crack this exam? We know that the Blue Prism Developer certification will provide you with several benefits as a professional. However, all things of value take effort to be accomplished. The exam will not be a cakewalk for any aspirant. The AD01 exam tests both conceptual and practical aspects of the skills from this domain. A few questions can be quite tricky. So, you need to take this very seriously if your wish to get certified.
With all that said, the certification isn’t an unachievable thing. You can get certified, just that you need to follow the right resources. Also, you have to stay determined and committed to your goal throughout the preparations. Let’s have a look at some of the resources that can help you shape a better skillset and knowledge to face the exam!
Blue Prism Developer Study Guide
The preparation resources will largely define how you will grow in skills and knowledge. Hence, it is vital to rely on trustworthy resources. With dedicated efforts and correct learning content, you can set yourself on the right path. You can also refer to this document – Developer Certification Path by Blue Prism. This has a detailed description of the resources for this exam. Furthermore, you can view our tutorial for the AD01 exam.
1. Blue Prism Developer Exam Objectives
The most authentic resource are the ones provided by the official vendors of the certifications. Therefore, you can go for the courses offered by Blue Prism itself. These courses cover different aspects of the exam and will help you in grasping the concepts. The following courses can be taken for the AD01 exam –
- Introduction to Surface Automation (v5)
- Surface Automation (v5)
2. Join the Blue Prism Online Community
Every aspirant would confront a few issues at some phase of preparations. A people group can have conversations and discussions on such queries related to the exam. In a community, an issue can be seen from several independent perspectives, and all things considered, an ideal goal can be determined. Subsequently, we recommend that each applicant should join and effectively take part in the Blue Prism Online Community.
3. Blue Prism Developer Books
Traditionally, books have been used to record and share knowledge. And any exam preparation seems incomplete without a proper book to refer to. So, for the Blue Prism Developer exam, we recommend the following books –
- Blue Prism MasterClass: Developer & Professional Developer by Prasanna Kumar Ballepalli
- Robotic Process Automation with Blue Prism Quick Start Guide: Create software robots and automate business processes by Lim Mei Ying
4. Blue Prism Developer Practice Tests
Taking practice tests can help you feel more confident on test days. Our practice tests offer the same features you’ll find on the actual AD01 exam. Each practice test is designed to match the pattern and the standards of the actual exam. The questions are similar in format and level of difficulty to those found on the real exam. Thus, these practice tests can help you in giving an introspective view of your skills and abilities. And the more your practice, the better you will get with the accuracy and time management during the exam. So, start practicing now with our free test!