Best Practices

Background:  We do not use tempo or user tasks in our application.  All our objects are deployed to higher environments under a service profile. We are having a discussion on best practice for swim lane assignments, here are the two thoughts: 1. All swimlanes should be set to run as designer. 2. All swimlanes should be set to run as initiator unless elevated privileges are needed. I'm in camp #2.  I don't believe process models should be set to run as designer.  Our service profile has Appian Admin access and therefore should only be used on a limited basis. While I'd like to hear opinions on this, if anyone has links to Appian recommendations, that would be even better.  Seems like "best practice" is thrown around too freely without official documentation and based more on personal preference. Thanks

Hi, I have a scenario where based on my selection on grid(which is record type) I fetch data based on selected grid Ids and provide excel with that data. Data to be shown on excel is from various table selected grid Id would help me get those data from DB. My thought process for solution here is :  To create Stored Proc taking selected grid Id as input and getting all required data and use export data to excel and get that to excel. Is that performance efficient and good to proceed with if I am not looking for creating a customized plugin for same. Will view be same or different? Any other idea to proceed in this scenario. Thanks!

Need major features will be released in 22.1 version., Can someone please let me know

Hi all, We have a requirement to read some xml files from an external system when they are ready. It would be ideal to set up an API in Appian to receive a call when a file is ready but this is not an option for limitations in the external system. We have to invoke from Appian a web service every x minutes to retrieve the files. The question is, how often to do it? The requirement says we should call the external system "at least twice per minute" which I think is too frequent. As the standard timeout setting of Web Service calls is 120 ms I think we could have difficulties if we invoked the service more frequently than that.  I really dont like having to generate process instances every 5 minutes but I would like to know what is the recommendation here? The customer wants to see the files quickly. How often would you generate a process for this?  Thanks a lot

why we do use connected system if we can authenticate directly from integration?

Hi Appioans, I work on a large Appian-based system with several developers (~14) who at any given time can be touching/changing multiple objects.  We have developed an Agile way of working around Appian that has proved pretty successful up to now.  We have ceremonies in place to plan small, encapsulated changes on JIRA tickets.  The developers wrap all the objects required for their fix/change/enhancement in an application (which maps to the JIRA ticket) and go to great lengths to list every object that they change onto the JIRA tickets as they go.  Before deployments into other environments two or three of our team spend a great deal of time and effort making sure that tickets haven't become entangled by shared objects.  This becomes especially difficult if things get moved back to DEV from UAT.  We have now reached a point where there is just so much change happening this is becoming unmanageable.   In 2021 what is the best approach for man

Hey Guys, I have requirement to get the zip file from UI and unzip and then process further, Here we tried using two different plugins, Extract Zip --- this plugin doesn't work as expected, some of the subfolder in our zip doesn't unzipped. ZIP Content Extractor -- This works as expected but it's taking much time to extract (eg: - for a 5 MB file, approximately it took more than 5 minutes) is there any possible option to extract Zip file which will be uploaded from Interface? Thanks in advance.

Hi All, I just need to know which one is the best practice 1)creating an expression rule to fetch the data and creating another rule to manipulate the retrieved data 2) using same expression rule for both things

Hello All, I would like to know what is the best practice while creating view CDT's? do we need to specify column length while creating view cdt's? Observed column length in view cdt is different from actual table column length, in this scenario view still exists upon publishing view cdt.

Hi All, We have one scheduler process which is running outside business hour to generate document (PDF) files related to each cases(records) Current implementation :once document are generated by scheduler and attached to records .Then user will go each record and download the files and print it. User new requirement :Business wants to automate this manual process of going to each record and print document. They are checking if scheduler it self send document to printer. Is there is nay out-of-box functionality available to achieve this requirement or any plugin etc. ? Thanks in advance

How to create a new method to instantiate a new queue? Hello I am very new to appian .I want to create a new action to add a queue in the workflow. From where can I create a new action?

Hi All, We have one scenario where we need to update the one field in one row in database table. Table consist of 50 columns. Question :What is the best  between below two option 1. Query Database node :can use single update query to update one row in database. 2. Write to datastore smart service :First bring all data in CDT and update value of field and then write CDT to database using Write to Datastore smart service . Note: There will be only one row to update.

Hi  Ler's say i want to create a common application where i would like to put all common parent groups for all the other appian applications and other common stuff. When i create a group in an another application with parent group in the common application there is a cyclic precedents relationship between the two groups (the parent group relays on member group and the member group relays  on parent group). The only way i found to deploy common application first without receive the warning of "missing precedents" is to assing rule membership by rule. I would like to know if there is a best practice in order to manage those kind of application design concerns.  I'm a java developer and for me it's really odd behaviour this cyclic relationship by desgin Thanks a lot in advance 

Hello together, as I didn't found something suitable in Appian Playbook or documentation. (perhaps i am just blind, then please provide suitable links)I want to ask for your experience regarding calling data of a second application.Scenario: You have already applications A,B,C.... live.Now you want to create another one (Application D) which likes to get some data from Application A.What is the most elegant way in your opinion?I think there a plenty possible ways to archive this technically. I am still thinking about the best one. Reusing the same query rule of application A in applicaiton D regardless that its another application?Copying/Dublicating query rules of application A to application D?Creatin web services in application A and integration in application D?Two data stores which use the same DB scheme?.......What would be your favorite one and mostly: WHY? ;)Looking forward to read your input there. Kind regards to you all!

I am looking for the best way to loop over an integration for each item in an array, and append the result (in this case a document) to a variable.  Ideally I would do this directly in the UI.

Assume we have a task report displayed within an Appian app. Usually, I would see all tasks assigned to an user, meaning also some tasks spawned by other apps. What is the silver bullet here? My current approach is the following, i.e. filtering by Process whose process name contains the prefix of my app which looks rather improvised to me. Is there an out-of the box way how to obtain the app which created a specific task? Related questions https://community.appian.com/discussions/f/general/8197/how-to-get-process-model-name-and-application-name-from-process-instance-id https://community.appian.com/discussions/f/best-practices/10583/show-only-tasks-per-application-in-task-report

HI,  I'm trying to use default search in an entity backed record. I want to show a list of records which are also stored in a different table on the grid. I tried to call the values in a local variable in Default filters(expression mode), and when I try to use the "IN" function,  I get an error saying "Cannot apply operator [IN] to field". So, I have used a for each and "=" function to achieve what I needed. Is this a good approach or do we have any other option to do it in Appian? Note: I know it can also be done via a view and filter those in the backend. I would like to understand whether there is any other option that we can look into?

Hi, We have a process model that calls some integration SOAP services (that process is small and contains less than ten nodes). That process needs to be called by different Appian applications (on same server), so we need to generalize this process model. Today, we have 5 applications : - SHARED_APP : commun rules and components used by each applications below - APP1_APIs : APIs integration used by APP1 - APP1 : application 1 - APP2 : application 2 (that application contains temporarly the Integration SOAP API describes above) - APP3 : application 3 How would you do to generalize this process model ? - Creating this process model in the SHARED_APP application. Then the SOAP Integration service would be added there too.   In this case, the 3 applications (APP1, 2, 3) would just need to call this general process model from SHARED_APP - Creating this process model in a new application called SHARED_API. The

Hi together, I have the following calculation: ri!timstamp(decimal)="1630391405000" if( isnull(ri!timestamp), todatetime(null), a!localVariables( local!hours: floor(ri!timestamp/1000/60/60), local!hoursMilli: local!hours*1000*60*60, local!tsMinusHours: ri!timestamp - local!hoursMilli, local!minutes: floor(local!tsMinusHours/1000/60), local!minutesMilli: local!minutes*1000*60, local!tsMinusMinutes: local!tsMinusHours - local!minutesMilli, local!tsMinusMinutes ) ) result 5000(decimal) if( isnull(ri!timestamp), todatetime(null), a!localVariables( local!hours: floor(ri!timestamp/1000/60/60), local!hoursMilli: local!hours*1000*60*60, local!tsMinusHours: ri!timestamp - local!hoursMilli, local!minutes: floor(local!tsMinusHours/1000/60), local!minutesMilli: local!minutes*1000*60, local!tsMinusMinutes: local!tsMinusHours - local!minutesMilli, local!seconds: todecimal(quotient(local!tsMinusHours, 1000.00)), local!second

Hello, I have recently been hired to develop an automation framework for a large-scale Appian project. I have experience in creating automation frameworks using Selenium, Cucumber, TestNG, Junit, Maven, and Jenkins but I have never used Appian (going through the developer course now). I was wondering what the community suggests is the "go-to" framework or if it's more up to personal opinion. I did find this helpful guide here https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/21.2/testing-applications.html however the links do not work for me that would take me to the three functional UI testing tools. If anyone has a working link that would also be helpful so I can have a look at all 3.  Mainly I am just looking for advice from anyone who has built a large automation QA framework for an Appian project.  Thanks!

Hi All, I am displaying the data from record type in an read only grid . Now I want to create a filter which will display the data based on particular field filter using expression rules . Help me to do this .

Hello, I have a two dropdowns , first dropdown have list of table names and second dropdown have all columns name based on the table name which you select from the first dropdown and then filter button . Whenever user hit the filter button based on the table name and columns should be present the data in gird layout. How to archive this one?  Is there any possibilities is there by using report builder?  Please suggest the best practice  Thanks in advance .  

Hi, We have a tempo report created(as readonly no task action) and we tried to view the report in form of Records (expression back record using source type as other webservice). We were able to achieve this. Can you please help me whether this approach will have any impact on the  performance. Do we have any recommendations or suggestion on this approach?

I currently have a requirement. A main process is running.  It needs to have variables altered in it and the flow diverted when a webapi kicks off a separate process. At the moment our plan to do this involves send and receive message Appian functionality in the process models to divert flow. I had noticed some bizarre functionality with this a few months ago and this deprecation page https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/21.2/Send_Message_to_Process_Model.html. I may have improperly assumed message sending was deprecated or at least not a good practice from some posts. Send and receive messages are not deprecated correct?  What would you recommend for solving this requirement above?

Hi  Team, Having few quires regarding UI testing Security configuration and features supported by Appain. how UI Testing Security is supported by Appian ? Does appian UI Testing support OWASP Top Ten  ? What are the configuration require to setup the Security ? out of the box UI testing security  ? Ease of Integration security ? Security feature Compatibility with latest version ? I am new to appian please share link of some document which can refer for security Compatibility. Thanks , Narendra