Best Practices

Hi Appian Community, I want to implement a simple Try... Catch within my Web API sail expression to test the request body being a valid JSON message. I still notice that the Try() function is not publicized in the documentation but it has been an easier implementation. And in posts that mention Try() function it heavily cautions that it is not recommended and could become unavailable. I looked into using some regular expressions off Google that match for JSON as an alternative but found they aren't compliant with the regex plugin. Example Regex /(?{((?\"([^\0-\x1F\"\\]|\\[\"\\\/bfnrt]|\\u[0-9a-fA-F]{4})*\"):(?\g|(?-?(0|[1-9]\d*)(.\d+)?([eE][+-]?\d+)?)|\g|\g|true|false|null))?\s*((?,\s*)\g(?:\s*)\g)*})|(?\[\g?(\g\g)*\])/ What are some recommended HTTP Request Body validation expressions that can validate whether the message is JSON or XML? It would be great if WebAPI object can handle the content-type validation automatically for us. Below code is using try() function to test f

What is the best practice for naming a datasource in Appian? In DEV, UAT, PROD can what should be the name of datasource be provided?

Hi everyone, Happy 2023. I've got a question about service accounts: we've got a single environment with no Dev + Test + Prod set up. Just one environment a number of devs at our company all use. A sort of "sandbox" where we have a number of applications. As an example, if 10 of us each had their own application that had an RPA object and a Connected System object (ie: for Portals).... would we need 20 different service accounts with 20 different API keys? Or, can we use 1 service account (+ its API key) for everything? Many thanks,Uel

Hello All, Is there an order of objects to deploy. I have environmental constants also. My prod deployment is still manual. Eg: 1.SQL scripts to be executed first. 2. CDTs 3. Datastores. 4. Constants 5. Connected systems.. ..etc

I've often had the request from clients for task notification customization: - Send to a mailbox not necessarily tied to an Appian user (they are using a shared mailbox or the user has not yet been created in Appian) - Send custom template The workaround I've been using is a little convoluted where I start a sub process on a timer before the task is initiated, it queries a task report to go and get the Task ID to be able to construct the task URL to put in the email. Would be nice if we could just customize this directly on the task itself without resorting to the subprocess/timer/task report approach.

Our Requirement is , x person will upload a loan form along with his government ID Proof , in our configured idp model. So when we are in reconcile screen we need to validate the name in the application form and id proof ,if matches its fine or else we need to display an error on name field , that name doesn't match with id proof - all this tasks should be done before we click on reconcile button NOTE: We are merging the two pdfs into one (1 is loan application form and the other is his id proof ex-Aadhar) , when we upload after the idp processing , we will be routed to reconcile screen where we will accept the task and we will reconcile - there in that screen we need to validate two documents . (like example- name in the application should match name in the aadhar card) is , there any way to solve this problem .

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It is my understanding that the "Appian" way is writing state-full applications - where the processes model instances hold the state of the application.  The main drawback is of course that being state-full means vertical scalability only. However, given current state of the horse power provided by standard hosting and the nature of Appian application  this is a non issue.  However being state-full means that long lived running processes cannot easily be upgraded in order to introduce new functionality. Reading the documentation, I am aware about an upgrade process which requires developing per upgrade plug-in which needs to be submitted and approved by APPIAN. Development of such a plug-in requires Java and Appian internals know-how, as well as locally deployed instance. This is of course beyond the rich of an average Appian developers. What is your stance  ? 

Hi Experts, What all point need to be taken into consideration while Moving Application from version 17.1 to 21.4. What all are the pre-requisite on the admin console side as well as at object level.

Hi Team, I have new requirement to add few fields in the interfaces for which i updated the existing interfaces and data types. But there are many active instances available in production which might cause issue? In One Scenario i want the latest changes also to be included after the deployment and in another task i want the hide the latest changes for few tasks. Can you please guide me to the list of steps that i need to take care while moving the changes to Production. Please let me know if any further information is required

Hi Team, We Often get the requirements from the business to Skip the flow and to complete the case. so we are cancelling the tasks and making the backend database changes when the user is unable to complete the task. Does it has Impact on the performance on the environment and what is the best way to handle this kind of Changes. Thanks In Advance

Hi all I want to hear some of the ways you guys organise the rules in an application in general or as a best practice. For example, an application involving a couple of hundred rules would be hard to manage and understand for someone new to it. I've thought of organising rules in their dedicated folders by their feature/record type. I want to know what other patterns the community follows for better organising their rules?

Hi All, There is requirement for implementing workflows having Approve and Reject functionality for people belonging to various groups. We have implemented it using Appian Task based feature where in person belonging to specific group can see the list of task that person needs to Approve Or Reject and based on Approve and Reject it moves to next persons bucket. But the issue we are facing is that the task are user input based and the process remains in Active state for long time until and unless the person acts on it. So keeping multiple process Active for long time is causing load on the performance of APPIAN as huge amount of Active task gets piled up. So my query, is this the recommended way for implementing workflows using APPIAN Task based approach. Regards Bihitak

Please let me know if we enable activity chaining on Appian Batch Process (ex: data load, copy files ) whether will that impact system performance?  Also mni is configured in one of the nodes to spawn multiple nodes. Thanks

We have requirements to build out document retention policy management features: * Define purge policy definitions to define business epxression for when documents should be purged (e.g.,  delete after X years and other business conditions met) * Create purge records to capture list of documents which will be deleted in upcoming purge cycles to allow users to define hold/exceptions which should not get purged) Has anyone built these type features in Appian and what implementation approaches were taken?Regards, Bob

Dear I would like Appian RPA Robot to read/write to DB in "MS Access".So, I am trying to create custom Java code. Issues Below are wexing me now.1. How to pass values from process model to custom Java code.2. How to execute the query statement against MS Access.3. How to return query execution results from java custom code to process model Regarding 2, I think I will use UCanAccess which is one of JDBC.If you know a better way, could you tell me it. Regarding 1 and 3, could you share a sample code ?

Hi all,   Wanted to ask the community to see if anyone has some best practice recommendations to handle the edge cases caused by Appian limitations in how it detects null/empty values and how it converts null singleton types into array rule inputs; and especially recommendations on setting up re-usable query entity rules.   We've discovered that Appian handles nulls in unintuitive ways depending on the data-type. If a rule input is an array, and you pass in a singleton of the same type that is null, Appian will automatically convert that input to {null} (a one element array where that element is null), rather than null or {} (empty). According to Appian support, this is the expected behavior of the product.   However, this causes two issues for us:     The out-of-the-box isnull() and a!isNullOrEmpty() functions return false, despite a reasonable assumption that the value is null/empty. (It is not. It is a one element array with that element being null, due

I have not created any record for storing status values i.e. assigned, accepted and completed. How can I do it?

Hello, I was wondering, what would be a good way for a software development team to work on the same project and maybe even the same objects?  Thank you for sharing some insightsThomas

In the cloud database, a value with the row id is stored. I have this read only grid, I want to change the row id value instead of another field of the row In the following read-only grid image, the value of the row id "3" appears in the column "Grupo/Empresa"  I want to change that value to a text to facilitate identification In this case the row id "3" belongs to "CORFOPYM QUITO" In the read only grid should appear " "CORFOPYM QUITO" instead of "3"

how can we achive pagination in layout grid without using foreach?.

Hello, I'm looking for a best practice how-to enable a user management within an application. Basically there are two main roles within the target application: administrator role - I assume that one can be based on the appian built-in user management standard user role - thats a role where an "anonymous" user can apply for with a self choosen username and password based on an application built login interface such user will have some additional things to do What would be a good way to achieve this if any? Thank you in advanceThomas

When I submit a form with a dependent dropdown fields, it stores the ID in the database... I want to store the value or text that I chose... I followed this: https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/22.3/recipe-configure-cascading-dropdowns.html  HOW I DO THAT? please help

Hi All, can you please suggest possible ways to convert PDF and word documents into txt document. These document are not having any specific template and all are having different format . Please suggest easiest way.

HI ,I am trying to update a process variable of type datasubset,I am using the following code to update a particular index value,a!update( data: pv!dataSubset, index: index( index( pv!dataSubset.data, wherecontains( 1, tointeger( index(pv!dataSubset.data, "verse_no", {}) ) ), {} ), "sentOn", {} ), value: now() ) As the data is an array and at each index again is a CDT.And I am trying to store it in the PV(type Datasubset) but I could not able to do it I am getting an error "(Expression evaluation error at function a!update: Invalid index: Cannot use multiple numeric indices into record for update) (Data Outputs)"