Backup/Export Appian Documents outside Appian

Using the ZIP file plugin, you can add an arbitrary set of documents to a zip file; and then you could upload that zip file to an FTP server somewhere using the appropriate plug-in, or perhaps push the file to a sharepoint server - it really depends on where the "external location" they want will be.

Could that work for every document stored in Appian so far because they may want save this document now in certain order.

The approach I would recommend is to assemble a process that collects all documents in specific targeted Appian filesystem folders and zips them together for export (and preferably, does the export right afterward).

Using this method, I think you could effectively gather every document in an environment, though the number of different nested folders and total sizes would vary dramatically depending on the particular implementation you're dealing with and its age.

Thank you Mike! We will have this approach in mind to get prepared for that requirement!

Just be careful on your process design - if you loop within a process and have lots of documents you could "implode" an exec engine if you're not careful depending on the method used.

We did this a while ago pushing to sharepoint and used a model which called a start process smart service which meant all the instances were balanced across the exec engines rather than ballooning lots of sub processes within a single one.