Best Practice for Deploying Patches

Question

We have several process models in our Production environment that list an individual user as the process owner. We've changed our practice since they were initially deployed, using only a service account (i.e., Appian.Aministrator) for deployments but the process owner value has not changed even when patches were deployed that modified these process models. Do we need to export the processes using the Appian.Administrator account and then re-import them in order to change the process owner? Please advise. I don't want to risk having these processes fail if the listed process owner account becomes deactivated.

yeswanththiyarir · Answer

Hi Judy, 
This should help you. 
 docs.appian.com/.../Application_Deployment_Guidelines.html 
Thanks 
Yeswanth

Mike Schmitt · Answer

Please look into a plug-in called " Re-publish process model as user ". Running this against any process models where the creator is not listed as your service account will allow you to set whatever user you like as the "last publisher", which in my experience is the main factor in process model security (regardless of whichever user originally imported the process model). In one of my projects the service account is a dummy only and developers can't log into it, so deployment is done via personal accounts and then we run a tool I wrote a few years ago that finds all process models not last modified by the service account, and re-publishes them under the authority of the service account.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

If you're interested, I've created a generic export of my process model republisher app. It requires the two plug-ins mentioned here, as well as the common Appian Common Objects rules (APN_isBlank, APN_isEmpty, APN_arrayLength, and APN_displayUser), but otherwise has no precedents. I will attach it here so you can try it out. 
 1362.Process Model Republisher - 2018-11-13.zip 
 This also requires a .properties file - the generic value is as follows, and you would need to supply your own custom admin user username proor to import: 
 ## Constant: PMR_ENVIRONMENT_ADMIN_USER
## Type: Text
##
## Text values will be displayed in Appian exactly as they are
## specified here. No spaces are trimmed. Values do not need to be
## encased in quotation marks.
content._a-0000dab0-812b-8000-9ba2-011c48011c48_193261.VALUE=admin.username