Best Practice for Deploying Patches

Thanks Mike! I think if we just export the application using our service account and then re-import it, we should be okay. I was trying to avoid doing that. I'm also working with the cloud team because I think the 'Owner' column displayed on the Process tab in 18.1 is not correct. The 'Created by' and 'Author' columns displayed elsewhere (i.e., in the /design view) all show the service account name (Appian Administrator). So - perhaps the 'owner' is correct - but Appian has a bug in the Process tab in the /designer view.

Yeah - it all gets a bit confusing particularly since Appian uses different terms for these things in different contexts. For instance in /design all we see for process models is "last modified", which is different from a process model's "creator", however when a process is set to "run as designer" (i.e. in a subprocess call) it actually uses the "last modified by" user, not the creator.

When you say "Owner column", where exactly are you looking? The default view of the Process instances listing in legacy designer lists "Started By" but this isn't really the same as "Owner", though you could be referring to something different that I'm not thinking of.

If you are in 18.1 or earlier and click on the Processes tab, then view Process Models - the default column headings include: Name, Description, 'Owner', Created, Last Modified. I will try to upload a screenshot.

I see it now - as far as I know, "Owner" there reflects the process model's creator, but (confusingly) not the Last Published By user, which is the more important thing.

Hi Judy,

Good day!!!

There are two ways to overcome this situation:

1) Take a patch consisting of the Process Models last published by deactivated user and deploy it to the same environment using Service Account

2) Use the **Republish Model as Different User** smart service to republish the process model
Inputs:
-> Append Old Description To New - Set Boolean if you need to append old description to new description.
-> Break Lock - Set Boolean to breaklock the PM if it is being used by any other user
-> Model ID - Set the Process Model IDs which has to be republished by Service Account. To get Process model ids of PM last published by deactivated user, Create a "Process Report on Process Models last modified by deactivated user" to list out the Process models(with its details including Process Model ID) . Using this report, we can get the Process Model Ids
> New Owner - Service Account

Please find the link to Smart Service: forum.appian.com/.../summary

Thanks Arun - I plan to do the first thing you suggested. I'm still waiting for an update on the support case I created with Appian (we are a cloud customer). They were able to recreate what I described to them - where the 'owner' is the person who originally created the process model - even though the last modified is the Service Account. We may actually be okay and this could just be a bug in the old Process Model view.

Hello Mike,

this is exactly our case you mentioned above. Our service account is a dummy only and we can't log into it,
How did you manage to find all process models not last modified by the service account? Because I am struggling with a functionality of "Process model report - models last modified by user". When I define Report Context it is showing nonsense.

Thank you
Juraj Buc

Juraj - Your service account should be linked to an email address. Can't you reset the password for that account? Also - if you can't - you may have to search for process models last modified by the service account and then look at the different versions associated with each to find the last one not modified by the service account.

Thank you for your reaction, Judy. In the end we managed to get a report with PMs not last published by the service account using the custom function getProcessModelDetailsByUUID.