Publish WebAPI with Start Processs Smart Service w/activity chaining

We are considering minimizing effort for first mvp deliver of a  a solution implementation where an external system will invoke a web api to start a process which will run a series of unattended nodes  activity chained through to  return the response in a synchronous manor.   

Its my understanding reading community posts and Appian documentation that this is feasible but is it a bad idea/practice to do so in the Appian architecture?  Has anyone every done this with success?    If so what is count of requests per month you are handling and how long does your process take to complete?   What other aspects should I consider before going down this path?   

Our solution will be deployed in Appian Cloud environment.

As noted the main reason to consider this is mvp delivery planning but if its a bad idea then want to plan appropriately.   The variables I can not assess now is how long the process will take to execute since we have not built it yet.   For load we need to handle 30K requests per month initially and business obviously wants a solution which will grow way beyond current needs.

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  • Not having detailed insight into your process: Your plan sounds fine to me.  7.5k transactions a week could be fine.

    Note - whatever is going on in your process ought to be fast, and iron clad (i.e. very unlikely to break).  
    If it's slow, and error prone, it's probably not a good fit for a synchronous response. 
    Your alternative (and it sounds like you thought about it already) could be to kick of an integration call from Appian to your external system after the processing in Appian is done, and send a "response" payload that's logically linked to the initial request.

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  • Not having detailed insight into your process: Your plan sounds fine to me.  7.5k transactions a week could be fine.

    Note - whatever is going on in your process ought to be fast, and iron clad (i.e. very unlikely to break).  
    If it's slow, and error prone, it's probably not a good fit for a synchronous response. 
    Your alternative (and it sounds like you thought about it already) could be to kick of an integration call from Appian to your external system after the processing in Appian is done, and send a "response" payload that's logically linked to the initial request.

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