External User access to Appian application

Question

Hi Community, 
 
 I have a use case where an external user has to be access Appian application to submit the requested details and attach necessary documents. For this, I can think of 2 possible approaches 
 1. Design a login workflow to provide access and using java servlet, capture the details. This definitely requires some effort and a challenge w.r.t user licenses if they are in huge number. Also, for the login workflow, can we configure an option to forgot security question? 
 2. Provide a standard template to enter the details and send the same to the respective SPOC (manually though email) to enter the details on their behalf. I know this approach will not cater for complete automation. To make it automated, does Appian has the capability to read incoming email along with its attachments when replied to the email triggered from Appian. 
 I'm looking for some pros/cons with above approaches and also other approach if any would be greatly appreciated. 
 
 Thanks.

Dai Williams · Answer

May be worth you considering (dependent on what version you are on) securing an Appian site for the external party and then masking the URL they access that site by? Could all be handled by Appian security then? But yes, licencing would need to be considered and how that information is collected and at what volume vs number of users. 
 
An external data capture tool to then call an Appian process api (WebAPI vs Process WSDL) could be another solution.