Features of Appian

Question

I am new to the Appian Community. I am interested in your opinion: What are the 5 best features of the Appian tool? Also, what things about Appian could stand improvement? 
 
 I have a customer that runs a heavy-duty equipment enterprise in the Midwestern US. We are looking to pitch Appian as a replacement for the current MS Access system for tracking equipment rental - they outgrew this system 5 years ago but have been unable to find an affordable solution. Appian seems to be a good fit.

Richard · Accepted Answer

That is a very broad question, and as a result is difficult to answer. The tool is tremendously flexible and can be made to suit a variety of purposes. I'd suggest engaging with the technical sales representatives to ensure you're armed with the information you need. 
 
Having said that, here's my list of best features: 
 
1) Appian, the company itself, employs stellar people who quickly adapt the product to emerging desires of their customers. They also have kept this company at the forefront of technology innovation. 
2) Divorcing the user interface components from being tightly bound to forms and reports. This flexibility has allowed us to allocate project resources very effectively 
3) Adoption of Hibernate and abstraction of data types into XML/XSD. The relief from writing complex SQL, and the ability to quickly write queries using a!queryEntity are huge and have reduced our development time significantly 
4) An open API for Java extension. Although we have found everything we need in the out - of - box solution, we recognize Appian's commitment to this as important. 
5) The user community, where we are right now. Many of our problems and challenges have been solved by this group. 
 
Having worked with the product for 11 years, I think that they've fixed any complaints that I had years ago.

lucasj · Answer

Some of my favorite features include: 
1) FitNesse for Appian allows for easy creation of automated test scripts 
2) Integration Designer 
3) Frequent platform updates allow you to take advantage of modern UI 
4) App market has lots of great plug-ins to extend out of the box functionality 
5) Appian Cloud takes the hassle out of managing servers