Option to Disable 19.3 Dialog Style Related Actions

Out of curiosity, how much of this would be solved if they tweaked the chaining functionality such that it correctly refreshes the source interface upon returning from a Related Action?

I like the idea of an option to allow either behavior - some use cases use a Related Action to start a brand new process flow (as opposed to something transient), and in such cases it might be expected that the task forms started by Related Actions act like regular actions / start process links / task links.

Additionally, it would be nice to be able to configure Start Process Links to emulate Related Actions (since they can be used to create "ad hoc related actions" in a sense).  All I would need is a new parameter that can be set either way. 

The new functionality is great when you need a user to complete an on-screen task and not accidentally navigate away, since depending on your setup (particularly in sites) they might not have visibility into a traditional "task list" and therefore running tasks might be lost.  It would just be nice to have a more complete set of options for it.

If they updated the chaining functionality to work that way and fixed the dialog style Related Actions so that they didn't take a performance hit from the old versions, I'd be ok with the dialog style RA's (Even if I'm not the biggest fan of them aesthetically).

My biggest issue is that the dialog style RA's are slower and can lead to lost inputs if the user interacts too quickly with the record view.

Charlie Shin said:

My biggest issue is that the dialog style RA's are slower

I haven't personally experienced this yet, but haven't tested it all that extensively either.  Hopefully some tweaking will arrive soon via hotfixes and the like.

I'll admit I didn't take a stopwatch to it but at the very least, the dialog style RA's feel slower and that may be due to the record view refresh after submission. In that case, the activity chaining change would be the only real fix needed.

Have you considered raising a support case for this?  At least the specific issue of the behavior change irrespective of activity chaining... that might get it on Appian's radar more quickly.

On our project we have a related action that goes through a series of forms in a process that incorporates multiple users and related systems and can last multiple days or weeks.  We designed that as a related action because that's how Appian worked when we designed it.

Did Appian consider that people might use related actions as larger components of their applications than the actions themselves?  Did Appian consider that for certain applications it would make more sense for the Actions to appear as dialog boxes rather than the Related Actions?

Now we can't upgrade to 19.3 ever, not without completely ruining the look and feel of the whole application.  With this bug included in the mix, we could see countless tickets of users doing irreparable harm to their data.

Appian could introduce a checkbox to the Record Type definition so we don't have to use it if we don't want to unless there's some severe architectural problem involved with having both.

Unknown said:

Appian could introduce a checkbox to the Record Type definition

I agree - though i'd prefer it to be a setting that can be set (or at least overridden) for individual related actions on the same record.

Unknown said:

we could see countless tickets of users doing irreparable harm to their data

To be fair, I have been testing this issue out myself and haven't been able to reproduce any actual data loss so far.

Unknown said:

we have a related action that goes through a series of forms in a process that incorporates multiple users and related systems and can last multiple days or weeks. 

I'm not sure much will change about this.  The initial chained section(s) following the related action will happen in the dialog, but any subsequent tasks will still appear on a user's task list and, i assume, still open and function in the same way.

Thanks for sharing this feedback. After reviewing this and other feedback we've received on this change, we’ve decided to remove it from 19.3. The behavior as-is does not meet the necessary use cases for user flows through related action forms. A 19.3 hotfix coming early next week will turn off the feature and restore prior behavior. We’re still reviewing if and when the capability will be re-added to the product.

This feature seemed like a very good approach to a variety of use cases where we would wish to keep the user from accidentally clicking away from a short-lived, temporary or transient process flow... especially in Sites where they are likely not seeing a traditional "task list".  

It seems to me that a great approach might be to allow designers the option to enable this functionality on an individual related action basis, as well as in Start Process Links, Task Links and Record Type actions.

Hi.

Is there any set date for this hotfix to be available on the Cloud environments?

The current behaviour is causing issues with our stakeholders.

Thanks,

Ryan