Update running Process instance with new functionalities deploy in latest version

RE: Update running Process instance with new functionalities deploy in latest version

Chris — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 18:55:54 GMT

Similar idea for both! ;)

RE: Update running Process instance with new functionalities deploy in latest version

Peter Lewis — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 18:51:06 GMT

Oh good call - that playbook article is probably even more relevant than the one I posted!

RE: Update running Process instance with new functionalities deploy in latest version

Chris — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 18:49:04 GMT

As Peter notes, this is tricky - there are a lot of considerations, when/where different data points are populated vs where your process instances are in their lifecycle, how drastic are the changes you are making, etc etc.

We've released thousands of enhancements over the past decade and never offer to the customer that running instances will be updated with the new logic. Only in one situation have we used the IFM Manager plugin, to resolve a bug that was deployed back on 16.x where a parent process passed a CDT to a sub process which contained a newer version, causing data to be cleared in legacy running instances.

Another read from the playbook is Creating Flexible Processes.

RE: Update running Process instance with new functionalities deploy in latest version

Peter Lewis — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 18:42:05 GMT

There is a plug-in that allows you to upgrade process instances to a new version: https://community.appian.com/b/appmarket/posts/process-management-services. However, it's a tricky procedure, as there's a lot of considerations based on what changes are made. There's a pretty good page in the documentation that provides Process Upgrade Guidance that I'd highly recommend reading before you consider an update.

Also some general guidance - in the future I'd recommend trying to set up your processes so they are short lived. This makes it less likely that a process upgrade is necessary and has lots of other benefits too (e.g. being more memory efficient). Here's a page in the playbook that goes through creating memory efficient models.