Calling appian web api from email

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Vinita Jain — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:02:11 GMT

Hi Vivek,

I don't think this is possible to do and moreover it will expose your application to security threats which might create even bigger problems. And if there is no other way then you might need to add a 2 way authentication where if the system checks that it is an external user based on domain or some kind of unique key and if it is external then those set of users will need to validate their identity by the unique id which is stored in Appian and only then the access can be given. But this might be a very complex way of doing it.

Thanks,

Vinita Jain

RE: Calling appian web api from email

viveku3486 — Wed, 26 May 2021 09:55:51 GMT

Thanks Stefan for you valuable suggestions and quick response. I will try to consider these mentioned approaches in order to achieve what we need.

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Stefan Helzle — Wed, 26 May 2021 08:26:48 GMT

You will need to contact your Appian key accounter for more info.

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Vincenzo Reggina — Wed, 26 May 2021 08:24:09 GMT

an link to preview of the new functionality?

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Vincenzo Reggina — Wed, 26 May 2021 08:21:20 GMT

in according to Stefan, you have those options, cited.

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Stefan Helzle — Wed, 26 May 2021 08:19:11 GMT

No, this is in beta and will be published in a future version. Depending on your project timeline that might be an option.

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Vincenzo Reggina — Wed, 26 May 2021 08:17:11 GMT

Appian portal is an interesting way, can you give a link to documentation about this?

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Stefan Helzle — Wed, 26 May 2021 07:59:37 GMT

Sorry to say, but this will not work. You can not do a POST from a link in an email.

Four options:

- Make externals Appian users and create a nice UI for them to do their job

- Create a separate portal for external users and do things over there

- Wait for Appian portal to become available, currently in beta, and do it this way

- Create a web API external to Appian, register an awaited call-back from emails using a random string as an identifier. This link must be unique, personal, random and not expose any data or credentials. Then this API could forward that call as a POST to Appian.

RE: Calling appian web api from email

viveku3486 — Wed, 26 May 2021 07:41:27 GMT

Can you elaborate some more? I didn't actually get your point. You mean to create a task in appian and call that task on the link click?

RE: Calling appian web api from email

viveku3486 — Wed, 26 May 2021 07:40:10 GMT

We are building a project where we are sending an email to our external clients. The purpose of this functionality is to enable them to make changes to their product directly from email. So we have decided to give them a button in an email, on the click of which our web api will get called and perform the actions that are desired. These emails are sent as a remainder every week and so we don't want them to open appian url,login into the system and perform actions, instead they can do their operations with a single click inside an email.

I also tried making a post request from html code(in order to hide security informations) but that doesn't seems to be working. Can you suggest something inline to this requirement that can help us get this working. May be in a different way?

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Vincenzo Reggina — Tue, 25 May 2021 18:00:59 GMT

I do not recommend this practice, because you'll expose your application to security risks.

If you want to do something like this, i suggest to create an task called by a link to an task that permitt to complete the request.

RE: Calling appian web api from email

Stefan Helzle — Tue, 25 May 2021 17:41:05 GMT

Simple answer. Do not do that !!!

This would give valid credentials to any system between you and your recipient. Email is not secure in any way and can be read by anyone.

What do you want to achieve?