** Feature Request - Site Action Navigation **

This feature request involves navigation controls upon Site Action completion.  Currently, as with all Appian Actions, when one is completed the user is returned to the area they initiated the action from.

This makes sense in a number of situations, however, not always with Site Actions in my experience.  In most situations I've encountered, a user is expected to submit 1 action at a time.  Typically we will have a few Site Pages, maybe a Home Page interface with general process details/contacts, a Record with some reporting capabilities, and a Action to submit a request.  Currently when the action is completed, the default behavior is to return the user to the same action's start form, essentially now a blank interface for the same process they have already submitted.  This causes end user confusion and creates extra development when we want to show a user a confirmation screen and allow custom navigation.  Best case, an extra click and an orphaned task in their Tasks List until timeout.

It would make sense to me if we had a configuration available on a Site Action, that allowed designers to determine which Site Page to route the user to when the action is completed.  In this situation, you  could have a "Submit" action that was configured to return users to the "Home Page" once completed - this would be more intuitive to the user, providing navigation to Home as an additional type of submission confirmation.  Currently if the user is not paying close attention, it can just appear as if the form clears itself and no submission occurred.

The alternative case where a user is expected to submit multiple tasks in succession, requiring them to remain on the Action after completion, is much more rare in my experience, so it does not make since to be the default configuration here.

Thoughts welcome!

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  • I understand your request and I think you should look into the record action component https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/20.2/Record_Action_Component.html

    Thie component allows you to place actions on any interface and open them in a dialog. When the action completes, the dialog closes and your page is still in the same state as before. You can also set local variables to refresh upon action completion. In general, it's not a UX best practice to keep redirecting users because they'll lose context of the page they came from.

    Another thing you can try for more dynamic page links is to use a!reportLink() which will load a report interface while keeping the user on the same site tab. You can rely on the user clicking the site tab to go back or navigating us the browser back button.

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  • I understand your request and I think you should look into the record action component https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/20.2/Record_Action_Component.html

    Thie component allows you to place actions on any interface and open them in a dialog. When the action completes, the dialog closes and your page is still in the same state as before. You can also set local variables to refresh upon action completion. In general, it's not a UX best practice to keep redirecting users because they'll lose context of the page they came from.

    Another thing you can try for more dynamic page links is to use a!reportLink() which will load a report interface while keeping the user on the same site tab. You can rely on the user clicking the site tab to go back or navigating us the browser back button.

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