We are on Appian 7.8 cloud. Following is my requirement. Let me know

We are on Appian 7.8 cloud.

Following is my requirement. Let me know if that is possible.

We want to send post containing report about previous day's work. Is there a way to show the report with grid or chart in the Post?

Thanks in advanced.

OriginalPostID-146764

OriginalPostID-146764

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  • AFAIK currently there isn't any such possibility in Appian. But probably you could think of an alternative such as providing a link to report in 'More Info' of the post and thereby updating the content of the post describing the user about the link in 'More Info'.
  • Thank you Sikhivahan for the response.

    Now, to give you some more details, the post will be directed to all managers and their reports. For example, if a manager has 3 reports, then the manager will get 3 posts containing his/her reports' work during last 24 hours, plus all the reports will get the same post.
    Now, because this will be a heavy process, we are thinking of running this once a day when the load on the server is very low. At first the idea was that we would show the grid on the post itself. But, it seems to be impossible. So, I was thinking to get the data (data will be coming from the external database) in the Script Task and save it in the process variable. And then save the data somehow. I looked and I couldn't find any smart service for exporting / creating excel document. So, is there any way I can save document in tabular fashion?

    Thanks again.
  • @aksharc Please correct me if I am wrong - So you do have the data which needs to be exported to the excel. For instance, say a manager needs 3 reports. Then you will have the data with respect to the 3 reports and you would like to push some data into each sheet, which ultimately results in a single document consisting of 3 sheets where each sheet has data related to a report. Is it so?
  • Sorry for the confusion here.

    Here reports of Manager means people working under the manager. So 3 reports of a manager means 3 people who reports to the manager.

    Now, consider following scenario:
    Manager A is managing three employees (EmpA, EmpB, EmpC).
    Info of EmpA will be stored in AttA, EmpB will be stored in AttB, and EmpC will be stored in AttC. All the Attachments are different excel files.
    Now every 24 hours, Manager A will get 3 posts which has information about the employees. (AttA, AttB, and AttC)
    Also, EmpA will get a post with attachment AttA. And so on.

    Now I am going to use ExportableDatatype (Came with Download Datasubset plug in) to store the data.

    So, is there a way I can save the data in the Excel file?
  • May I please know the answers to following questions:

    1. Are you struck in exporting the data present in the PV of type ExportableDataType to an excel document?

    2. Earlier you specified in the post that you want to represent the document in a 'tabular fashion'. May I know what do you mean by it?
  • 1. Yes. But, to clarify, I am not using the plug in. I am just using the custom data type ExportableDataType that came with it.

    2. Final goal here is having a document that has a data represented in the tabular fashion. So, it can be excel file or table in word file, or any other document.

    Hope that helps.
    Let me know if any question!
  • No problem, Here goes my explanation as per the understanding I had from your answers:

    1. If you have the data in a PV which is of type ExportableDatasubset, then you could make use of the data in this PV (For instance, to access the data in a field called 'id', use index(PV!X.datasubset.data,"id",null)) and use 'Export CDT to Excel' utility to export the data into an excel. (Offcourse there might be some other utilities as well, which will export the data to excel and you can make a search of these in the Shared Components)
    2. If you want to export the data into Excel or Word document in a tabular fashion, you could do either of the following:
              - Excel document: Export CDT to Excel does the work for you. You could prepare a template of the excel sheet, and there by usage of 'Export CDT to Excel' and the PV (of type ExportableDatasubset which actually has data) will result in a document which represents the data in one single table. (If needed, usage of the same utility with different sheet numbers will offer you multiple tabs in the same excel sheet.)
              - Word document: Firstly, a word template is needed. Secondly you could create an expression rule which would generate xml code (with a desired design) that results in a nicely formatted table with the desired columns from the given data. Thereafter you could pass the output of the expression to the word template which results in embedding the table in the document (I suggest you to refer Advance Document Templating before implementing this approach).
              
    Please do let me know if the above explanation didn't answer your question yet or if you have any follow-up questions.
  • Thank you so much Sikhivahan. I will try to implement your suggestions and come back here if I run into something. Thanks again.