I need help setting a constant in a process

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

pedrol — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 20:12:21 GMT

Actually think I do not need them now.

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

Mike Cichy — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 19:50:53 GMT

I think you need to present your larger use case. What problem are you trying to solve? What is the value you are trying to persist? Why do you call webAPI later on? From your description I would like to know why you need the information from the PM, maybe we could suggest a different design altogether.
Updating a constant to temporarily store some information is not a good idea, since it does not handle transactionality and as sureshg57 noted, creates multiple versions which in high use situation could cause performance and resource utilization issues.

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

pedrol — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 19:05:20 GMT

Thank you that was what I needed. I think buggy documentation needs to be brought to Appian's attention.

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

sureshg57 — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 07:22:26 GMT

It is not necessary the constant to be a number though it is mentioned in documentation.

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

pedrol — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 21:33:25 GMT

I need to make this value public via an API, not a UI. I have no access to the DB due to security restrictions. And writing the ephemeral result of a transient process to the DB seems like a heavyweight and rather odd situation.

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

pedrol — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 21:30:10 GMT

My constant is not of type number so those instructions do not seem to be relevant.

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

sureshg57 — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 21:16:22 GMT

It is little bit unclear what is your exact requirement, but form what i get you are trying to access/retrieve some values which is a result of a process that completed already. if this is the case I think best way is to persist the required data in database table and use webAPI to retrieve those data when ever webAPI is called.

To answer how to update a constant it is pretty clearly given in the below documentation.
When selecting constant in the smart service user Directory icon to select constant rather than opening up expression editor.
(this approach is not good for this requirement as this may result in creating many version of the constant)
docs.appian.com/.../Update_Constant_Smart_Service.html

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

gianninol — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 21:11:30 GMT

Pedro,

In response to your first question, you can create process reports that report on terminated processes; all you have to do is edit the process report, navigate to the "filters" tab of the dialog box, and uncheck the "active" box. You will only be able to see data from unarchived processes, however, so check when the processes are archived by opening the process model properties and navigating to the "Data Management" tab. You can change the archival period there.

In general, though, you will want to avoid waiting too long to archive most processes, as it will eat memory. So, if you will need to access the results of that process much later, you will want to write the results to the database as Colton mentions above. Realistically if it is meant to be accessed across multiple applications it's probably best to write it to the database anyway, but you can do it through process reporting if necessary.

Thanks,
Nino

RE: I need help setting a constant in a process

Colton Beck — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:07:57 GMT

Could you write these values to the database? Doing so would simplify accessing these data.