How we can invoke a process model through email?

Hi Aswini as per my understanding, web API is the best option for you to trigger a process using a link, but when you talk about through an email, in such case an email can be triggered to anyone who is not aware of Appian system, the moment they click on the link, he will be redirected to Appian login screen, which do not make any sense to business user, who is not the part of Appian.

In such case, you can build a servlet plugin which will use basic authentication, so while sending an email, we need to send servlet url instead of Web API url, where the url will contain some certain parameter, which will identify the process or its parameter.

Now the moment users clicks on servlet link through his email, he will be asked for basic authentication using html standard pop-up(which can be sent to the user in its email body) and once user provides the authentication details, servlet will authenticate the user and will login him into Appian and will send the same parameter to its configured Web API, and once the request gets delivered to Appian, it can easily determine & invoke the target process where process model or its parameters can be identified using the passed parameter to servlet through email link.

I know it's a bit complex, but I believe it's the only way you have, specially when you are on cloud premises and don't want to build a separate web application and deploy in other server to integrate with Appian.

Hope this will give you high level understanding about the process which you need to follow when you want to invoke a process using an email link.

Hi Aswini as per my understanding, web API is the best option for you to trigger a process using a link, but when you talk about through an email, in such case an email can be triggered to anyone who is not aware of Appian system, the moment they click on the link, he will be redirected to Appian login screen, which do not make any sense to business user, who is not the part of Appian.

In such case, you can build a servlet plugin which will use basic authentication, so while sending an email, we need to send servlet url instead of Web API url, where the url will contain some certain parameter, which will identify the process or its parameter.

Now the moment users clicks on servlet link through his email, he will be asked for basic authentication using html standard pop-up(which can be sent to the user in its email body) and once user provides the authentication details, servlet will authenticate the user and will login him into Appian and will send the same parameter to its configured Web API, and once the request gets delivered to Appian, it can easily determine & invoke the target process where process model or its parameters can be identified using the passed parameter to servlet through email link.

I know it's a bit complex, but I believe it's the only way you have, specially when you are on cloud premises and don't want to build a separate web application and deploy in other server to integrate with Appian.

Hope this will give you high level understanding about the process which you need to follow when you want to invoke a process using an email link.