Fully automated workflow

Hi All,

I have a requirement as below.

 1. Automated trigger will be created in Appian and the trigger will create a soap request and hit the surrounding systems then return the response list

 2. List should be iterated and for each item in the list, it will go again to surrounding systems with soap integration and get the necessary details

 3. Finally we submit the collected data through soap request and post the data to the surrounding systems.

 

All the above mentioned action points are automated and no manual users are involved. Can you pelase help me if this requirement is feasible in Appian?

  Discussion posts and replies are publicly visible

  • Hi Ramesh - 

    Typically - when you share a requirement like this, if you can also share some business context, it helps us mentally process the problem better.

    At a high level, what you've described sounds technically possible to achieve using Appian. 

    I have one comment and then one question - The comment is, as the expression goes: "the devil is in the details".  

    The question: You don't mention users anywhere in your description.  Does the output of this data manipulation and web service orchestration ever get used by an Appian user?  

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer

    Agree with Rob. At a high-level, it sounds possible. However, will people ever interact with any data from this? What do you hope to gain by performing this in Appian and instead not in a RPA tool or DB? Is there intelligence that the iBPMS can provide insight into, are there some steps somewhere in the middle a person might do, or is there exception flows that a person might do? 

  • Hello Robert,

    Thanks for your comment.

    My business case is to Remit the loan.

    We have a legacy system which takes care of Loan process. Once the loan is processed by legacy, loan remittance is happening manually. We wanted to automate this loan remittance process using Appian and Middleware. Finally we decided to follow the below approach. 

    MW will get the completed loan details from legacy system and give it to Appian as a json list and in-turn appian will  parse the list and iterate one by one process. We wanted to completely eliminate the user intervention in this process. Some exception are there but those will be handled through user queues. Technical stuffs i have explained in the earlier message.

  • Hello Christine, Thanks for your comment. We have exception queues which will be handled by Appian Users but mostly straight through process only. I have explained my requirement in by previous reply to Rob. Please suggest which one will be the good option for this requirement.

  • Please suggest which one will be the good option for this requirement.

  • Nothing you have written raises any red flags with respect to accomplishing this in Appian. 

    Christine does ask an important question though.  What I'm hearing is that you wish to reconcile data throughout a series of systems when an event occurs.  This pattern is well-worn territory, and there are fit-for-purpose tools to do it.  Unless there are mitigating reasons that Appian has to be the tool,  it doesn't seem like a perfect fit.

    It would be like using the back of a shovel to hammer nails into a board,  it would work, but a hammer would be a better tool.

    Having said that, it seems like you may wish to expose an Appian process as a webservice:

    • It will call a series of webservices to identified systems.
    • Based on a the return values either use a looping function or MNI (multiple node instance) to retrieve further data
    • Perhaps you will update some of those data items based on the original trigger
    • Update the external systems via a WebService call (again, possible a looping function or MNI)

    Some cautions.  MNI may be resource intensive.  The volume of data inside the process sounds like it might vary in size, be careful with your memory footprint (use sub-processes with short life cycles).  Seek opportunities to make a series of lightweight process models instead of monolithic ones.

  • Hello Richloan,

    Thanks for your comment. 

    I have developed my application in such way you mentioned in your comment. I raised this question to get the best solution for my requirement. Comments which you have posted are valuable to design my application.