Task-based process flow or Record-centric design

Certified Associate Developer

Hi Community,
We have about 15 legacy Workflow applications that we're going to convert into Appian workflows. Most, if not all, of these workflows are mainly linear Task-based HR workflows (like Request for Overtime, Request for Annual Leave, Travel Request, etc).

We already converted two of the big workflows using the Task-based workflow Process design pattern. The remaining ones generally follow the same process steps: Start -> Submission Sub-Process -> Approval 1 Sub-Process -> Approval 2 Sub-process -> Process Request Sub-Process -> End Flow.

Now, some of us are at least looking into whether it's worth it to do the remaining workflows (and refactor the two workflows already in production) using the Record-Centric design where all the sub-processes will be "Related Actions" instead of as Tasks. I understand that the Record-Centric approach is the preferred method of Appian but with our old workflows being all Task-based workflows, there are numerous reasons why I prefer continuing with this approach.

Reasons I can think of(but not limited to) are:
1) Record-centric approach is perfect for Case-Management style apps, but ours are Linear Task-based. We still use Related Actions by the way for a lot of adhoc tasks on the record during the flow and after the flow has ended.
2) Since there are no Tasks generated from Record-centric approach, user-experience will be affected negatively especially the approving managers as they are used to just clicking a link to the task from their notification e-mails or having a nice one page where all their assigned tasks from different Appian applications are shown.
2b) The legacy workflow plus our other non-Appian workflow type applications have their approval process behave similarly to Appian's task-based approval, so this was endorsed by our Business Analysts when we first did our first Appian workflow.
3) We don't have memory issues right now that merit this change and as long as we follow the Appian playbook of creating memory-efficient models(including maybe using Modular design or Flexible design in some cases), the future forecast is that we will not have memory issues at all.
4) We already converted two legacy workflows (one of them being the most complex one), so refactoring these two if we switch to Record-centric will bring extra work (and pain).

What about you guys/gals? Is there a case that I don't know that would warrant a change to the new design approach? Is there even a compelling case that a Record-centric approach should be implemented for a Linear Task-based workflow? Thanks for your help.

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    Certified Associate Developer

    Thanks for the responses so far guys. In our particular case, every employee is an Appian user and in every user's main Dashboard page will be different links to each type of request (ie, Overtime Request, Leave Request, Travel Request, etc).

    So for example, an employee starts and submits an Overtime request for himself for a particular day, the process then creates an approver task and assigns it to the line manager. Daily reminder e-mails are sent to the approver if he/she hasn't actioned the task. Our Appian Record Type in this particular case is the Overtime request. So before the line manager approves the request, the two Related Actions available to the record for the employee (the initiator) are "Change Line Manager" and "Change/Cancel Overtime Request". Once the request has been approved, that's practically the end of the process. There will not be any long-running processes in our case. 

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  • 0
    Certified Associate Developer

    Thanks for the responses so far guys. In our particular case, every employee is an Appian user and in every user's main Dashboard page will be different links to each type of request (ie, Overtime Request, Leave Request, Travel Request, etc).

    So for example, an employee starts and submits an Overtime request for himself for a particular day, the process then creates an approver task and assigns it to the line manager. Daily reminder e-mails are sent to the approver if he/she hasn't actioned the task. Our Appian Record Type in this particular case is the Overtime request. So before the line manager approves the request, the two Related Actions available to the record for the employee (the initiator) are "Change Line Manager" and "Change/Cancel Overtime Request". Once the request has been approved, that's practically the end of the process. There will not be any long-running processes in our case. 

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