22.4 Feedback - major overhaul to process modeler has removed Grid Lines by default

Certified Lead Developer

First let me start this off with some good news.  The left-hand object bar has been further tweaked and reorganized.  I previously commented that "process model / interface search results" being at the top of the list (as they are in 22.3 and lower) makes it harder to access the Smart Service Nodes we're after when that's what we're actually searching for.  It looks like they listened! Yay!

But for the main point of this post: i've noticed that Grid Lines are now turned off by default and there is no way to undo this except by turning them on manually every single time you load a process model.

At first I was hoping this was a bug in my Community Edition instance, or some incomplete feature or temporary break.  But other users are now posting screenshots from 22.4 versions around community and it seems like it may have been "intentional".

Hey Appian folks?  This may have been intended to "look cleaner" or something - but to me, psychologically, it makes me think something hasn't loaded correctly.  As far as I know, with as long as I've been looking at process models with grid lines, I anticipate this effect will last a long time.

I see they're still there.  They're redesigned but I guess I don't have any major qualms with the newer, simplified grid lines (i'll paste an example below for everyone's reference).  Can we just have them turned back on by default?  Could it at least be given as an override in designer user-level preferences or something?

I know the product backlog is huge, lots of higher-priority stuff, etc.  But I think this is something that wasn't necessary to change.

  Discussion posts and replies are publicly visible

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer

    If anyone from Appian sees this anytime soon, here's a non-exhasutive list of Process Modeler quality-of-life features that I've been tracking for a long time now (not 22.4-specific of course), but all of which would improve designers' experience anywhere between "small but frequently helpful upgrade" to "dramatically better" (imho).

    • The very continued existence of Single-Line expression boxes (where a multi-line expression can be written, but which will be collapsed to one upon saving) is ... flabbergasting.  I can't even accurately put into words how frustrating this is.
    • The modeler Title Bar (the dark-blue area next to the "Appian Process Modeler" label) continues to be a large, empty, waste of screen space, which could be repurposed to show some helpful information about the Currently-Open Model / Instance, which is quickly obscured in the Tab header once a lot of tabs are open.  Instead, when monitoring many open process instances, I'm forced to mouse-over the tab and read the pop-up-text, even to tell which instance i'm CURRENTLY on.
    • Right-clicking on Flow Lines should show standard functionality (chaining, labels, etc) FIRST, and then "suggested nodes" after that.
    • The Right-Click Menu itself can easily be obscured by the Messages Panel for objects at or near the bottom of the process model.
    • Variables in Expression Editor: welcome (re-)Addition, however they leave a little bit to be desired.  What is the data type of this CDT field?  Is this PV a single or array item?  Currently there's no way to tell, and these should be available at-a-glance.
    • Process Model [Generated] Documentation: there is no way to see values configured as interface inputs on the Forms tab of User Input Tasks.  Particularly when passing PV values or expression-calculated values into interfaces for read-only purposes.  That means if a PV is used only in a Form input (directly), it will not be seen at all in the generated documentation.
    • For the Process Instance Editor: there's no reason the "CTRL+S" hotkey shouldn't save the instance edits (like it already works in the model editor).

    If anyone else agrees or has suggestions on any of the above, please upvote / comment / let me know otherwise somehow.  Or should each of these just be submitted as individual support cases?

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Mike Schmitt

    Just some quick work they could do on default behaviors:

    1.  Make Alerts default to sending only to the administrators of THAT process model.  There may be some folks for which that is OK, and some that still want to change default, but nobody wants Alerts to go to every last developer on the environment.

    2.  Make "Save Draft" on User Input nodes default to unchecked instead of check.  The amount of effort across all Appian developers to repeatedly uncheck the same box for every interface made dwarfs the effort  to check the box when they want to use that feature.

    Also, some really nice features would be if the lines didn't have to overlap as hard as possible, which gets especially annoying when only 1 of several overlapping lines doesn't have an activity chain, and you need to find it.  Also, on debug, it would be super awesome to have some visual cue for how many times a process flow flowed over the same line.

    Also, restart gateways.

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Dave Lewis
    nobody wants Alerts to go to every last developer on the environment.

    Or that one VP who insists on having an Admin account in TEST that he never touches anyway, but still gets all alert emails for...

  • Agree with pretty much all the suggestions here!

    Variables in Expression Editor: welcome (re-)Addition, however they leave a little bit to be desired.  What is the data type of this CDT field?  Is this PV a single or array item?  Currently there's no way to tell, and these should be available at-a-glance.

    In my little 21.1 instance I have mouse-overs for data types in the expression editor, that is gone in 22.4?

    Also, restart gateways.

    Yes!  Not sure why we have never gotten the ability to restart gateways.  I find myself having to edit process instances to put dummy script tasks in front of them to restart at that point.

    Right-clicking on Flow Lines should show standard functionality (chaining, labels, etc) FIRST, and then "suggested nodes" after that.

    Definitely annoying to have Activity Chaining at the bottom, when it's basically the only thing I ever right click on the lines for.  I'm fine if they remove the Suggestions all together.  I don't know of anyone who would right click a flow line thinking, "Should I put something random here?"

    A few more adds from my perspective:

    1.)  Default End Nodes to Terminate.  90% of my end nodes Terminate, and it's 5 extra clicks each time to configure one as such.

    2.)  I would prefer removing the auto-connect which occurs when dropping a node on a flow line.  This has caused me more hassle than it's worth, when moving nodes around in a tightly organized process and you don't realize something has changed flow, a debugging nightmare ensues.  Seems backwards as well to build a flow and then add services instead of adding your functionality/services then connecting them in order.

    3.)  Differentiate Smart Services in the left panel by Plugin or Appian/OOTB.  This could help developers realize which plugins they are using, and look for OOTB solutions that might fit the bill first.

    I'm sure I'll come up with more Grinning

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Dave Lewis

    And, thanks - i captured these (with attribution) in my running text document that I finally decided to start the other day.  Part of me thinks this would make a good Google Doc (or maybe spreadsheet), though that seems like a lot of work.

  • Or that one VP who insists on having an Admin account in TEST that he never touches anyway, but still gets all alert emails for...

    This is where I say "Oh do you still want that admin acct now?!"  Joy

    I do think the alerts going to all admins can be good for a small team, we have 4.5 developers for an environment with ~70 applications and ~75k processes active at any time, we all share the burden of alerts to help with staff coverage, training, etc.

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Chris
    In my little 21.1 instance

    oh sweet summer child.
    Wait until you get the Appian version with "New! Improved! Expression Editor boxes!" - these match more closely the interface / expression rule editors.  It *was* an improvement, to be fair - but they totally removed the left-hand panel of PVs / rules / etc.  Look at some old threads from the later half of 2021 to see us griping about this.  As Stefan mentioned in another thread I saw just yesterday, they re-added a brand new, revamped left panel in 22.3.  But the granularity of detail there, as I noted, is not super great (much better than nothing of course, but leaves a bit to be desired).

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Chris

    I think this could easily fit into Dave's suggested reconfiguration though - all our process models have one of a few high-level Appian Admin groups added as the Process Administrator, so your use case (assuming some similar proper setup is already in place) might be as simple as making sure all developers belong to those groups, or whatever subset of those groups that are relevant to them.

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Dave Lewis
    Also, restart gateways.

    Not only that, but right click and see the instances that have been fired off and at what times (like with any other style of node).  Similar with timer nodes (and an expanded ability to trigger the next instance, or force the next triggered instance to skip, etc).  These seem so incomplete in the current implementation, enough to make me think the engineers in charge of updating PM functionality have never really had to do O&M work on active production systems with large, unruly, and often old-and-buggy process models.

  • Joy

    We'll be up there enjoying all of the new "features" very shortly..