Question on implementing Sites

Certified Senior Developer

After implementing Appian Sites, we have following questions:
1. How do we provide capability for "Save Changes" that users are used to seeing on the left side of the task
2. Once you are in a task, how do you provide capability to return to the Appian Site to see the full list of tasks at any time?

Please share any experience you have had with these and other design patterns you have used for Appian Sites.

OriginalPostID-188956

OriginalPostID-188956

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  • Hi Raj, to answer the first question - Can we try to have a XOR gate and navigate to the same screen, depending upon if you want to be on the same screen we can keep the activity chaining.. this will enable us to store the details of the values in the output ac variables. Will that be an option ?
  • For question # 2, when you refer to "the Appian site", do you mean Tempo? If so, then it looks like links referring to items outside of Sites, such as the Tasks URL (../suite/tempo/tasks/assignedtome) should navigate the user back to the Tempo interface.
  • Re question - 1, I feel that it's better to leave it as is and also opt for 'Educate the user' re the behavior of the Sites. If I am not wrong, whatever changes we opt for implementing in the Task will be also reflected when we try to access the Task from Tempo interface.

    For instance let's say we have added a button called 'Save Changes' or some other option on the Task form which will take us back to the same form (by using a gateway in the process) for saving the values when we access a task in the site. The same functionality would be reflected even when we access the Task from Tempo interface, and at this point of time, this functionality would be a kind of duplication, as the 'Save Changes' would be already available now in the left hand pane.
  • 0
    Certified Senior Developer
    Thanks for all the responses.

    I like the idea of just leaving the node and coming back to the node with activity chaining for Save Changes and without activity chaining for returning to Site.

    I do agree that the additional buttons/link that I might add will be visible in both Tempo view and Sites view. However, it's usually better to have an option in both places than to not have it in one place. I understand the education part... but users are striving for an experience with very little training and providing the functionality in multiple places accomplishes that.
  • @raj: We are using Site feature a lot and the way your point #1 & 2 are handled, is described below.
    For each task form, we have two default buttons "Save" and "Close".
    Clicking on Save button stores all the values in PV. The button doesn't have any validation and therefore even if user doesn't fill up few required fields, it won't show any error.
    Clicking on "Close" button will submits the form and then will loop back to the same User Input node creating a new similar task for that user. (no activity chaining in this case)
    On site page, the moment user clicks on the Close button of the task form, site page refreshed and brings user back to all task view on Site page. We have educated users to always use "Close" button to close a task and "Save" button to save any data on the form.