Appian with Angular JS

Hi Team,

Could you please provide some expert opinion about using Angular JS based UI with APPIAN. Areas of interest will be
--Is this a recommended approach
--Does this needs some plugins
--What are the pros & cons in this approach

OriginalPostID-235140

  Discussion posts and replies are publicly visible

  • Appian has its own language to build the UI, but if you want to create your own webpage you can create it using js and at user input task you can choose your custom form .Lets see what other practitioner has to say about this. This is not recommended by appian as such.
  • Pros:-
    1. You can use the technology like java or html to build your forms at fullest .
    2. You will not be restricted by the appian short come while building UI.

    Cons:-
    1. You will not be able to use appian architecture in your forms to interact with other systems.
    2. Your forms may become heavy while using JS and other technology.
  • something to think about ,would be losing the Mobile out of the box functionality
  • As mentioned by SparshS, it's not recommended. SAIL is good and you get all the functionality of Appian functions which AngularJS obviously does not have.
    You can still use AngularJS to create some forms and embed Appian using the Embedded interfaces. However, Embedded Interfaces should be used only if your main web application already exists, and you need a small subset of Appians functionality, say you want to embed some task report etc.
    If you use AngularJS, you will have the responsibility of making your webpages mobile responsive - you can ofcourse achieve that using responsive frameworks like Bootstrap.
    But then it will increase the efforts required - you will need custom code development.

    On the other hand, if you develop the UI using SAIL, Appian takes care of mobile responsiveness, no extra coding(advanced CSS, JS knowledge) is required.
    You also have the full flexibility and power of Appian expression functions. You will not have these advantages if you use AngularJS.
  • In case UI already exist on Angular JS and there is a need on process automation with BPM suite then Headless BPM Solution is the best design pattern, where an Appian servlet plug-in or Web-API will be used with API operations to communicate.If Appian SAIL functionality needed in Angular JS or HTML5 UI then Appian Embedding interfaces pattern is helpful.