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martab0003
June 28, 2021
Solved

Implement a "watchlist" feature

  • June 28, 2021
  • 5 replies
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Hello everyone,

Our client asked for a requirement where we should allow our users to subscribe to a "watchlist", allowing a user to click and be aware of any kind of changes that occur on a specific object and receive a notification (email, mobile...) whenever the object suffers any change.

What would be the best way to accomplish this? Does Appian support this function OOTB? I couldn't find any information regarding this process.

Kind regards

    Best answer by mikes0011

    It shouldn't be too hard to implement something like this, but it will need to be done manually i.e. via your own custom business logic, process models, and helper DB tables.  I don't know of any out-of-box functionality or pre-built templates that would help you in avoiding any of this manual development, though.

    5 replies

    danny.verb
    danny.verb
    June 28, 2021

    When you say 'specific object' are you referring to an Appian object or something such as a row in the database?

    M
    martab0003Author
    June 28, 2021

    Hello Danny,

    In this case, we will be working with data from the database.

    Let's say for example that I have an Appian Site that allows a user to see All Orders created in our database.

    Our goal is to allow a user to click on a button and to watch/unwatch all changes made to that specific order.

    For example, let's say that user A creates the order, while user B changes the order status. We want to be able for User " to be a watcher of all changes made into this order and to un-watch whenever the user desires to.

    Do you think this is possible to implement in Appian? Kind regards

    mikes0011
    mikes0011Answer
    Brainy
    June 28, 2021

    It shouldn't be too hard to implement something like this, but it will need to be done manually i.e. via your own custom business logic, process models, and helper DB tables.  I don't know of any out-of-box functionality or pre-built templates that would help you in avoiding any of this manual development, though.

    The Expression Guru
      davel001150
      davel001150
      June 28, 2021

      I think that this could be easily implemented if your "Object" happens to be a record.  You just have to include a "Follow" and "Unfollow" related action on records, and then make sure all of your Record Related Actions that modify the record also send an email (MNI that) for each user on the "followers" list for that record.

      In the backend, I think the best way to implement that would be a FOLLOWERS lookup table that has a user ID foreign key and a record ID foreign key, exactly as Chris said.  You can either have a different FOLLOWERS for each record you want to be followed, or you'd have to go through a few shenanigans to use one global table to join to all the different tables, though after so many you'd have to do it that way to keep your sanity.

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