Governance

How can I optimize the performance of my Appian application?

I am considering implementing pessimistic locking in Appian. However, I have heard that pessimistic locking can potentially degrade performance because it restricts concurrency. In practice, how much impact does pessimistic locking typically have on performance? Also, from a best practice perspective in Appian, what kind of design or implementation approaches should be considered? Specifically, I would appreciate guidance on topics such as: In which scenarios does pessimistic locking have a significant performance impact? When should pessimistic locking be used, and when should it be avoided? If pessimistic locking is required, are there any design techniques or best practices to minimize its performance impact?

Is there any way in Appian to capture the previous state?I have a form with a couple of dop downs where the user selects different assignees for different tasksI want to able to send an email only to the changed users. Is there any way to compare old user values with new ones to see if changes happen?

When user logs in using SAML, they face 403 access denied error. We checked the users ID and they have the required access levels. When checked on tomcat-stdout logs we see the following issue 'Cannot request SAML Assertion for SBAF Authorize Click since user is not valid for SBAF'. Any leads on this?

Hello all, I have come across certain columns of different tables which are not being used in anyway. To validate  this, I have done the following : Check for CDT dependencies Check for record type dependencies Search for usage of the field/column globally in the application Based on the above, it appears that these fields are not being referenced by anything. But prior to deleting the columns, I wanted to get your feedback regarding the following: Does the above process ensure that the columns can be deleted without causing any issues ? Is there anything else that needs to be checked prior to deleting such columns (Process Models, integration etc.) ? What is the best way to delete such columns in Appian ? Am I supposed to deprecate these columns prior to their deletion ? Thanks

Hi, Is there any log from Appian to see when a specific user was added to a group and by whom for all the existing groups? Note: I understand we can have a workarounds to track these changes by building custom functionality but I'm particularly looking to see if there is any default functionality / log that I can refer to.

Having an issue when attempting to configure cmgt studio portal module.Errors are: Incompatible function used. Refactor the portal object precedents to only use functions compatible with portals. Incompatible functions will not work in a published portal. The following precedents use an incompatible function: CMGT_UTIL_SystemTimezone [usertimezone]. Incompatible plug-in(s) detected Refactor the portal object precedents to only use plug-ins compatible with portals. Using incompatible plug-ins can cause the published portal to error. Precedent(s) containing incompatible plug-in(s): CMGT_Document_Sub_UploadDocument [Content Tools], CMGT_UTIL_LoadBrandingMap [Appian Solutions Plugin]Also CMGT_Portal_Case_IntakeForm is missing from the portal module, is this a known issue?

Hi everyone,  I'm having a multi layer nested CDT (Nested CDT that is a column in another nested CDT column of the main CDT that uses as data type) which is taking too long to query data and sometimes causes time out error. I would love to have some suggestion to optimise/ replace it with something else if possible.  Thank you 

I am deploying a package to PROD in Appian. One object got depkoyed while other couldn't as deployment completed with errors. When I checked the log, it said the particular object is open. But thing is the object isn't open anywhere. Besides, i also logged out and logged in once to check but still, deployment was failing for the particular object and it is saying the object is being edited by me.

Hey Folks, I am using an excel tools plugin for converting HTML to CSV. Now, there is a new requirement for converting PDF to CSV, and walking through the discussions and searches I haven't found any good match or solution. Can anyone help me with this? It would be highly appreciated.

We’re experiencing recurring high memory usage in our Appian Cloud DEV environment that is leading to emergency restarts. This typically occurs outside of normal development hours, when there is little to no active user activity. As part of troubleshooting, we have: Cleared all processes that had stopped due to exceptions Removed older versions of process models and interfaces Reviewed for obvious runaway process instances Reviewed guidance in KB-2011 Despite this cleanup, the memory spikes continue. Has anyone encountered similar behavior in a DEV environment with low user activity? If so: Were scheduled processes, integrations, or unattended background jobs the root cause? Are there specific logs or metrics in Appian Cloud that are most helpful for identifying memory drivers? Does exporting and removing older, inactive applications from DEV meaningfully reduce memory consumption, or is memory primarily driven by actively executing objects? Any guidance on deep

Hi everyone, I’m working on a large and complex process where we are not using User Input Tasks. Instead, we implemented a pool-based approach, where each group has its own pool of requests. All request data is stored in the database. We also have an Admin Configuration interface that allows the admin to enable or disable certain tasks for specific groups. For example, in the database we store a boolean flag: true → the request/task should appear in the pool false → the request/task should no longer appear On the interface side, we are using a grid that queries the database and filters the tasks based on this flag to display the pool for each group. The issue we are facing is the following: When the admin disables a task (changing the flag from true to false), the request still appears in the pool grid. It only disappears after performing a hard browser refresh. The standard refresh mechanisms in the interface do not update the grid immediately. My questions are:

We switch our primary timezone from GMT to GMT+1 in the Appian admin console during UK daylight saving time. In the application, we display all dates using a text() function, like this: if(   a!isNotNullOrEmpty(ri!dateTime),   text(ri!dateTime, "dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm AM/PM"),   "" ) However, as soon as the timezone is updated in the admin console, the displayed date values shift according to the new timezone. This causes the date and time shown in the UI to change even though the stored datetime has not changed. Is there any way to keep the displayed date consistent regardless of timezone changes?

Hi, in our environment the IdP changed some usernames from lowercase to uppercase. Appian configured for SAML authentication with "Retain Casing" option, returns error code 401. Do you have any experience that the configuration option at docs.appian.com/.../SAML_for_Single_Sign-On.htmlcan resolve the issue, and can these changes be made hot or do some services need to be restarted? Thanks!

I have 3 doubts in Appian environment. Can you help me, please? 1. In Appian, can you work with branches associated with process versions, similar to GitHub? 2. Is it possible to have two versions of the same process running in production and choose at any time which one the application should use? 3. If a new version of a process is deployed to production, can migrations be performed for the processes that are active at that moment? Thanks in advance.

Hello, I need to change/update user last name. Can it be done through the backend database? Thanks, Raj

I am trying to replace the existing document with new document but I'm getting this error .  I'm using the primary key  of the each record as target  ,I configured the update as record action, and I cannot delete the existing record because that Id is used as main request id since the record is created with document upload. 

Hi team, I have a question.  I have an issue concerning the user license count and was under the impression that some users may have been inadvertently reactivated without anyone manually doing it. Since, we use LDAP sync, if a user is re-enabled in the Active Directory (AD), the next LDAP sync process in Appian will detect this change and automatically reactivate the user account in Appian. Anyone have any experience with this issue on how we can stop LDAP from reactivating users?  

Good morning. I am trying to deploy an application that contains records synchronized with integration. This is the first deployment of the application, and I am using the compare and deploy option. When creating the package, all elements of the application are included, but not the records synchronized with integration. The records are in the application, as are the calls to the synchronization services. However, these elements are not included. I have tried adding them to the package after the option appears, but when I check again, it still indicates that the elements are not included.What could be the problem, and how could it be solved? Thank you very much and best regards. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

In "monitor" section there is a "go to customizable report" link. I tried to filter them based on the name. I tried (see below the print-screen): -Name like "Daily" -Name like "Daily%" What exactly is the proper way? I need to filter all reports that start with "Daily". The above 2 didn't work. Any idea? Thank you so much.

Hi, What is the most efficient way to retrieve data from a large table (more than 4 million rows) in Appian? When I use queryEntity to fetch data from this table, it takes a long time to execute, which negatively impacts Appian’s performance. How can I improve the data retrieval process? My current approach to solve the issue: I split the data retrieval into smaller batches. Specifically, I: Created multiple records that point to the same source table. Used the foreach function to query each record in batches of 5,000 rows. Used the union function to combine the results from each batch. Used the union function to combine the results from each query record. Then, combined the results across all the records to get the complete dataset. I’m concerned about future system complexity.Do I really need to create multiple records and change the system design just to retrieve all the data from a large table? Or is there a better, more efficient way

In one of our production apps, we currently send emails directly from the main process models using the Send Email smart service. As volume is increasing, we’re starting to rethink whether this is the best long-term approach. For those who’ve worked on larger implementations — do you keep email logic in the main process, or move it to a reusable subprocess? Also curious how you’re handling retries and basic monitoring in production. Just trying to sense-check our design as the app scales.

Hi everyone,  I'm curious to know if anybody using Lightspeed Devops CI/CD pipeline with Appian. if so what's your take on it. Thank you

Hi Everyone, We are looking for the ways to monitor the Disk, Memory and CPU usage metrics through logs in Appian Cloud environment and send alerts if it reaches certain thresholds. I know Appian Support will notify us through a support ticket when certain threshold reaches, but we would like to have our own monitoring and automated alerts before Appian Support creates the ticket to act on it immediately. Also, we know that we can monitor these metrics through Appian Support portal which is not an efficient way as this needs to be monitored manually during our entire business hours. If we have these logs, we wanted to get them to our Splunk logs and create the alerts accordingly when a particular metric reaches certain thresholds which will reduce the manual effort and can respond on time. So please let me know if anyone implemented this kind of feature in your Appian Cloud space. Appreciate your response. Thank you, Veera

Hi Guys, we are facing the below issue in the document viewer. i do have admin access for this pdf which i am accessing to and i can able to download (via link field), but not really sure of the root cause for this .