Introduction to Appian Community Edition

Appian Community Edition is where Appian Community members can go to experience the Appian Platform, build applications and improve their skills. Appian Community Edition provides Appian Community members with free and unlimited-time access to the Appian platform in a shared environment. Each member gets their own dedicated workspace upon registering for Appian Community Edition.

Appian Community Edition is not suitable for production use and sensitive information.

With Appian Community Edition, you receive access to most features and capabilities that the Appian platform has to offer. Restrictions in place for Appian Community Edition are removed when upgraded to a paid production version of Appian. If you are a prospective customer evaluating Appian for your business, contact us via the Request Upgrade action on the My Learning Journey page when you are ready to upgrade to a full version.

Understanding Appian Community Edition

Workspaces

A workspace is your personal area to build and get hands-on with the Appian Platform separate from other users in the shared environment. A workspace provides you a connection to your own database schema, as well as a set of pre-loaded tutorial applications to support courses available on Appian Academy Online.

Each workspace has a unique identifier, which allows you to create new applications and objects while avoiding most name uniqueness conflicts with other objects or applications already created within the environment.

Note: You must complete onboarding to be assigned a workspace. If you are not assigned a workspace, you will not have any learning applications available and will not be able to read or write data using the Appian Cloud database.

Shared Workspaces

Shared workspaces allow users to collaborate within a single environment. Workspace members can see and edit applications within a shared workspace. 

Any user can create a shared workspace. During the onboarding process, you can choose to create a shared workspace. If you already have a personal workspace, you can convert your personal workspace to a shared one using the action in the right-hand panel of the Community Edition homepage. Please note, if you convert your workspace to a shared workspace, you will no longer have access to the objects and applications in your personal workspace.

Once you have a shared workspace, you can invite other developers using the Invite Members action available in the right-hand panel of the Community Edition homepage. Invited users will receive an invitation via email that they can accept or reject. You can invite developers who do not have a Community account. Only the shared workspace owners can invite other members. If you have a personal workspace and choose to accept an invitation to join a shared workspace, you will no longer have access to your personal workspace.

Activity and Usage

Log in to Appian Community Edition and use it regularly to keep your workspace active. If your workspace is inactive or underutilized for 28 days, you may lose access to your workspace and any objects or applications you have created. If you have no activity in your newly assigned workspace, you may lose access to it within a few days.

If you do lose access to your workspace, you can register again for Appian Community Edition and get a new workspace assigned to you.

Maintenance and Updates

Appian occasionally needs to perform maintenance on the underlying infrastructure associated with Appian Community Edition. Maintenance includes updating and patching software, firmware, and replacing hardware. During maintenance, Appian Community Edition may not be accessible. The time required for maintenance depends on the specific task(s) being performed. Your work and data on your Appian Community Edition is unaffected by planned maintenance.

Appian Community Edition environments always run on the latest generally available version of Appian.

To get assistance with Appian Community Edition, please review the Getting Appian Community Edition Assistance section of this guide

Appian Community Edition Product Restrictions

Appian Community Edition allowances and restrictions are designed with the user experience in mind and allow us to provide the Appian Community Edition experience to all Community users. Restrictions are removed when you upgrade to a full version of the Appian platform. We have provided links to more information about these product features.

• One Appian Community Edition workspace is provided per Appian Community user. Users are not allowed to register in more than one region.
• Users are able to make one deployment to their workspace from the Appian Community Edition app catalog per day.
• DevOps, Infrastructure, and Import/Export features are disabled. Linking of an Appian Community Edition to any other Appian instance is disabled.
• Portals can be configured in Appian Community Edition, but they cannot be published.
• Generative AI capabilities based on Appian’s native bedrock architecture are disabled, including Records Chat, Enterprise Copilot, Data Fabric Insights Copilot, and Prompt Builder AI Skill. Developer copilot capabilities like generating sample record data and generating test cases for expression rules are enabled.
• Case Management Studio is not available in the base Appian Community Edition experience. However, users can access a free 28 day trial of Case Management Studio via the Community Edition Trial environment.
• Limit of 25,000 rows per Appian Record synced. Data sync allows you to operate with the benefits of onsite data, while leaving your source data where it is. Caching this data in Appian allows for better performance, and advanced data manipulation and reporting using Low-Code.
• 1 Appian RPA Robot. A robot is a PC or virtual machine where robotic tasks are executed. You can configure one Robot, but you can create an unlimited number of robotic tasks. Learn more about Appian RPA.
• Appian Community Edition does not provide access to the Appian Admin Console. Therefore, users are unable to leverage administrative features, such as:
  • Configuring branding
  • Deploying plug-ins
  • Authentication and SSO configurations
  • Creating API keys and service accounts
  • Creating users
  • Terms of service
  • Health check
  • Configuring DevOps Infrastructure
• CDTs, Data Stores and WSDLs are not supported in Appian Community Edition.
• Default role-based access security is not configurable in Appian Community Edition. All role-based access security must be specified using users and groups.
• Public groups and group membership rules are disabled.
• Access to System Logs is disabled.
• Access to the default Appian business database schema is disabled.
• Uploading a user profile picture is disabled.
• You may execute up to 250 process instances per day. An execution of an Appian Process Model counts as a process instance.
• You may execute up to 50 robotic task executions per day. However, you can create an unlimited number of robotic tasks.
• You may execute up to 30 document extractions and classifications and 30 email classifications per day using Appian’s AI Skill Designer features. Appian’s AI Skill Designer features can be configured to classify documents as a certain type (e.g. purchase order, invoice, receipt…), classify emails based on business specific labels, and extract and structure data from a document (e.g. extracting the purchase order number).
• All native Generative AI capabilities are disabled within Appian Community Edition except for generate sample data for records and generate test cases for expression rules.
• You may utilize up to 15Gb of your allocated Disk Space, which excludes the amount of disk required for base installation

Accessing Appian Community Edition

Appian Community Edition environments can be accessed directly by any Community User. If you have not previously accessed an environment, a user will automatically be created for you on the environment. When you first visit an Appian Community Edition environment, you will be prompted to select a region you would like to register in. Picking a region geographically close to you has several benefits, including better performance, better maintenance times, and an increased likelihood of being able to cohort with users from your region in the future.

Once you select a region, complete the onboarding form and accept the Appian Community Edition terms and conditions. After completing onboarding, a workspace will be assigned to you in a few minutes or less. You can easily return to your Appian Community Edition environment by bookmarking the URL, or by clicking the link available on the My Learning Journey page.

Getting Appian Community Edition Assistance

Support Policy

• Appian Community Edition is provided as-is with no guaranteed uptime or SLA.
• Appian Community Edition is Community-supported; questions can be posted on the Appian Community Discussions forum.
  • Appian Cloud features and services that require Appian Solution Engineering are not included with Appian Community Edition instances. These include, but are not limited to:
    • Custom Domains for instance URLs 
    • Branded Mobile Apps
    • Custom Email Servers
    • Custom Restricted / Allowed IP Lists
    • Premier Support Features (e.g. No BYOK encryption)
    • VPN tunnel configuration
    • MyAppian console

If you still are having issues with your Appian Community Edition, please contact us at CommunityEdition@appian.com. 

Be sure to include a detailed description if you are reporting an issue. Include images/screenshots that help to illustrate the issue.

For questions about upgrading to a full version of the Appian platform, please review the Upgrading to a Full Version of the Appian Platform section of this guide.

Upgrading to a Full Version of the Appian Platform

Appian Community Edition allows for learning, evaluation & limited* development for production purposes if used within the parameters of the terms and conditions of the Appian Community Edition license. So what happens when your business is ready to scale beyond what the Appian Community Edition version provides?

Appian Community Edition offers a streamlined path to upgrade to a full version of the Appian platform, including the ability to keep what you build when you upgrade to a paid production version. From the My Learning Journey page, simply use the Request Upgrade action. Your request will enter a prioritized queue and a member of our team will reach out to discuss your needs within one business day. 

Have general questions about Appian or questions for our sales team? Contact Us today!