Introduction to Appian Community Edition

Appian Community Edition is designed for Appian Community members who want to develop applications or improve their skills on the Appian Low-Code Automation Platform. Appian Community Edition provides Appian Community members with free and unlimited-time access to the Appian platform and a dedicated Appian instance. Each member gets one dedicated instance to maximize the benefits for all Appian Community members.

Additionally, Appian Community Edition may be used for limited production purposes if used within the parameters of the terms and conditions of the Appian Community Edition license.

With Appian Community Edition, you receive admin-level access to most features and capabilities that the Appian platform has to offer. Restrictions in place for Appian Community Edition may be removed if 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

Activity and Usage

Log in to your Appian Community Edition and use it regularly to keep the instance active. If your environment is inactive (no logins) for five days, or is determined to be underutilized via our monitoring, the environment is automatically shut down. When an Appian Community Edition is shut down, a backup is taken. A backup allows you to restart your Appian Community Edition environment in the exact same state. If you do not restart and log into your environment during the 28 day retention period, the backup will be deleted and there is no way to recover the instance's data. Don’t worry - you can always request a new Appian Community Edition!

Your last login date can be found in your Appian Community Edition management console on the My Learning Journey page.

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, your Appian Community Edition and/or the My Learning Journey page on Appian Community 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.

Newly requested Appian Community Edition environments are always spun up on the GA-latest Appian version and Appian RPA version. The fastest way to get an Appian Community Edition environment on a new GA Appian release is to shut down your current environment and request a new one.

All existing Appian Community Edition environments will be automatically updated to the GA-latest Appian version within two weeks of each major Appian GA release.

• Automatic restarts for Appian Community Edition environments are performed three times daily for each supported cloud region. Environments in each region that have not been started or restarted for >= 14 days will be automatically restarted. Environments will be temporarily unavailable during this time.
• Restarts triggered by the automated process will bump the environment to the GA-latest Appian version (including the latest Appian RPA version) regardless of the original version of the environment (some will be major upgrades, some will be minor).
• Environments restarted outside of the automated process (including start-up from a shutdown state) get Appian hotfixes, AMI updates and Appian RPA updates. Environments will be upgraded to the GA-latest Appian version only if they are currently on an older major Appian version that is no longer supported for Appian Community Edition environments.
  • Note: A greater number of major Appian releases are supported for paid production cloud and self-managed environments.

To get assistance with your 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.

Product Restrictions

Appian Community Edition

Appian Community Edition 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 is provided per Appian Community user. 
• Up to 15 Active Users may use an Appian Community Edition.
• DevOps, Infrastructure, and Import/Export features are disabled. Linking of an Appian Community Edition to any other Appian instance is disabled.
• 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 Resource. A resource is a PC or virtual machine where robotic processes are executed. You can configure one Resource, but you can create an unlimited number of bot configurations. Learn more about Appian RPA.
• Appian Community Edition provides access to most Admin console features. However, certain sections of the Admin Console are disabled.
  • SSO Configurations (SAML and LDAP are disabled)
  • Terms of Service (active and cannot be disabled)
  • Health Check (provides insights into application design patterns and performance risks in your environment) is disabled in Appian Community Edition
  • The Infrastructure page of the DevOps section is disabled
  • Import/Export of applications and Admin Console settings 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 processes per day. However, you can create an unlimited number of bots!
• 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).
  • Appian Community Edition comes pre-configured with a pretrained document and email classification model. The Appian AI credentials included with Appian Community Edition can not be used to train a new document or email classification model. However, you can bring your own Appian AI credentials and replace what has been preconfigured. Please see our documentation for more information.
• You may publish up to 2 Portals. All Portals will include a static footer.
• You may utilize up to 15Gb of your allocated Disk Space, which excludes the amount of disk required for base installation.
• Appian Community Edition is limited to 2 processing cores on vCPUs/CPU.

Creating Integrated Portals

In order for Portals to connect with your Appian Community Edition, you will need to upload a properties file when configuring the Portal. Please find instructions below for creating the properties file without using application export:

1. Create a constant of type "Connected System." Select the Connected System used in your Portals integrations as the value.
2. Use an expression rule to execute getcontentobjectdetailsbyid(cons!'your_portal_connected_system_constant'). You will use the UUID value when creating the properties file.
3.  Create a text file with the .properties extension (e.g. portal.properties). Add the below information to the file using the UUID from step 2.

## Connected System: 'portal_connected_system_name'
connectedSystem.'portal_connected_system_UUID'.baseUrl='your_site_URL'
connectedSystem.'portal_connected_system_UUID'.apiKeyValue='your_connected_system_API_key'

Community Process Mining

Community Process Mining allows you to explore a free version of Appian Process Mining. The free Community Process Mining version:

• Includes Process Mining; Mining Prep is not available
• Limits upload size to 5 MB or less per file (log file, case attributes file, etc.)

NOTE: Violation of Appian Community Edition restrictions and/or the terms and conditions of the Appian Community Edition license may result in penalties including suspension of access to Appian Community and Appian Community Edition services.  Appian additionally reserves the right to suspend or terminate service as detailed in the terms and conditions.

Appian is built for mission critical applications. You can grow with world class performance, governance, DevOps, and security. Learn more by visiting our Trust Center and our System Requirements documentation. Full versions of Appian have additional available features around compliance (e.g. HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and FedRamp certifications) and high availability. Learn more about Appian Cloud capabilities.

You should also be aware that:

• Appian Community Edition cannot be created from existing customer or partner instances
• Appian Community Edition data cannot be used when loading an existing customer or partner instance
• Appian Community Edition cannot be linked via DevOps Infrastructure to customer or partner instances
• Appian Community Edition cannot export to the Appian AppMarket
• Some Appian AppMarket applications cannot be installed on Appian Community Edition. Appian Cloud-approved plug-ins may be used at-your-own-risk and deployed via the Plug-ins section of the Admin Console

Getting your Appian Community Edition

To get a new instance:

• Sign in to Community and head to the My Learning Journey page.
• Click the Get my site button in the My Community Edition Site card.
• In the Select your Cloud Region dialog, select a region for the instance and agree to the terms and conditions. Click the Get my site button.
• Instance assignment times may vary and delays can occur during periods of high request volume. You can use the Check Status button to get the current status.
• When an instance is assigned to you, your instance URL is added to the My Community Edition Site card on the My Learning Journey page. Your username and password will be sent via email. Your username will be the email address associated with your Appian Community account. If you do not receive your Appian Community Edition credentials, please email CommunityEdition@appian.com for help.

• Log in to your Appian Community Edition. When logging in for the first time, you will be prompted to change your password. Passwords must be at least 7 characters long and contain a digit, an uppercase letter, and a lowercase letter.

Managing your Appian Community Edition

You can manage your Appian Community Edition via the management console on the right side of the My Learning Journey page. You need to be logged into Appian Community to access your Appian Community Edition information and the actions you can take on it.

Actions

Shutting Down your Appian Community Edition

If your environment’s status is Active, you can use the Shutdown Site action. You might want to shut down your current environment if you wish to start over with a fresh Appian Community Edition.

The process takes about 5 minutes and is complete when your environments’s status is Inactive. A shutdown is in progress if your environment's status is Terminating.

Restarting your Appian Community Edition

If your environment’s status is Inactive, you will need to use the Restart Site action in order to access your Appian Community Edition environment. This action will take about 45 minutes and will bring back the environment in the state you left it. Delays may occur with initiating restart during periods of high request volume. You can use the Check Status button to get the current status.

Releasing your Appian Community Edition and Getting a New Environment

If your environment's status is Inactive, you can alternatively use the Get New Site action. This action discards your previous instance and provides you with a fresh Appian Community Edition. Instance assignment times can vary and delays may occur during periods of high request volume. Please note that there is no way to recover a discarded environment's data or applications.

If you have any issues taking actions on your Appian Community Edition, please review the Getting Appian Community Edition Assistance section of this guide for steps you can take. 

Administration

Resetting your Password

There are two main ways to reset your password in your Appian Community Edition environment. You can use the Forgot your password? link on the login page of the site.

Alternatively, you can change your password when already logged into your Appian Community Edition. Click your profile photo > Settings > Password.

Installing Plug-ins

You can install cloud-approved plug-ins directly in your Appian Community Edition instance. 

All plug-ins are use-at-your-own-risk, and their functionality is not guaranteed by Appian. All plug-ins should be tested thoroughly. For more details about individual plug-ins, visit the Appian AppMarket.

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 cannot access your Appian Community Edition, try checking its status via the My Learning Journey page. If your environment’s status is INACTIVE, you should be able to use either the Restart Site action to get your old environment back up and running or the Get New Site action to start over with a fresh environment.Instance assignment times can vary and delays may occur during periods of high request volume. You can use the Check Status button to get the current status.

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

• Appian Community Edition availability issues
• Appian Community Edition Password issues
• My Learning Journey page questions

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!