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March 21, 2024
Question

Seeking Reporting Framework Suggestions

  • March 21, 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 0 views

We have built a reporting framework that allows customers to customize columns and filters to generate a custom report. The customer is asking for more flexible filtering, including defining operators between filters and grouping filters, basically a UI for building logical expressions. Furthermore, the customer has more complex reporting requirements such as generating reports with dynamic columns, based on selected filters.

We have a potential solution for the flexible filtering requirement, but we have performance concerns as our current filter framework uses nested CDTs

Are there any existing solutions or examples of report builders / query builders in Appian? Also, what is Appian's recommendation for handling complex reporting / data analysis? 

Thank You

    4 replies

    mathieud0001
    March 22, 2024

    Have you taken a look at Self Service analytics?

    docs.appian.com/.../allow-users-to-build-reports.html

    March 22, 2024

    Thank you for the suggestion Mathieu. I looked into Self Service analytics, and it looks to be similar to how our current column and filter (all filters are separated by an "and" operator) selections are set up. 

    stefanhelzle0001
    March 22, 2024

    IMHO, Appian is not designed with such highly flexible and dynamic use cases in mind. Enforcing this quickly becomes very complicated and tends to become a unmaintainable mess of workarounds.

    Did you check self service analytics like [mention:f5e81b8502fa4e77ad12697686a4fc56:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] mentioned? Could it be an option to use an external tool like PowerBi, that is already established?

    March 22, 2024

    Thank you for the PowerBi plugin suggestion Stefan, it looks to be a potential solution for our needs.