https://community.appian.com/success/Success center groupen-USTelligent Community 12https://community.appian.com/success/p/visionFri, 30 Jan 2026 21:12:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:58edcf04-6193-4e33-8d38-e2d72803bf1bHome Pillar Vision People Delivery Architecture Platform Browse by Category Articles Guides Playbooks Stories Tutorials Success Services Appian Accelerate Expert Delivery Appian Success Plans Appian Academy Shape Your Vision Identify the highest value automation opportunities for your business and connect them to measurable strategic outcomes. Tailored for Appian Leaders Leader Stakeholders Managers Business Leaders Who are Appian Leaders? You need a high-level understanding of the Appian platform to better help position your organization for success. Planner Business Analysts Project Managers Product Owners Who are Appian Planners? You want start or plan an Appian project. You need to know how applications come together, but won’t be building the app yourself. Feature Articles Strategic insights for leveraging Appian in your business. Article Why Process Automation is Right for Your Business Invest in adaptable systems that can meet the needs of today and the demands of tomorrow. Article How to Select the Right Appian Delivery Partner Learn how to select the right Appian delivery partner for your organization. Article Problem Solving: Where to Start, When to Scale Leverage scaling and operational efficiency as part of your transformational strategy. Article Innovate with Process Automation See how businesses automate their processes and integrate flexible delivery models using Appian. See all Articles Guides Step-by-step instructions, and best practices for deploying effective solutions. GUIDE Define your Strategy Defining a strategy is the first step before jumping fully into project development. GUIDE Ideation and Initiation This guide teaches you how to align business objectives with the right Appian technology. GUIDE Select the Right Project Learn how to prioritize project opportunities and match them with the best fitting technology solutions. See all Guideshttps://community.appian.com/success/p/peopleFri, 30 Jan 2026 21:10:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:2446719d-7516-46bc-8956-063535828bdbHome Pillar Vision People Delivery Architecture Platform Browse by Category Articles Guides Playbooks Stories Tutorials Success Services Appian Accelerate Expert Delivery Appian Success Plans Appian Academy Assemble Your Team Build small, agile teams that emphasize teamwork and business expertise. Tailored for Appian Leaders Leader Stakeholders Managers Business Leaders Who are Appian Leaders? You need a high-level understanding of the Appian platform to better help position your organization for success. Planner Business Analysts Project Managers Product Owners Who are Appian Planners? You want start or plan an Appian project. You need to know how applications come together, but won’t be building the app yourself. Feature Articles Strategic insights for leveraging Appian in your business. Article Process Automation Team Essentials Learn about the roles and responsibilities that make up an Appian process automation team. Article Appian Planners: Product Owners and Analysts Learn how product owners and analysts function as process automation planners. Article Build Your Appian Development Team Assemble, structure, and foster the growth of your process automation development team. Article Share Knowledge Across Your Organization Best practices to scale knowledge sharing across your organization. See all Articles Guides Step-by-step instructions, and best practices for deploying effective solutions. GUIDE How to Skill and Structure Your Team Learn how to identify Appian development skill sets and structure your development teams. GUIDE Establish a Learning Culture Put together an action plan to promote your learning culture and make educational content more accessible. GUIDE Train Your Appian Team Take control of your projects and feel confident in your team’s ability to manage your Appian applications. See all Guideshttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/2977/why-process-automation-is-right-for-your-businessFri, 30 Jan 2026 21:09:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:1437a59b-d261-4757-b9ec-1c73c4f4c3b3Devon LeeOrganizations are transforming at a breakneck pace, driven by rapidly evolving consumer behavior and expectations. New, digitally enabled businesses are upending entire industries and the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the trends. According to an executive Global Survey done by McKinsey , more than half of respondents said they were “investing in technology for competitive advantage or refocusing their entire business around digital technologies.” Compare that to the same survey done pre-pandemic in 2017, where only around 10% of respondents held the same view of technology. The problem is most businesses continue to rely on legacy enterprise systems. These systems are often complex and difficult to change. Over time, they often include patched or jerry-rigged measures to address a myriad of issues. With all this change, one thing is clear—you can’t rely on inflexible technologies and business practices. You need adaptable systems that can meet the needs of today and the demands of tomorrow. Is traditional software development up to the task? Organizational success has become increasingly dependent on technology. Even “non-tech” companies now succeed or fail based on the capabilities of their digital infrastructure. However, the typical technology stack is often complex and opaque. It’s hard to use and years worth of ad-hoc changes have made it even harder to revise. This is only made worse by slow and expensive software development practices. In today’s technological climate, the ability to quickly develop and implement new processes is essential. Whether you’re a hotel providing touchless check-in or a retailer fostering a more efficient and personal online shopping experience-—brands that empower customers with technology are being rewarded. This trend has only been accelerated further by the onset of the pandemic, where agility and adaptability have in some cases meant the difference between thriving and just surviving. If you were quick to put in place contactless protocols, you could get back to work faster than those with inflexible systems. Given this increasing need for agile and flexible software development, traditional methods of hand-coding software can’t keep up. The traditional software development model consists of large, centralized teams of specialized developers. These teams work within highly planned and rigid processes and fail to adequately address the complex automation needs of today's digital enterprise. If you're stuck with outmoded or rigid legacy processes, you won't be able to adapt to your users changing needs and may risk losing them. Compounding the problem are a complex set of circumstances, including: Unprecedented new operating environments. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a world of continuous disruption and adaptation. It forced organizations to create processes for remote work. It also called for new safety, testing and tracking protocols. Changing regulatory requirements. From environmental protections to accounting standards—new rules and regulations result in costly workflow modifications. Evolving expectations. Customers and employees expect high-quality, streamlined and intuitive user experiences. The bar is now set by their favorite brands at home, rather than those at work. Companies must continually enhance the customer journey by leveraging data and digitizing functions. Global growth opportunities. Global markets enable organizations to sell and source materials in new territories. Technology is not only making new products and services possible, but also changing how you market and deliver them. But, without the time and resources to invest, businesses risk missing out. Navigating all this uncertainty requires more streamlined, automated digital workflows. And this must be done as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible. Low-Code: Flexible, Resilient and Adaptable To thrive in this new reality, enterprise software today must be flexible, resilient and adaptable. You need customizable automation that can change according to dynamic needs. You also need automated workflows that are custom mapped to unique goals and real-world challenges, not just the most common scenarios. Most of all, you need to increase speed and lower the cost of development. Fortunately, low-code development platforms reduce the burden of building enterprise applications. Meaning you can now build apps and streamline workflows faster and cheaper than ever before. Low-code lets you leverage existing technology investments, and extend capabilities. It reduces buildout time and cost, and enables you to effectively automate functions to compete in this new paradigm. An Economic Impact Study conducted by Forrester found that customers using Appian’s low-code platform: Accelerated application creation by 17x Improved time-to-value of applications by 50% Realized a 389% return on investment (ROI) Those outcomes were made possible by two distinct advantages low-code offers to developers: Speed and Ease of Use. Low-code allows developers to work rapidly by selecting from a library of ready-made tools or empowering them to make their own reusable tools. In addition, low-code removes the barrier to entry to software development. Rather than each developer needing a solid command of Java, HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL (not to mention third party API frameworks ), each team member only needs to know Appian, which creates bandwidth for what’s most important: solving real business problems. At its core, low-code does away with much of the time and resource intensive high-code development requirements. Appian pioneered and continues to lead the low-code development space by providing best-of-breed integrated development tools, in addition to a full suite of tools designed to help you unify your data, build apps, and automate your business.Visionhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/2979/innovate-with-process-automationFri, 30 Jan 2026 21:07:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:0393af37-6c84-4ffa-a2ed-86f1384e0407Devon LeeTo be competitive today, it’s not enough for businesses to be efficient; they also need to innovate according to their own unique vision. They need to offer dynamic products and services that can respond to the distinct demands and requirements of their users. However, building a new product or service is a time and resource intensive undertaking. This is even more pronounced when developing solutions that don't fit nicely into pre-established product delivery pipelines. Manual tasks, inflexible processes and complicated business rules all get in the way of offering unconventional or game-changing product lines. Innovation, by definition, requires some coloring outside the lines. And this is where low-code can make all the difference, by helping businesses automate their processes and integrate more flexible delivery models. Innovation for differentiation In the sometimes conservative and highly regulated world of finance, innovation can be hard to come by. But institutions with an eye towards digital transformation are increasingly differentiating themselves in a highly competitive market. Let’s take a look at SEB Investor Services, one of the leading providers of asset servicing to institutional investors in the Nordic region, to see how low-code drives innovation. SEB saw an opportunity to offer its clients services outside the traditional securities most banks provide, namely shares, bonds, derivatives, and funds. They wanted to add alternative assets–wind and solar, private equity, venture capital holdings–to their portfolio, so as to better serve the diverse needs of their clients. In the past, SEB offered relatively few alternative assets due to the manual labor and high degree of operational difficulty required to provide the service. They needed to find a way to automate the handling of these assets, without having to bring in a full team of developers to create and maintain the service. That’s when the SEB team identified low-code as the perfect solution to quickly and efficiently move forward with their plan. Using the Appian platform, they were able to reconfigure and automate complex business rules, as well as the unique workflows and data structures associated with alternative assets. In an interview given to PostTrade 360° , SEB Product Manager Frederik Söderlund described the process of using low code to realize the project: The big projects cost big money – with large project groups, consultants and testing. But when you start from a blank sheet today, using new technology based on blocks that you assemble in lego style, with pre-defined integrations and self-testing capabilities…it gets so much easier. Fredrik Söderlund, Product manager for portfolio solutions at SEB Investor Services/LCFI In addition to automating the handling of alternative assets, SEB was also able to employ AI-powered IDP (Intelligent Document Processing ) to help extract and interpret investment data. This holistic approach enabled them to not only increase the number of alternative assets available to their clients, but to maximize value from returns on those investments. By partnering with Appian, SEB was able to take one of finance’s least standardized processes and unlock new, value-added product offerings from it. Disruptive innovation Disruption shouldn’t be a business goal in and of itself. But innovation often has the side effect of disrupting those arenas that are no longer providing an optimal experience. Since the advent of ridesharing companies, the commonly held belief was that congestion and pollution would decrease as more single drivers opted for these services. However, a study conducted by Researchers from the University of Kentucky and the San Francisco County Transportation Authority found that transportation network companies (TNC’S) were actually the largest contributor to increased congestion in cities like San Francisco. Enterprise Holdings, Inc, manager of the largest and most diverse privately-owned fleet of vehicles in the world, identified an opportunity to innovate within the ridesharing industry. The plan was to target a traditionally underserved market of vanpool commuters , namely people traveling to work in groups of more than 3 or 4. The goal was to provide these commuters with a lower-cost, more environmentally friendly commuting option. However, existing systems within the company could not accommodate a new business with a radically different operating model and workflow. Building a custom application using traditional methods would have taken years, causing Enterprise to miss their window of opportunity. Using Appian, Enterprise was able to realize this vision and create Commute , the company’s vanpooling service, in just 4 months. Commute programs are organized by an employer and typically consist of 4 to 15 coworkers traveling together. Commuters coordinate a central meeting location, board a late-model, low-mileage van or SUV from the company’s fleet, and take turns driving to and from work. This gives commuters time to read, relax, catch up on some work, or even stream their favorite shows with WIFI enabled vans. We adopted Appian's platform for Enterprise Rideshare because it combines the best of business process management, social business, mobile access and cloud deployment. The result is a truly modern business management platform that supports our objective of providing commuters with a smarter, better way to get to work. Ryan Johnson, Assistant Vice President of Enterprise Holdings Commute not only helps workers reduce the financial burden of commuting, but also lets them arrive at work less stressed, leading to higher productivity. After partnering with Appian, Commute has scaled to operate more than 11,000 vanpools in 45 states. It removes more than 40,000 vehicles off the road every day and eliminates an estimated 900 million commuter miles annually. To top it all off, the program also reduces more than 695 millions pounds of carbon emissions annually . We’ve seen how low-code can be a driver for innovation, whether in more historically conservative fields such as finance, or in burgeoning industries such as ridesharing. Low-code enables businesses to work more quickly, efficiently, and cost effective. Dynamic business conditions and evolving user demands will always put pressure on businesses to innovate. With low-code integrated into their digital strategy, imaginative organizations can respond quickly and decisively, while continuing to push the envelope on their personal strategic vision.Visionhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/2987/process-automation-team-essentialsFri, 30 Jan 2026 21:06:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:acd3fd56-dca9-4c3f-ac33-85d74ec0a6f2Devon LeeOne of the most common questions we receive focuses on how to structure an organization for low-code success. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but we do have a few guidelines for getting started. The most important part is thinking of your Appian-trained workforce as a team, with mutually supportive roles and responsibilities across the organization. At Appian, we think a successful team is a combination of a few select roles that each play an important role in a project’s success: Leaders Planners Builders Administrators Let’s dig a little bit deeper into each of these team roles, why they are important, and what they need to know. Appian Leaders For our purposes, leaders include business stakeholders, managers, or executives who need awareness of low-code automation capabilities but aren't heavily involved in the development process. They are, however, stakeholders and decision makers responsible for an organization’s success. They often control the budget, people, and determine the desired outcomes of projects. To be successful, these leaders need to understand the capabilities of Appian and how it can solve their problems. Leaders also need to understand how to source, train, and structure their teams for ongoing success, and they’ll usually want to know what pitfalls to look out for when automating portions of their business. See our Vision pillar for resources geared towards Appian Leaders. Appian Planners The planner role defines the processes to be automated, prioritizes development efforts, and ensures coordination with other business units. The most common job titles we see functioning in the planner role include business analysts, product owners, project managers, scrum masters, and UX designers. Some organizations have distinct team members assigned to each role, while others may have a single individual functioning across multiple roles. At a minimum, you should plan to include both a product owner and an analyst as part of your Appian team. This will ensure your organization is positioned for success. Appian planners need a strong understanding of the Appian delivery methodology and a basic understanding of how Appian objects come together to make applications. See our Delivery pillar for more resources geared towards Appian Planners. Appian Builders Builders, or developers , are the core of any Appian delivery team. Their primary job is taking requirements produced by the analysts, prioritizing them with the product owner, and converting them into applications using the Appian process automation platform. Functionally, the role of an Appian builder can be broken down into the following positions: Low-Code Developers Lead Developers Quality Assurance Appian strongly recommends a Team of 3 structure for most projects, with larger projects or initiatives distributed across multiple teams. Each team should be cross-functional in so much as any member of the team can take on any task when needed. Naturally, some team members will be stronger in certain skills than others, but we’ve found that high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams are best suited for success. For example, a low-code developer often falls into the “Developer and…” paradigm. This means that a particular team member might fall into a dual role as a low-code developer, in addition to acting as an architect, scrum master, UX lead, or test manager. When building these small cross-functional teams, it’s important to look for team members that have skills outside of their primary role or function. Whether that’s an interest in data models, integrations, or process mining, looking out for complimentary skills is the best way to establish a versatile low-code team. Administrators Administrators own responsibility for the Appian system and supporting infrastructure. This includes overseeing server admins, database administrators, IT staff, or anyone supporting the application’s backend. Administrators are most often concerned with the security implications of the Appian platform and how it interacts with their internal systems. This includes things such as data management, web APIs, user accounts and more. Although administrators aren’t usually involved in development themselves, they work closely with lead developers to define technical requirements and boundaries. To this end, administrators should pursue a basic level of training to better understand the terminology and underlying infrastructure of the Appian platform. Application Administrators Application Administrators are employees of the customer organization responsible for the maintenance and support of individual applications. They’re typically in charge of user management, performing basic clean-up and housekeeping activities, and serve as the first layer of support to triage tickets and issues. At a high level, Application Administrators understand how Appian objects interact with one another to form an application, but aren’t developers themselves. They perform basic troubleshooting activities, and are knowledgeable on navigating Appian support systems to get resolution on more complicated issues. Application Admins are also familiar with tools including Health Check, Health Dashboard, and MyAppian . To support this role, we developed the Appian Application Administrator course , available through Appian Academy.Peoplehttps://community.appian.com/success/w/guide/3623/writing-to-synced-record-types-at-high-throughputThu, 18 Dec 2025 16:34:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:c655af54-6f28-49d4-9fdc-87a90630339cjoel.larinIntroduction Appian's data fabric allows you to unify, secure, and optimize data spread across the enterprise. Typically, writing and syncing data in record types is as easy as using one of Appian’s smart services like Write Records, Write to Data Store Entity, and Write to Multiple Data Store Entities. However, when designing extremely high throughput autoscaled processes, you may need to modify your design to workaround write throughput limitations. Synced record types are limited to handling up to ~30,000 write requests per minute for processes writing data in small batches (1-10 rows). Trying to sync data above this level of throughput will fail and can cause record type invalidations. This guide explains how to design a process that supports writes to data fabric when peak times require more than ~30,000 write requests per minute across all of the applications on your site. This is accomplished through an incremental sync pattern where data is synced into the record types independently from the writes to the source table in large batches enabling over 1,000,000 rows to be synced per minute. Example Process Let’s say we have a process model with Autoscale enabled, which receives data over an API call, performs some transformations on the data, and then writes a single record to a synced record type. Typically, the API is called only 200 to 300 times per minute. However, at peak times, the API is called over 30,000 times in a single minute. At these peak times, the Write Records node fails due to data sync limitations. Upon reaching data sync write throughput limitations, write performance will degrade, leading to request timeouts. Failed requests will return either 'could not obtain a reservation within the time limit' or 'the request has timed out due to the system being busy.' Deferred Sync Pattern In order to allow the process model to continue to process data even in times of peak load, we need to implement an independent sync pattern where data is synced in batches rather than one row at a time. To avoid automatically syncing data to data fabric from the process model, an independent data store or a connected system data source must be created and used in the autoscaled process model to write data. This will allow us to write data only to the source table at first, and sync it in the record type independently. Configure a New Data Source, Data Type, and Data Store Create a new Data Source Connected System that connects to the same database as your existing record type. Create a CDT from the table that already backs the synced record type. Create a new data store with that CDT as an entity. Use the connected system data source you just created as the data source. If your record type does not already have a modifiedOn timestamp, you will need to add that to your data structure, and ensure it is being updated every time the row is updated. Replace the Write Records Node In the autoscaled process model: Update the process variable that holds the data being written to use a CDT instead of a record type (the one we just created). Update all usage of this variable. Replace the Write Records node with a Write to Data Store Entity node, using a constant for the new data store we just created. Click Save & Publish. Now, your autoscaled process model will only write to the source table instead of automatically syncing data in the record type. Sync Batches of Data Every 5 Minutes After re-configuring the autoscaled model, create a separate process model running without autoscale enabled to incrementally sync data the record type from the source table. To configure incremental sync: Create a new process model without autoscale enabled. Create process variables to track the timestamp at which data was last synced (lastSyncTime) and the list of IDs to sync (recordsToSync). Set the default value of the lastSyncTime variable to now()-5. This will cause the first run of the process to sync anything updated after 5 minutes ago. Configure a timer event on the start node to run the process every 5 minutes. In a new expression rule, query the IDs of any rows modified after the lastSyncTime timestamp, using a query that looks like this: a!queryEntity( entity: cons!JLT_RecordEntity, query: a!query( selection: a!querySelection( columns: { a!queryColumn( field: "id" ) } ), logicalExpression: a!queryLogicalExpression( operator: "AND", filters: { a!queryFilter( field: "modifiedOn", operator: ">", value: ri!lastSyncTime ) }, ignoreFiltersWithEmptyValues: true ), pagingInfo: a!pagingInfo( startIndex: 1, batchSize: 50, sort: a!sortInfo( field: "modifiedOn", ascending: true ) ) ), fetchTotalCount: false ) Add a Script Task to the process and call the expression rule created above, passing in lastSyncTime. Add a Sync Records smart service node to sync the IDs you just queried in the record type. Since this will most likely require syncing more than 1000 rows at a time, you will need to use a loop to iterate over all rows that need to be synced. That’s it! This pattern of ingesting data in larger batches can support syncing over 1,000,000 rows per minute in record types across all applications on your site, with data being updated in 5 minutes or less.recordsdesign patternsArchitecturedata fabrichttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/3286/shared-object-management-overviewWed, 29 Oct 2025 14:20:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:8f9cac36-5814-424a-9d71-238be414e130joel.larinOverview This document provides guidance on what shared objects are, how to identify them, how to secure them and how to update them in a manner that is safe and responsible. When used with care, shared objects provide a layer of reusable components for the entire platform to fast forward the development of every application. Common objects are those that are used across the platform in multiple applications. They could provide generic, routinely-used functionality for many applications or they could be more specialized and used for a specific set of applications only. For example, a user sync module that pulls user information from Workday would fall into the first category, while an Engagement record will fall into the latter. Avoid objects with complex or specific business logic unless they apply to all referring applications and aren’t likely to differ between applications in the future. In general, the more well defined and structured the inputs and outputs of an object are, the easier it will be to reuse amongst different applications. The rules for which objects to place into a common objects application can differ from one organization to another, however it is important to consider the value the component will provide compared to the additional time to maintain, test, and coordinate among groups utilizing the object. In some situations, having multiple common object applications, each specific to their scope, will make managing changes easier for those who utilize them. As an example, a department may have multiple applications to manage new product approvals, customer onboarding, and periodic customer review processes which share common data objects, expressions, and integrations. Some of those components may be specific to the department and others are used globally. For each common objects application that your organization decides to create, ensure the following are documented: Description of the purpose and scope Owner or owning group Implementation usage instructions Who to notify when updates are made Object Types Object type Criteria Example Expressions Decisions Logic containing reusable functionality Email address validation Mailing address formatting Display name formatting Data Types Data Stores Query Rules Constants Reference data across applications List of States/Countries User details Interfaces Common interface sections Mailing address input form User details input form Web APIs Reference data exposed externally User details Records Records referenced by or containing data from multiple applications or synced records representing reference data Study Engagement Process Models Logic containing reusable functionality User synchronization Connected Systems Integrations Reusable connections to external systems Transfer documents Identification and Cataloging The identification of common objects is the responsibility of the application development team and the Center of Excellence (CoE). Some heuristics for identifying common objects could include: Is the functionality going to be accessed by all platform users? Are other applications going to leverage the same functionality? e.g. vendor search? Is the functionality agnostic of the application it is in? e.g. a list of countries What is the potential scope of a common object; eg. Department, Region, Global These questions can be asked before, during and after the development cycle, but the sooner common functionality is identified the easier it is to classify it and leverage it across the platform. Once the team identifies the object(s), they should be moved to the appropriate application and renamed with the appropriate application prefix. Detailed descriptions for Appian objects are important to ensure that changes do not break the contract between the shared object and the corresponding dependent object. For expressions and interfaces, ensure common objects have test cases defined so that during updates, they can be tested for backwards compatibility . Rule inputs should also be given descriptions so that Designers can easily understand their intended use. Teams working on new applications should always consult the Common Objects applications in order to identify any functionality that could be reused. Proper naming conventions and descriptions will make these objects easier to search and discover. Security and Ownership Since common objects are shared between different applications, changes to these objects can have a wide impact. Changes that benefit one app could potentially break another. Therefore, updates to common objects need to be taken with care after sufficient impact analysis. In programs with multiple teams, we recommend securing the objects to a specific designer group (and revoking sys admin access from designers). In such situations, while all objects need to have an admin group defined (see Health Check for more details), common objects especially need to have correct security set up with one group as the object admins and other designer groups as viewers – so these objects can be used but not edited. Common Object Use and Maintenance Using a common object is very easy – just reference it in your application. Note that if the common object version you wish to utilize has not been deployed to your desired environment already, you may need to use a separate package to deploy it, if it is only part of the common object application but not your own. When an object needs to be edited, make a change request to the owners. Where appropriate, consider notifying the impacted teams if the updates will result in changes to the end user behavior or will require consumers of the common objects to opt into the new functionality being developed. Who makes the change depends on your organization (see Example Process) but we recommend that owners delegate the edits to the change requestor (application team). Appropriate testing and reviews should occur before promoting to higher environments. An extra emphasis should be placed on regression testing to ensure the changes will be backwards compatible. Example Process Steps to Modify Common Objects When an object is modified in a common app, follow the below steps: Request to make a change from the object owner(s). Before making the change, check for dependencies on the object to see which teams could be impacted by the rule modification. Reach out to the associated owners to ensure the change is compatible before proceeding. The owner grants edit access to the application(s). If a common object needs to be modified that already has changes in progress, check to see if the change has already been deployed throughout the environments. More complex objects, like records, have a higher likelihood of a change in progress. If that is the case, reach out to the developer associated with the object and ensure the proposed changes are compatible before proceeding. Other measures may have to be taken, e.g. feature toggles, to get the changes deployed without breaking precedents. Owner revokes edit access to the application(s).DeliveryArchitecturehttps://community.appian.com/success/p/platformFri, 24 Oct 2025 21:25:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:4798ff08-53ef-49ac-a032-ae530a157e46Home Pillar Vision People Delivery Architecture Platform Browse by Category Articles Guides Playbooks Stories Tutorials Success Services Appian Accelerate Expert Delivery Appian Success Plans Appian Academy Govern Your Platform Manage your Appian environment, secure your processes, and bring cohesiveness to your application ecosystem. Tailored for Appian Administrators Administrator Application Admins Web Admins Server Admins Who are Appian Admins? You want to maintain applications and infrastructures. You monitor the health of the system and act as the first layer of support for end users. Builder Developers Integrators UI / UX Designers Who are Appian Builders? You love building things, and are technical and resourceful. Low-code sounds like an exciting way to start or enhance your developer journey. Playbooks Curated learning paths with recommended training and certifications to level up your skills. Platform and Application Security PLAYBOOK Platform and Application Security Discover best practices for strengthening application and platform security. Administrator - Developer - Beginner Performance and Scalability PLAYBOOK Performance and Scalability Maximize the efficiency and scalability of your Appian platform. Administrator - Architect - Intermediate Appian DevOps PLAYBOOK Appian DevOps Delve into DevOps best practices within the Appian framework, emphasizing streamlined development. Administrator - Developer - Intermediate High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR) PLAYBOOK High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR) Explore the fundamental principles of HADR in Appian. Administrator - Developer - Intermediate See all Playbooks Articles Strategic insights for leveraging Appian in your business. ARTICLE Manage Your Appian Cloud Upgrade Learn how to keep your platform updated and secure. ARTICLE Machine Learning Overview Gain a general understanding of machine learning and how Appian integrates with your models. ARTICLE Application Go-Live Readiness Checklist Ensure your platform and applications are ready for your end users. See all Articles Guides Step-by-step instructions, and best practices for deploying effective solutions. GUIDE Application Deployment Guide Follow DevOps best practices to ensure quality deployment, increase speed, and reduce risks. GUIDE Recommended Environments Ensure efficient maintenance and production deployment, while sustaining development velocity. GUIDE Frequently Reused Appian Components Create and store common Appian components that you can easily retrieve for future use. See all Guideshttps://community.appian.com/success/p/deliveryFri, 24 Oct 2025 21:24:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:02e0a6ac-1e27-4551-8749-f1e72990d7e5Home Pillar Vision People Delivery Architecture Platform Browse by Category Articles Guides Playbooks Stories Tutorials Success Services Appian Accelerate Expert Delivery Appian Success Plans Appian Academy Accelerate Value Delivery Best practice guidance, tools, and templates taken from our proven delivery methodology. Tailored for Appian Planners Planner Business Analysts Project Managers Product Owners Who are Appian Planners? You want start or plan an Appian project. You need to know how applications come together, but won’t be building the app yourself. Builder Developers Integrators UI / UX Designers Who are Appian Builders? You love building things, and are technical and resourceful. Low-code sounds like an exciting way to start or enhance your developer journey. Feature Articles Strategic insights for leveraging Appian in your business. Article Delivery Principles Design for impact and accelerate value delivery. Article Delivery Process Overview Learn about the four core phases of Appian's delivery methodology. Article Application Vision Learn how to communicate application value proposition to important stakeholders. Article Initiating an Appian Project Identify your project goals and define a release plan. See all Articles Guides Step-by-step instructions, and best practices for deploying effective solutions. GUIDE The Appian Delivery Methodology Deliver value quickly with Appain's innovative approach to software development. GUIDE Reuse Promotion Learn how to reuse Appian components and interfaces to ensure a consistent look and feel to your applications. GUIDE Manage and Mitigate Delivery Risk Manage and mitigate delivery risk at critical junctures using the Appian Delivery Governance Model. See all Guideshttps://community.appian.com/success/p/architectureFri, 24 Oct 2025 21:24:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:4a8895c2-c396-418b-a010-0dbbcc8e3f6aHome Pillar Vision People Delivery Architecture Platform Browse by Category Articles Guides Playbooks Stories Tutorials Success Services Appian Accelerate Expert Delivery Appian Success Plans Appian Academy Design for Scale Unify your data, design for scale, and incorporate intelligent automation in your workflows. Tailored for Appian Builders Builder Developers Integrators UI / UX Designers Who are Appian Builders? You love building things, and are technical and resourceful. Low-code sounds like an exciting way to start or enhance your developer journey. Administrator Application Admins Web Admins Server Admins Who are Appian Administrators? You want to maintain applications and infrastructures. You monitor the health of the system and act as the first layer of support for end users. Playbooks Curated learning paths with recommended training and certification to level up your skills. Advance your Process Models PLAYBOOK Advance your Process Models Learn some best practices to advance your process models. Developer - Architect - Beginner Appian Testing Essentials PLAYBOOK Appian Testing Essentials See how testing functions across the Appian development lifecycle. Developer - Tester - Beginner Extending Appian PLAYBOOK Extending Appian Learn how integrations are used for data exchange with external systems. Developer - Architect - Beginner Database Performance and Optimization PLAYBOOK Database Performance and Optimization Optimize your databases within Appian's data fabric. Developer - Administrator - Advanced See all Playbooks Articles and Guides Insights, step-by-step instructions, and best practices for deploying effective solutions. ARTICLE Design Review Checklist Use this checklist throughout your development cycle to ensure application success and reduce technical risk. GUIDE How to use Appian Records Leverage Appian Records to gather insights and take action on your data. GUIDE Antipatterns: Solution Design Mistakes to Avoid in Appian Improve efficiency, scalability, and performanc by avoiding common design mistakes. See all Articles See all Guides Video tutorials Expert-led tutorials, webcasts, and insider tricks for building enterprise ready apps. TUTORIAL Process Model Basics Appian uses Process Models to define a company's business workflows. TUTORIAL How to Unify Your Data with Appian Learn about Appian’s data fabric, a powerful capability that allows you to unify data from multiple systems. TUTORIAL Extending Appian See how to use integrations and web APIs to connect Appian with external system. See all Tutorialshttps://community.appian.com/success/w/guide/3311/automated-testing-with-cucumber-for-appianTue, 10 Jun 2025 23:23:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:46bc0e4d-d906-4f38-a453-edf5b739bc6fjoel.larinPlease be advised that this package has moved to a new open-source repository , as future updates on the App Market will be discontinued. We encourage all users to switch to the new repository to gain the ability to contribute, receive immediate access to bug fixes and new functionality, and improve communication with other users and maintainers via GitLab issues. Cucumber For Appian is a client-side tool that builds on top of what FitNesse For Appian has implemented and allows users to write automated UI tests against Appian with Gherkin syntax . Cucumber For Appian will support all of the same fixture methods that FitNesse For Appian currently supports. Requirements Appian 22.2 and above Java Runtime Environment 11 Chrome or Firefox browsers If using Chrome, we recommend using Chrome For Testing for a more consistent testing experience. Access to Terminal if you’re on Mac/Linux or Command Prompt if on Windows Apache Maven tool Installation The zip file for the tool can be downloaded from the AppMarket. Unzip the contents into any directory (e.g. C:/) In a terminal window, navigate to the ‘CucumberForAppian-x’ (where x corresponds to the version number) folder extracted from the zip file (e.g. C:\CucumberForAppian-19.1-SNAPSHOT) We will refer to this directory as CUCUMBER_ROOT from now on Running Cucumber Tests Navigate to src/test/resources from CUCUMBER_ROOT Edit either the ApplicationExample.feature or TempoNavigationExample.feature file “BROWSER” - Chrome or Firefox “APPIAN_URL” - e.g. https://site-name.appiancloud.com “APPIAN_VERSION” - e.g. 18.4 “APPIAN_LOCALE” - en_US or en_GB “APPIAN_USERNAME” - e.g. fitnesse.user The comments on the top of the .feature files will also help you in setting up The completed feature file should look like the one shown below: In CUCUMBER_ROOT, run ./setupCustomPropertiesForMac if using a mac or ./setupCustomPropertiesForLinux if using UNIX. If using Windows: Open the “custom.properties” file located in CUCUMBER_ROOT/src/main/resources/configs and modify: automated.testing.home to be CUCUMBER_ROOT (e.g. C:\CucumberForAppian-19.1-SNAPSHOT) download.directory to be CUCUMBER_ROOT/target (e.g. C:\CucumberForAppian-19.1-SNAPSHOT\target) Run mvn clean test in CUCUMBER_ROOT The output in the terminal should be similar to what’s displayed below *NOTE* By default, only the TempoNavigationExample.feature test file will run when you execute the command above due to the “tags” argument in RunCucumberForAppianTest.java At the top of the TempoNavigationExample.feature file, there is a tag “@Tempo” which corresponds to that in the .java file. To selectively run the tests, you can add or remove tags as you wish. You can completely remove the tags parameter if you’d like to run all of the tests together. By default, the tool collects usage metrics for analytics purposes. Developing Custom Cucumber tests The Cucumber sample tests from above will be a good model to follow when developing your own tests. To help you out, we have provided a CucumberForAppian Cheatsheet. You can find it individually in the combined files ZIP you downloaded from the App Market. When developing tests, be sure you are using methods for the environment you are testing. For example, if testing sites, use navigation methods that come from the "Sites Methods" scenario. Using methods from a different environment has the potential to break in future releases. The CheatSheet.feature file lists out all the methods we support and how to invoke them using the @Given, @When, @Then, @But, @And.... and other Cucumber supported annotation Features Multiple browser support Chrome (v64-66) Firefox (v53-v62) Benefits Test your Appian application within minutes of downloading the tool Methods created specifically to operate within Appian applications and Tempo Test scripts do not need to be updated for upgrades to supported Appian versions Appian design knowledge is not required to create test scripts Common test case scenarios can be created for reusability throughout test suites Test scripts are easily updated for new UI changes to a form or interface Release Notes March 2025 - Release 25.1 Enhancements Added support for defining and using custom locales. Use create appian locale | PATH TO File. This method must be called after setting the version. File must be JSON file with the format : { "dateFormats": [ { "label": "dateFormat", "value": }, { "label": "dateDisplayFormat", "value": }, { "label": "timeFormat", "value": }, { "label": "timeDisplayFormat", "value": }, { "label": "datetimeFormat", "value": }, { "label": "datetimeDisplayFormat","value": } ], "labels": [ { "label": "acceptButton", "value": "Accept" } ], "locale": } Bug Fixes Fixed clickOnRecordRelatedAction to function correctly when the Record Summary page contains more than three action items. August 2024 - Release 24.3 Enhancements Added built-in retry to click operation in case of element not interactable exception. Updated the milestone locator. June 2024 - Release 24.2 Enhancements Updated locator for site menu links Created method which supports clicking on text within an interface. This is particularly useful for nested cards such as tab layouts, but can also be used as a fallback when existing methods don't work. This method is available for all Appian versions. Click operation on Card layout will be performed on the left side of the element instead of the right. We're not expecting any impact on existing test cases. March 2024 - Release 24.1 Enhancements Support for Appian version 24.1 Adds support for collapsing/opening sidebars ClickOnCard updated to support clicking on cards with complex content. For example, the method can now click on cards that have a component nested in multiple layouts within the card November 2023 - Release 23.4 NOTE : Project has been updated to require Java 11 JRE Enhancements Support for Appian version 23.4 Add support for the side navigation menu in sites Add support for downloading charts Add support for buttons configured with custom colors Bug Fixes Honor the download directory given in custom.properties for Remote Drivers Update dropdowns for versions greater than 23.3 to ignore the aria-checked value Fixed Populate Record Type Data Range User Filter method August 2023 - Release 23.3 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.3 Added functionality to interact with new site group headers Updated to Selenium 4.11.0 Add support for Date Range user filters in Record Types Update checkboxes to support CARD style for 23.3 and later Appian versions June 2023 - Release 23.2.1 NOTE : Updates to site navigation in the 23.2 product breaks the use of the "click on menu" method in site environments. "click on menu", and other Tempo navigation methods, are guaranteed to work only in Tempo environments. Use the "click on site page" method instead Bug Fixes Update pickers to recognize selections with links (e.g. Record Pickers) June 2023 - Release 23.2 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.2 NOTE : Updates to site navigation in the 23.2 product breaks the use of the "click on menu" method in site environments. "click on menu", and other Tempo navigation methods, are guaranteed to work only in Tempo environments. Use the "click on site page" method instead May 2023 - Release 23.1.2 Bug Fixes Fixes an issue where Dropdowns with Search were not working Fixes an Issue where verifyText did not work on multi-node components February 2023 - Release 23.1 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.1 Updated locator for Dropdown class Bug Fixes Update CVEs Update scripts (start.bat, start-mac.sh, start-unix.sh, runFitNesseTest.sh) toreference the new fitnesse-20221219-standalone.jar August 2022 - Release 22.3 Cucumber for Appian is released and supported Removed support for 20.3 November 2021 - Release 21.4 Enhancements Support new card choice components Bug Fixes Update CVEs August 2021 - Release 21.3 Bug Fixes Fix bug for radio button card Fix bug for date picker June 2021 - Release 21.2 Enhancements Support new SectionLayout Upgrade Selenium Server to 3.141.59 Bug Fixes Fix bug for radio button card Fix bug for icon link alt text February 2021 - Release 21.1 Enhancements Supports Appian version 21.1 November 2020 - Release 20.4 Enhancements Support Chrome capabilities Update Cucumber to 6.8.2 NEW METHOD: Support Stamp Field NEW METHOD: Support Tag field NEW METHOD: Support signature field NEW METHOD: Support record action field Bug Fixes Fix grid row count bug when there is no paging Fix getGridColumnRowValue when the grid cell is a button Fix clear picker bug when there are multiple selections Fix capturing an empty rich text field September 2020 - Release 20.3 Enhancements NEW METHOD: Populates the search box in a dropdown with some text Bug fixes Fixed a bug for custom login submit button August 2020 - Release 20.2.1 Bug Fixes Fixed a bug regarding clicking on card layouts July 2020 - Release 20.2 Bug Fixes Fix bug with milestone click Fix toggle box visibility on related action pop up April 2020 - Release 20.1 Enhancements NEW METHOD: click on bar chart * NEW METHOD: click on menu widget NEW METHOD: click on button with tooltip NEW METHOD: verify confirmation dialog header NEW METHOD: verify confirmation dialog message NEW METHOD: Verify a field is not blank NEW METHOD: click on document image link NEW METHOD: clear search field in record Include all jars in Cucumber Bug fixes Remove pie chart hover for fragility and also make it the page scroll before hovering for firefox Clicking on standalone icons by making the xpath less specific Fix closing social task bug January 2020 - Release 19.4.1 Enhancements NEW METHOD: star and unstar action with action name NEW METHOD: click on icon link with alt text Bug fixes Fixed issues for dropdowns with many options November 2019 - Release 19.4 Enhancements NEW METHOD: verify button with label is enabled NEW METHOD: verify button with label is disabled NEW METHOD: verify link containing text is not present NEW METHOD: verify a box with given label is present NEW METHOD: verify a box with given label is not present NEW METHOD: verify a section with given label is present NEW METHOD: verify a section with given label is not present NEW METHOD: verify a card with given accessibility text is present NEW METHOD: verify a card with given accessibility text is not present NEW METHOD: verify if text is not present anywhere in the user interface Bug fixes Fixed populate first column in a grid when rowheader is set to 1 September 2019 - Release 19.3.1 Enhancements Added additional logging for site page navigation Bug fixes Fixed verify text present for text with apostrophe June 2019 - Release 19.2 Bug fixes Support sending news post without participants May 2019 - Release 19.1.3 Bug fixes Fixed the bug that users can not click on menu tabs on Appian 19.1 Fixed the bug on Read Only field "contains" Fixed the bug on sending news post on Appian 19.1 April 2019 - Release 19.1.2 Enhancements Support Wait For Progress Support Click on X and Y coordinates on monitor Bug fixes Fixed the bug that box layout toggle only acts on the first box March 2019 - Release 19.1.1 Bug fixes Fixed error popup caused by loading Automation Extension February 2019 - Release 19.1 Cucumber For Appian availabletestingArchitecturehttps://community.appian.com/success/w/guide/3312/automated-testing-with-appian-selenium-apiTue, 10 Jun 2025 23:23:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:af6be428-e229-4a89-9844-d99ca095396cjoel.larinPlease be advised that this package has moved to a new open-source repository , as future updates on the App Market will be discontinued. We encourage all users to switch to the new repository to gain the ability to contribute, receive immediate access to bug fixes and new functionality, and improve communication with other users and maintainers via GitLab issues. Requirements Appian 22.2 and above Java Runtime Environment 11 Chrome or Firefox browsers If using Chrome, we recommend using Chrome For Testing for a more consistent testing experience. An IDE, such as IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse Setup The Appian Selenium API plug-in is a Java library which allows you to write automated tests for your Appian UIs. It contains methods which allow you to interact with Appian components in a browser. It provides methods and fixtures to interact with Appian applications in its various environments, e.g. Tempo or Sites. When writing tests, be sure to use methods from the correct fixture for the environment under test, e.g. use SitesFixture where possible to test Sites. Methods defined in fixtures that are intended for different environments are not guaranteed to work in future versions of the plugin. It can be used in a Java application or integrated directly into any Selenium or Java-based testing tool. Appian Selenium API contains the underlying Selenium methods used by Cucumber for Appian and FitNesse for Appian , but offers you more flexibility by allowing you to define your own automated test cases. You can create your own Cucumber Step Definitions, your own testNG test, or the Java Framework of your choosing. You are no longer tied to Cucumber for Appian or FitNesse for Appian yet you get the same ease and simplicity of those respective frameworks. Open this project in an IDE, such as IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse. Update configurations: Open file configs/custom.properties Update automated.testing.hom e with the path to this installation. Examples: Windows: automated.testing.home=C:\\testFolder\\appian-selenium-api-example-java Mac: automated.testing.home=/Users/tester/Desktop/appian-selenium-api-example-java Update chrome.driver.home with the path to the Chrome driver that comes with this installation. Examples: * Windows: automated.testing.home=C:\\testFolder\\appian-selenium-api-example-java\\lib\\drivers\\chromedriver.exe * Mac: automated.testing.home=/Users/tester/Desktop/appian-selenium-api-example-java/lib/drivers/chromedriver-mac Open file configs/users.properties , for each username used in a test add a line in the format of = to this file. If you prefer not to disclose your password in plain text, you can also choose to use com.appiancorp.ps.automatedtest.fixture.BaseFixture.loginIntoWithUsernameAndPassword fixture method to login by passing in the password from a system property value. Open "src/main/java/com/appiancorp/example/HelloAppian.java": Update TEST_SITE_URL to your Appian URL, such as protected static String TEST_SITE_URL = "https://example.appiancloud.com/suite"; Update TEST_USERNAME with a username, such as protected static String TEST_USERNAME = "tester.tester"; * Make sure this user exists in configs/users.properties Run the main() method of this class: You should see that a Chrome browser will open up, and the fixture commands in HelloAppian.java will execute accordingly. Note that this test will fail since your site might not have an action "Create a Case" under menu "Actions" that opens up an interface that has a "Submit" button. Features Multiple browser support Chrome Firefox Benefits Define your own integration tests without being limited by a third-party testing tool Selenium-based test scripts can be created for reusability throughout test suites Methods created specifically to operate within Appian applications and Tempo Test scripts do not need to be updated when upgrading between supported Appian versions Test scripts are easily updated for new UI changes to a form or interface Appian design knowledge is not required to create test scripts Release Notes March 2025 - Release 25.1 Enhancements Added support for defining and using custom locales. Use create appian locale | PATH TO File. This method must be called after setting the version. File must be JSON file with the format : { "dateFormats": [ { "label": "dateFormat", "value": }, { "label": "dateDisplayFormat", "value": }, { "label": "timeFormat", "value": }, { "label": "timeDisplayFormat", "value": }, { "label": "datetimeFormat", "value": }, { "label": "datetimeDisplayFormat","value": } ], "labels": [ { "label": "acceptButton", "value": "Accept" } ], "locale": } Bug Fixes Fixed clickOnRecordRelatedAction to function correctly when the Record Summary page contains more than three action items. August 2024 - Release 24.3 Enhancements Added built-in retry to click operation in case of element not interactable exception. Updated the milestone locator. June 2024 - Release 24.2 Enhancements Updated locator for site menu links Created method which supports clicking on text within an interface. This is particularly useful for nested cards such as tab layouts, but can also be used as a fallback when existing methods don't work. This method is available for all Appian versions. Click operation on Card layout will be performed on the left side of the element instead of the right. We're not expecting any impact on existing test cases. March 2024 - Release 24.1 Enhancements Support for Appian version 24.1 Adds support for collapsing/opening sidebars ClickOnCard updated to support clicking on cards with complex content. For example, the method can now click on cards that have a component nested in multiple layouts within the card November 2023 - Release 23.4 NOTE : Project has been updated to require Java 11 JRE Enhancements Support for Appian version 23.4 Add support for the side navigation menu in sites Add support for downloading charts Add support for buttons configured with custom colors Bug Fixes Honor the download directory given in custom.properties for Remote Drivers Update dropdowns for versions greater than 23.3 to ignore the aria-checked value Fixed Populate Record Type Data Range User Filter method August 2023 - Release 23.3 NOTE : Project has been updated to require Java 11 JRE Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.3 Added functionality to interact with new site group headers Updated to Selenium 4.11.0 Bug Fixes Update checkboxes to support CARD style for 23.3 and later Appian versions June 2023 - Release 23.2.1 NOTE : Updates to site navigation in the 23.2 product breaks the use of the clickOnMenu method defined in TempoFixtures for site environments. clickOnMenu, and other navigation methods defined in TempoFixtures, are guaranteed to work only in Tempo environments. Use the clickOnSitePage method defined in SitesFixtures instead Bug Fixes Update pickers to recognize selections with links (e.g. Record Pickers) June 2023 - Release 23.2 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.2 NOTE : Updates to site navigation in the 23.2 product breaks the use of the clickOnMenu method defined in TempoFixtures for site environments. clickOnMenu, and other navigation methods defined in TempoFixtures, are guaranteed to work only in Tempo environments. Use the clickOnSitePage method defined in SitesFixtures instead May 2023 - Release 23.1.2 Bug Fixes Fixes an issue where Dropdowns with Search were not working Fixes an Issue where verifyText did not work on multi-node components February 2023 - Release 23.1 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.1 Updated locator for Dropdown class Bug Fixes Update CVEs Update scripts (start.bat, start-mac.sh, start-unix.sh, runFitNesseTest.sh) to reference the new fitnesse-20221219-standalone.jar August 2022 - Release 22.3 Appian Selenium API is released and supported Removed support for 20.3 November 2021 - Release 21.4 Enhancements Support new card choice components Bug Fixes Update CVEs August 2021 - Release 21.3 Bug Fixes Fix bug for radio button card Fix bug for date picker June 2021 - Release 21.2 Enhancements Support new SectionLayout Upgrade Selenium Server to 3.141.59 Bug Fixes Fix bug for radio button card Fix bug for icon link alt text March 2021 - Release 21.1 Appian Selenium API is released and supportedtestingArchitecturehttps://community.appian.com/success/w/guide/3313/automated-testing-with-fitnesse-for-appianTue, 10 Jun 2025 23:23:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:c8850879-8dd5-475d-984d-48e7e52228fajoel.larinPlease be advised that this package has moved to a new open-source repository , as future updates on the App Market will be discontinued. We encourage all users to switch to the new repository to gain the ability to contribute, receive immediate access to bug fixes and new functionality, and improve communication with other users and maintainers via GitLab issues. FitNesse for Appian is a client side tool, built on top of FitNesse , that makes it easy to create automated tests on the Appian platform. This tool allows you to create test scripts in a easy to read wiki language that will be run by the system to interact with an Appian application as a human user. FitNesse for Appian provides an Appian-specific wiki language within FitNesse that maps directly to actions that can be performed in Appian, such as: Navigating the interface (News, Tasks, Records, Reports, Actions, Sites) Starting actions and completing tasks Validating content on record views or in news events And much more... the complete list is available directly within the tool! For more information about testing and development best practices when using FitNesse for Appian, visit the FitNesse for Appian Best Practices guide. Requirements Appian 22.2 and above Java Runtime Environment 11 Chrome or Firefox browsers If using Chrome, we recommend using Chrome For Testing for a more consistent testing experience. Setup The zip file for the tool can be downloaded from the App Market Public Listings . Unzip the contents into your root directory or preferred location (e.g. C:\) In a terminal window navigate to the folder extracted from the zip file (e.g. C:\fitnesse-for-appian). We will refer to this directory as TESTING_HOME throughout this documentation For PC, main commands will be: dir: used to show contents of current directory (folder) cd: used to change directory (open a folder), e.g. cd Documents would open the Documents folder. cd .. would go to the parent folder of current folder. For Mac/Linux, ls: used to show contents of a directory (folder) cd: used to change directory (open a folder), e.g. cd Documents would open the Documents folder. cd .. would go to the parent folder of current folder. Open the "custom.properties" file located in TESTING_HOME/configs and change: automated.testing.home to be TESTING_HOME (e.g. C:\FitNesseForAppian) download.directory to be a folder of your choosing chrome.driver.home to be TESTING_HOME/lib/drivers/chromedriver(.exe if using windows, -mac if using a mac, -linux if using UNIX) firefox.driver.home to be TESTING_HOME/lib/drivers/geckodriver(.exe if using windows, -mac if using a mac, -linux64 if using UNIX) Run start.bat if using windows, start-mac.sh for Mac, and start-unix.sh for UNIX to install and run FitNesse for Appian. Installation should take around 30 seconds and is complete when you see the message "Starting FitNesse on port: 8980". To stop FitNesse for Appian, invoke Ctrl+C in the terminal. Running your first FitNesse test Start FitNesse if it isn't already running by running start.bat/start-mac.sh/start-unix.sh depending on your system Navigate to http://localhost:8980/FitNesseForAppian.Examples.TestExample Follow the configuration instructions marked by "Please follow the directions below to execute the test" Click Test at the top of the page Developing custom tests To try out the tool further, use the Appian application included in the combined files download (Automated Testing - 1x.x.zip) and import it into your corresponding version of Appian environment. Navigate to the FitNesseForAppian Cheatsheet and make use of the supported methods to write your own test suite to run against the sample application! Be sure you are using methods for the environment you are testing. For example, if testing sites, use navigation methods that come from the "Sites Methods" scenario. Using methods from a different environment has the potential to break in future releases. An example test suite run could look like this: By default, the tool collects usage metrics for analytics purposes. Set collect.metrics=false in the "metrics.properties" file to opt-out of metrics collection. Features Multiple browser support Chrome (v64-66) Firefox (v53-62) Benefits Test your Appian application within minutes of downloading the tool Methods created specifically to operate within Appian applications and Tempo Test scripts do not need to be updated for upgrades to supported Appian versions Test scripts are written in a wiki language that is very easy to read and synthesize Appian design knowledge is not required to create test scripts Common case scenarios can be created for reusability throughout test suites Isolate test steps into scenarios to perform Spec by Example tests Test scripts are easily updated for new UI changes to a form or interface Release Notes March 2025 - Release 25.1 Enhancements Added support for defining and using custom locales. Use create appian locale | PATH TO File. This method must be called after setting the version. File must be JSON file with the format : { "dateFormats": [ { "label": "dateFormat", "value": }, { "label": "dateDisplayFormat", "value": }, { "label": "timeFormat", "value": }, { "label": "timeDisplayFormat", "value": }, { "label": "datetimeFormat", "value": }, { "label": "datetimeDisplayFormat","value": } ], "labels": [ { "label": "acceptButton", "value": "Accept" } ], "locale": } Bug Fixes Fixed clickOnRecordRelatedAction to function correctly when the Record Summary page contains more than three action items. August 2024 - Release 24.3 Enhancements Added built-in retry to click operation in case of element not interactable exception. Updated the milestone locator. June 2024 - Release 24.2 Enhancements Updated locator for site menu links Created method which supports clicking on text within an interface. This is particularly useful for nested cards such as tab layouts, but can also be used as a fallback when existing methods don't work. This method is available for all Appian versions. Click operation on Card layout will be performed on the left side of the element instead of the right. We're not expecting any impact on existing test cases. March 2024 - Release 24.1 Enhancements Support for Appian version 24.1 Adds support for collapsing/opening sidebars ClickOnCard updated to support clicking on cards with complex content. For example, the method can now click on cards that have a component nested in multiple layouts within the card November 2023 - Release 23.4 NOTE: Project has been updated to require Java 11 JRE Enhancements Support for Appian version 23.4 Add support for the side navigation menu in sites Add support for downloading charts Add support for buttons configured with custom colors Bug Fixes Honor the download directory given in custom.properties for Remote Drivers Update dropdowns for versions greater than 23.3 to ignore the aria-checked value Fixed Populate Record Type Data Range User Filter method August 2023 - Release 23.3 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.3 Added functionality to interact with new site group headers Updated to Selenium 4.11.0 Add support for Date Range user filters in Record Types Update checkboxes to support CARD style for 23.3 and later Appian versions June 2023 - Release 23.2.1 NOTE: Updates to site navigation in the 23.2 product breaks the use of the "click on menu" method in site environments. "click on menu", and other navigation methods from Tempo, are guaranteed to work only in Tempo environments. Use the "click on site page" method instead Bug Fixes Update pickers to recognize selections with links (e.g. Record Pickers) June 2023 - Release 23.2 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.2 NOTE: Updates to site navigation in the 23.2 product breaks the use of the "click on menu" method in site environments. "click on menu", and other navigation methods from Tempo, are guaranteed to work only in Tempo environments. Use the "click on site page" method instead May 2023 - Release 23.1.2 Bug Fixes Fixes an issue where Dropdowns with Search were not working Fixes an Issue where verifyText did not work on multi-node components February 2023 - Release 23.1 Enhancements Supports Appian version 23.1 Updated locator for Dropdown class Bug Fixes Update CVEs Update scripts (start.bat, start-mac.sh, start-unix.sh, runFitNesseTest.sh) toreference the new fitnesse-20221219-standalone.jar August 2022 - Release 22.3 FitNesse for Appian is released and supported Removed support for 20.3 November 2021 - Release 21.4 Enhancements Support new card choice components Bug Fixes Update CVEs August 2021 - Release 21.3 Bug Fixes Fix bug for radio button card Fix bug for date picker June 2021 - Release 21.2 Enhancements Support new SectionLayout Upgrade Selenium Server to 3.141.59 Bug Fixes Fix bug for radio button card Fix bug for icon link alt text February 2021 - Release 21.1 Enhancements Supports Appian version 21.1 November 2020 - Release 20.4 Enhancements Support Chrome capabilities Update FitNesse version to 20200501 NEW METHOD: Support Stamp Field NEW METHOD: Support Tag field NEW METHOD: Support signature field NEW METHOD: Support record action field Bug Fixes Fix grid row count bug when there is no paging Fix getGridColumnRowValue when the grid cell is a button Fix clear picker bug when there are multiple selections Fix capturing an empty rich text field September 2020 - Release 20.3 Enhancements NEW METHOD: Populates the search box in a dropdown with some text Bug Fixes Fixed a bug for custom login submit button August 2020 - Release 20.2.1 Bug fixes Fixed a bug regarding clicking on card layouts July 2020 - Release 20.2 Bug fixes Fix bug with milestone click Fix toggle box visibility on related action pop up Apr 2020 - Release 20.1 Enhancements NEW METHOD: click on bar chart NEW METHOD: click on menu widget NEW METHOD: click on button with tooltip NEW METHOD: verify confirmation dialog header NEW METHOD: verify confirmation dialog message NEW METHOD: Verify a field is not blank NEW METHOD: click on document image link NEW METHOD: clear search field in record Bug fixes Remove pie chart hover for fragility and also make it the page scroll before hovering for firefox Clicking on standalone icons by making the xpath less specific Fixed closing social task bug January 2020 - Release 19.4.1 Enhancements NEW METHOD: star and unstar action with action name NEW METHOD: click on icon link with alt text Bug fixes Fixed issues for dropdowns with many options November 2019 - Release 19.4 Enhancements NEW METHOD: verify button with label is enabled NEW METHOD: verify button with label is disabled NEW METHOD: verify link containing text is not present NEW METHOD: verify a box with given label is present NEW METHOD: verify a box with given label is not present NEW METHOD: verify a section with given label is present NEW METHOD: verify a section with given label is not present NEW METHOD: verify a card with given accessibility text is present NEW METHOD: verify a card with given accessibility text is not present NEW METHOD: verify if text is not present anywhere in the user interface Bug fixes Fixed populate first column in a grid when rowheader is set to 1 September 2019 - Release 19.3.1 Enhancements Added additional logging for site page navigation Bug fixes Fixed verify text present for text with apostrophe Sep 2019 - Release 19.3 Enhancements Support gauge field Support locating field using placeholder, instructions or tooltip NEW METHOD: get gauge field GAUGE_FIELD or GAUGE_FIELD[INDEX] percentage NEW METHOD: verify gauge field GAUGE_FIELD or GAUGE_FIELD[INDEX] percentage is PERCENTAGE NEW METHOD: populate field with placeholder PLACEHOLDER with VALUE(S) NEW METHOD: populate field with instructions INSTRUCTIONS with VALUE(S) NEW METHOD: populate field with tooltip TOOLTIP with VALUE(S) NEW METHOD: get field with placeholder PLACEHOLDER value NEW METHOD: get field with instructions INSTRUCTIONS value NEW METHOD: get field with tooltip TOOLTIP value NEW METHOD: verify field with placeholder PLACEHOLDER contains VALUE(S) NEW METHOD: verify field with instructions INSTRUCTIONS contains VALUE(S) NEW METHOD: verify field with tooltip TOOLTIP contains VALUE(S) June 2019 - Release 19.2 Bug fixes Support sending news post without participants May 2019 - Release 19.1.3 Bug fixes Fixed the bug that users can not click on menu tabs on Appian 19.1 Fixed the bug on Read Only field "contains" Fixed the bug on sending news post on Appian 19.1 April 2019 - Release 19.1.2 Enhancements Support Wait For Progress Support Click on X and Y coordinates on monitor Bug fixes Fixed the bug that box layout toggle only acts on the first box March 2019 - Release 19.1.1 Bug fixes Fixed error popup caused by loading Automation Extension February 2019 - Release 19.1 Enhancements Support Masked Barcode Support Vertical Milestone Bug fixes Fixed login with terms for 17.2 January 2019 - Release 18.4.4 Enhancements NEW METHOD: populate field with partially matching picker field suggestion NEW METHOD: login into URL with username NEW METHOD: login into URL with role NEW METHOD: wait for seconds NEW METHOD: wait for minutes NEW METHOD: wait for working January 2019 - Release 18.4.3 Enhancements Add capability to run tests on remote web drivers Bug fixes Fixed milestone step verification Fixed section containing validation message verification December 2018 - Release 18.4.2 Enhancements NEW METHOD: populate grid column row with partially matching picker field suggestion Other minor enhancements November 2018 - Release 18.4.1 Enhancements Documentation overhaul Improved out of the box examples Updated information about supported Appian versions October 2018 - Release 18.4 Enhancements NEW METHOD: open settings menu NEW METHOD: open user profile NEW METHOD: use discoverability to navigate to NEW METHOD: close social task NEW METHOD: verify task feed containing text is not present Added usage metrics and corresponding metrics.properties file Bug Fixes Fixed login with terms August 2018 - Release 18.3.1 Enhancements Added new methods for hovering and clicking on profile links and circles in news posts Bug fixes Fixed NoClassDefFoundError for TempoEncryptedTextField introduced in 18.3 August 2018 - Release 18.3 Enhancements NEW METHOD: create a news post NEW METHOD: send kudos NEW METHOD: send messages NEW METHOD: send tasks NEW METHOD: sort tasks NEW METHOD: star a news feed item NEW METHOD: filter news feed NEW METHOD: navigate to link in news post NEW METHOD: generic assertion that text is present Bug Fixes Fixed bug with MilestoneField pre-18.2 Added WebContentField to 18.1 May 2018 - Release 18.2.1 Enhancements Auto login to previously set URL Milestones in side by side layout Card click identified by link name index NEW METHOD: verify video (not) present NEW METHOD: verify web content (not) present Updated test app for 18.2 Bug fixes User pickers not selecting correct field value Card click not working in Firefox May 2018 - Release 18.2 Enhancements Added support for 18.2 NEW METHOD: click on card Updated select grid method to account for the row highlight selection style Added test app for 18.2 Bug fixes Fixed fragility of file upload March 2018 - Release 18.1.4 Enhancements Added Support for finding grid indices Added the ability to delete documents downloaded by Fitnesse February 2018 - Release 18.1.3 Bug fixes Updated mac and linux scripts shebang to /bin/sh February 2018 - Release 18.1.2 Bug fixes Fixed Windows start script to run FitNesse successfully Fixed the example page and default fixture to use TempoFixture instead of SitesFixture January 2018 - Release 18.1.1 Enhancements Updated 16.3 Test Zip Bug fixes Fixed issue with navigating to /logout URL Fixed Multiselect dropdown on 16.3 Fixed Record filter clearing on 16.3 January 2018 - Release 18.1 Enhancements Added support for 18.1 Added test app for 17.3 and 18.1 January 2018 - Release 17.4.1 Enhancements Add ability to accept Tasks Add ability to populate Record Type user filter Add ability to download files Make LinkField capturable Added advanced functionality to adjust dates, including setting dates in the past If url contains "/suite", remove anything after it to prevent navigation failure. Bug fixes Updated chromedriver to version 2.33 Updated startup scripts to pass FitNesseRoot properly Always logout before login in case a previous test failed and didn't logout Made Firefox webdrivers executable Fix BarcodeField not working in 17.1+ November 2017 - Release 17.4 Enhancement Change FitNesse usernames Allow FitNesse tests to hit an arbitrary endpoint through an environment variable Bug fixes Mac Firefox date and dateTime field tests no longer throw an null character Dropdown tests does not read duplicate values October 2017 - Release 17.3.2 Enhancements Updated test application to run initialize on import Bug fixes Checkboxes that are too short are not checked October 2017 - Release 17.3.1 Enhancements Updated Test App to create users Documentation tweaks/ Readme tweaks Bug fixes Allowed login for internationalized pages Fixed an issue preventing searching in record list view Changed the way the start-unix script was sourced September 2017 - Release 17.3 Enhancements Supports Appian version 17.3 Ability to configure custom login page Updated the following components to be compatible with the latest Appian Hotfix Package for 17.1 (G), and 17.2 (D): Paging Grid Editable Grid Scripts now recognize new loading bar and wait for it to be done before continuing Added shell scripts and drivers for F4A on Mac and Linux Bug fixes Browser is maximized by default which ensures the "Sign Out" button is always visibleNote: Previously tests could hang waiting to logout if the browser window was within a specific size range where the "Sign Out" button got hiddentestingPlatformArchitecturehttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/3299/appian-usage-insights-appian-license-tracking-faqsTue, 10 Jun 2025 23:12:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:90ff1870-237a-4d07-9046-f26831cb625ajoel.larinWhy does my application package include something called “Appian License Tracking”? A recent update to the application led to this name change. The name used to be “Appian Usage Insights” but is now “Appian License Tracking.” The previous name persists on the AppMarket posting for recognition purposes. The application tracks license utilization and may, in future iterations, more closely track application usage based on log availability within Appian. How do I install the apps? The bundled Appian License Tracking Usage Insights Installation Guide describes how to do this. How do I upgrade to the latest version of the apps? The bundled Upgrade Notes document describes how to do this. How should I use the apps? The bundled Appian License Tracking Quick Start Guide describes how to do this. How does the app deduplicate users across environments? Users are identified by distinct username. Their group membership and logins are considered across all environments based on the same username. For example, john.smith in Environment A is considered to be the same user as john.smith in Environment B, but not the same as john.smith@acme.com in Environment C. I’ve run analysis on a collection run but the configuration was wrong. What can I do? You can modify the configuration (business entities, license pools and groups, license types etc) and rerun analysis on the latest collection run as many times as you need to get the configuration right. You can only run analysis on the latest collection run, so once you load the next collection run (a few weeks later) then any further configuration changes will only apply to analysis of that next collection run data. After my latest collection run, why do all license pools have zero allocated licenses? After each new collection run you need to run analysis again on that latest collection run. The majority of the reports are based on the analysis of the latest collection run (except for the capacity planning report and user logins over time), so will not display any data until analysis has been run on the new collection. How do I know which version of the app I am running? From v1.1.0, a constant was introduced in both the Collector and the Reporting apps to display the app version. This has been updated in v2.0.0 to the following based on application name updates. Collector App: LRDC_APPIAN_LICENSE_REPORTING_DATA_COLLECTOR_VERSION Reporting App: ALR_APPIAN_LICENSE_REPORTING_VERSION Information for v1.1.1 and older versions can be found below: For the Reporting app, if the constant LMA_R_APPIAN_USAGE_INSIGHTS_REPORTING_VERSION does not exist in your app, you are either running v1.0.0 or v1.0.1. In this case, if your reporting database includes the Stored Procedure LMA_SP_USERS_BY_LICENCE_TYPE, then you are running v1.0.1. For the Collector app, if the constant LMA_R_APPIAN_USAGE_INSIGHTS_COLLECTOR_VERSION does not exist in your app, then you are running v1.0.1 (which is identical to v1.0.0 as the Collector app did not previously change). How should I configure reporting to see details per app but also grouped at business unit level? From v1.1.0 onwards the Application Quick Start Guide describes how to do this. How do I configure flat app thresholds? From v1.1.0 onwards you can do this via the related action within any license type record. See the Application Quick Start Guide for more information. Do you have examples or scenarios of how to set up the business entities? Business entities are a fairly flexible concept that allow you to model usage in the most appropriate way for your business. A standard approach - that provides an overview at business unit level while allowing visibility on a per-app level too - would be to configure business entities for your organisation's larger business units, and then model the apps that belong to those business units as entity license pools. For this you would create one or more license types per app. For example, you might configure "Finance" as a business unit, create "Fin App1 Enterprise Users", "Fin App2 Enterprise Users" and "Fin App3 Enterprise Users" as license types, and map those to the Finance business entity by creating an entity license pool for each license type within the Finance business entity. For each of those entity license pools, you would configure the groups that allow you to identify users of each of those apps (so the entity license pool for "Fin App1 Enterprise Users" might be the group "Fin App1 All Users", for instance). When you find users that still end up in the Default entity, it's because you haven't mapped a group for them in your Business Entity - license Pool structure. The aim is to end up with no one left in the Default pool, so you know you have configured things correctly. This can take several iterations. Why do I have to upload collection data from all of my environments at once? Usage analysis and the resulting reports are based on a snapshot of usage across all in scope environments at the same time. Therefore, for each new collection run loaded into the reporting application, a collection for every active environment is required. These collections should generally have all been run on the same day, or close enough. From v1.1.0 it is possible to deactivate an environment so that no further collections need to be uploaded for it. This would be used where an environment that was being reported on is no longer being used. Can I use a non-production environment to host the reporting app? You should consider whether your organisation allows the data that the collector application collects to be stored in a non-production environment. Additionally, as you use the application and the data stored in the reporting application grows, you should consider how you manage capacity in your chosen non-production environment. As with any App Market app, clients are responsible for testing these apps in their own environments. When rolling out the Appian License Tracking applications within your organization, ensure that the apps are tested in your non-prod environments first according to your usual testing and release procedures. How can I export the reports? Currently (v1.1.0) the only export functionality included is the high level Usage by Business Entity report, which can be exported via the "Download usage by business entity" download link on the Usage Reports > Usage By Business Entity report. How do you report on non-prod and prod licenses separately, where users need to have one license per environment? Install the reporting app once per environment tier - e.g. a Dev reporting component, one for Test, one for Prod etc. Load only Dev environment collections into the Dev reporting component and so on. How do I configure the collector app to gather login information for the last year? The data collection component will collect a maximum of the last 30 days worth of login information. If you have run the collector in the last 30 days, it will collect the login information since the last time it ran. Over time as the collector is run (at least every 30 days) and the collections are loaded into the reporting component, you will build up login data across a longer period. The application doesn't support collecting older, compressed login audit data. This doesn't prevent the allocation of users to license pools (which is based on the most recent group membership collections). But it does mean that the login information displayed in the app will only become more meaningful as collections are built up over time.monitoringhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/3250/integrating-using-web-servicesTue, 10 Jun 2025 17:41:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:fb55cce9-e2b5-4683-80c4-b2047be126c0joel.larinAppian can use Web Services to integrate with external systems as a service provider (other systems calling Appian) or as a client (calling other systems from Appian). Most common protocols and standards are supported by default, but you can extend the platform using Appian's plug-in framework. The recommended approach for Appian to access other systems is through use of the Integration Object . The recommended approach for other systems to access Appian is through the Web API Object . Calling Other Systems from Appian Anytime Appian calls another system using supported authentication and methods, it should be configured using an Integration Object , paired with a Connected System . The Connected System object allows for multiple Integrations to be configured with one system, while hosting the authentication configuration in one place. Querying vs. Modifying Data Developers should always be aware of whether the integration will be querying (read-only) or modifying (read/write) data and select the appropriate checkbox for Usage when configuring an Integration object. Note: Appian will restrict developers from placing Integrations that modify data in places where duplicate calls can occur. Unlike other Web Service smart services, Integration objects can be called in SAIL or in process. Queries via an Integration object can also be used as the source for a service-backed record to create a structured, navigable interface for that data in Appian. Working with JSON When building the request body of an Integration object as JSON, you should create CDTs or use dictionary syntax that matches the expected structure to structure the data, and then use the function a!toJson to format the body. This will account for special characters and nulls, and always produce a well-formed structure. When parsing the response body of an Integration that is expected to be JSON, you should use Automatic Output Parsing (“Convert the JSON Response body to an Appian value”). This will always return your result as structured data in Appian. Note: If there are any Date or Date and Time fields expected in the response body, you will need to manually convert these fields from a Text type (e.g. "2018-01-01T12:00:00Z") to a Date or Date and Time type by parsing the string. Working with XML When building the request body of an Integration object as XML, you should create CDTs or use dictionary syntax that matches the expected structure to structure the data, and then use the function fn!toxml to format the body. This will account for special characters and nulls, and always produce a well-formed structure. When parsing the response body of an Integration that is expected to be XML, you should use the option to “Return the raw response body” and then use the function fn!torecord to convert the XML string into the structure of a matching CDT. Note: The namespace of the CDT must match the namespace of the XML. If you have the WSDL URL for the XML, you can automatically create CDTs which match the XML structure in your environment by adding it to the Call Web Service Smart Service , and then saving and publishing the process model. Unsupported Methods or Authentication Configurations For SOAP-based Web Services that use unsupported or non-standard data structures follow the advice in the Advanced SOAP Web Service Configuration guide. For Web Services using unsupported authentication methods you may be able to utilize the Advanced Call Web Service or Send HTTP Request plug-ins. If these do not work for your use case you can always write custom function plug-ins to perform the call. Calling Appian from Other Systems Other systems can use Web Services to call an Appian Web API to expose Appian expressions such as query data, modify data, or start a process. See the Best Practices for configuring an Appian Web API guide for more information.integrationsArchitecturehttps://community.appian.com/success/w/story/3613/helia-cultivates-a-culture-of-growth-and-innovation-with-appian-certificationsFri, 03 Jan 2025 17:43:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:7cdeb9e7-db3e-4e73-9be5-3e9f16cc6d6fjoel.larinSummary Helia, a leading Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) provider in Australia, has been committed to accelerating financial wellbeing through home ownership for almost 60 years. Partnering with both bank and non-bank mortgage originators, Helia plays a vital role in helping home buyers achieve the goal of home ownership. Featured Voices Ganesh Radhakrishnan Digital and Cyber Risk Leader Snapshot Industry: Financial Services Headquarters: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Number of Employees: 200+ Website: Helia The challenge: driving innovation and growth Helia’s mission is to become the unparalleled leader in LMI. In 2023, Helia was recognized with an Appian Innovation Award for transforming its operations, culture, and employee experience through the Appian Platform—and its ability to conduct quick builds to enable experimentation. The company’s goal was to modernize business processes, streamline the LMI policy lifecycle, and enhance employee skills to keep pace with technological advancements. Helia leveraged the Appian platform to accelerate business transformation. The organization used it to implement a new underwriting platform, an operational quality assurance tool, a claims management platform, and a billing solution—all while automating the entire LMI policy lifecycle. These advancements enabled faster, more efficient processing and empowered the team to innovate with confidence. The solution: fostering a culture of continuous learning Helia's success stems not only from technological upgrades, but also from a strong commitment to its customers and employee development. By embedding Appian’s education and certification programs into its employee development strategy for technical and operations teams, Helia cultivates a learning culture that fosters growth and innovation for roles across the business. Certification is more than just a piece of paper; it’s an achievement.” Ganesh Radhakrishnan, Digital and Cyber Risk Leader At the forefront of this initiative was Ganesh Radhakrishnan, Digital and Cyber Risk Leader at Helia. Ganesh encourages his team to pursue Appian certifications, which validate their technical expertise and allow them to take on increasingly complex tasks. Certifications are not just formal qualifications; they’re accomplishments that bolster employee confidence and capabilities. “Certification is more than just a piece of paper; it’s an achievement,” Ganesh explains. Reaching these milestones leads to tangible results, as Helia sees faster development velocity with each new certification earned. To encourage this process, Helia integrated certification goals into employee performance reviews. This makes it integral to the company’s growth and innovation strategy. Building a community of certified experts Helia goes even further to encourage certifications—the company also provides incentives and recognition for achievements. Helia maintains a certification leaderboard to motivate developers at all levels to continue advancing their skills. Each certification is celebrated with a photo and goodie bag. Plus, they further celebrate these achievements at team reviews, fostering a learning and growth culture. Helia’s regular “Appian Development Community of Practice” meetings provide a platform for showcasing new features, further fostering collaboration and innovation. In fact, a recently graduated developer earned their Associate Developer certification in just 90 days, highlighting the accessibility of the certification program and the effectiveness of Helia’s learning culture. Staying on the cutting edge of technology Beyond certifications, Helia’s technical and operational team members use all of Appian’s educational resources including webinars, technical documentation, and community forums. By staying up to date with the latest Appian features—such as AI tools and Process HQ—Helia remains at the forefront of technological innovation. These educational tools help Helia remain agile and quickly deploy cutting-edge, future-proof solutions to customers. A future-ready workforce and accelerated growth Helia’s commitment to growth and innovation, driven by its strategic investment in Appian certifications and education, has delivered significant benefits. Helia's rapid adoption of new technologies is proof of its LMI industry leadership, delivering better customer outcomes and a stronger, more agile business. By fostering a learning culture, Helia not only strengthens its internal capabilities, but also enhances its ability to reimagine the home ownership experience. This blend of technological transformation and employee development will fuel its mission of accelerating financial wellbeing through home ownership. Want to take your own development team’s skills to the next level? Learn more about Appian Certifications .credentialsstoryAppian Certificationscertificationssuccess storyhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/story/2980/citizen-development-at-bendigo-and-adelaide-bankMon, 30 Dec 2024 19:22:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:6806525b-380c-4ace-83a9-62afe5dddf8djoel.larinSummary Bendigo and Adelaide Bank champions citizen development, empowering its non-technical staff to build applications through Appian's low-code platform. This initiative boosts digital transformation, enabling employees to directly enhance technology and customer service. The strategy underscores the bank's dedication to promoting a culture of learning and teamwork, thereby increasing operational efficiency and market responsiveness. Featured Voices Ben Boase Service Owner, Workflow & Robotics Snapshot Industry: Financial Services Headquarters: Bendingo, Australia Number of Employees: 7,000+ Website: Bendingo Bank Interview Date: July, 2021 Catalyst for Citizen Development Q: Why build a community of citizen developers? What does your program look like today? A: We’d been developing in Appian for several years and opening up to citizen developers seemed like the next logical step. This effort allows people closer to business problems to use Appian to address those problems versus go through us. Today, we have about 12 citizen developers who are active in the community. Citizen Developer Qualifications Q: Can anyone be a citizen developer? To you, what makes for a ‘good’ citizen developer? A: In our business, the role best aligned with the requirements for successful citizen development is the Technical Business Analyst. These folks might not have deep programming expertise, but they all have excellent analytical capabilities and some degree of technical skills. They are particularly good at problem solving and systems thinking. They know how to find inefficiencies in a process and come up with ways to use automation to make it better. Supporting Citizen Developers Q: What types of support are you providing citizen developers? Similarly, what are the parameters or guardrails you’ve put in place? A: The first thing we do with people who want to learn Appian development is get them set up on Appian Community. From there, we point them to the online learning on Appian University: Appian Fundamentals training. We provide them support during their learning process through our CoE. We also provide them with access to a sandbox and a development environment. (Access gets more and more restricted the closer they get to production.) Also, we have an Appian community wiki and Teams channel for Appian development. New citizen developers have the ability to ask others in the community for help. Also, every 2 to 3 weeks, my team will lead an Appian discussion, which will always include our citizen developers. Here we will pick one topic (e.g. new release features) and go deep. Our major control for citizen-developed applications is our solution assurance process. This includes a health check review, but also validation that good build practices have been followed, like the use of proper naming conventions, table structures, etc. Nothing gets released into production without this review, which my team conducts. Lessons Learned Q: With respect to this program, what has worked well and where have you struggled? What advice would you give to others on their citizen development journey? A: Low code is not no-code. You need to understand how technology works. The people we target don’t necessarily have lots of programming experience, but they often have some computer science. However, technical aptitude is more important than experience. You might be good at Visio or Excel, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be proficient in Appian. Success Measures Q: How do you measure the value generated by this program? What measures do you point to to prove success? A: We don’t have formal program success measures. But I would say the biggest indicator of success is the fact that several of the applications built by citizens (or in partnership between IT and citizens) are some of our most heavily used Appian applications. These are not small apps either: they automate meaningfully complex and important processes. Another indicator of success is that the community is still growing. Most of our newer Citizen Developers came to us because they saw the success of their peers in other business groups in solving problems with Appian and they wanted to do it for themselves.storyVisionhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/3301/sizing-hardware-for-appianMon, 30 Dec 2024 18:41:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:5bae185d-2a85-4bd7-9669-4b950a08d37cjoel.larinAppian's hardware sizing process provides a general estimate of the hardware needed to run your Appian solution. This estimate is based on several high-level business parameters and is typically used prior to the start of a project. The sizing can be repeated if parameters change significantly due to new business requirements. The sizing recommendations apply to Production environments only . For non-prod environments we recommend following System Requirements for your Appian version. NOTE: Hardware sizing is not a replacement for proper performance and load testing. Requesting a Hardware Sizing Fill out the Appian CS Hardware Sizing Survey to provide high level estimates of: Expected user load Process volume Data and document size Environment configuration Service level expectations Email your Account Executive the completed sizing survey. Your Account Executive will follow up with you to validate the inputs and provide you with guidance.environmentsPlatformhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/3216/performance-and-load-testingMon, 30 Dec 2024 18:34:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:fee595c7-b5d5-492b-9d68-5c91486b7f62joel.larinWhy Performance Test? Performance testing can be used to answer critical questions about the application, such as: Will pages load fast enough to satisfy end users? Can the application store all of the data that will be collected? Will performance be consistent over time? Which areas of my application should I improve? Answering these types of questions reduces risk, informs current business decisions and assists future planning. Performance testing is needed to determine if the application will perform within specification given a particular situation. It also validates if the resources provided to the application are sufficient for the given volume and data load. The "right" amount of performance testing can only be determined by the project sponsor and stakeholders after considering the importance or visibility of the application, potential revenue loss due to poor performance, and other risk factors.Appian designers should ensure that end user interfaces perform within the specification before they promote the feature to higher environments. If interfaces do not perform adequately during unit testing, they will not improve during performance testing. There are several ways that interface performance can be captured and various troubleshooting techniques. Please see Interface Performance and Debugging for more details. Process Performance Baseline When designing process models, designers need to pay attention to the response times between user tasks to ensure appropriate user experience. Similarly to interfaces, processes need to perform appropriately during unit tests, before they can be accepted for performance testing. Performance of individual activities is recorded in logs, and designers can utilize the Appian Health Check to find out if there were any expressions or smart services that could impact end users’ experience. Health Check also provides an HTTP Response Time chart that provides an aggregate view of performance within the environment. These tools should be utilized after every round of functional testing to monitor emerging performance risks. Absence of Health Check should not be a blocker to analyze performance test results. You can still analyze Appian Logs in their tool of choice (Splunk, SolarWinds, Grafana, New Relic, Excel). Additionally, designers can use network monitoring tools built into their browser, to record the exact performance of requests between user clicks during their unit testing. Performance Testing Performance testing should be done once the application is in a stable build with the majority of the functionality built out. The app does not have to be complete to get started, but needs to pass the QA/QC cycle, so that performance results are not skewed by application errors. Additionally, performance testing needs to be executed for major releases of the application. Over time, the test will grow to include additional applications and functionality as your platform use evolves. There are two load factors to consider during performance testing: Data Load - how much data is in the system during performance testing? This is a frequently overlooked factor but applications need to be tested with a pre-loaded set of data in order to ascertain how it will perform in a realistic situation. Performance testing is often executed with blank databases, which will not be the case 3, 6, 12 months or even at application go-live. Results from such testing will be inaccurate. Please read the Database Volume Testing play for tips on how to load data into your environment. Load Volume - how many users are in the system creating transactions? When designing your test, you need to find out how many business processes are executed in a given timeframe by how many users. You also need to make sure that all other significant activity in the system is tested, to set up a realistic transaction volume scenario. Tests need to be designed to emulate real user activity, with appropriate pauses between interactions. More details on methodology, complete with test design templates and helpful tips, can be found under Performance Testing Methodology . Performance testing should have its own project plan and it should be considered its own agile project. A backlog of performance improvement fixes will start to build with each nightly performance test run. The business should prioritize the improvements based on impact and severity. Promote performance fixes on a nightly basis and rerun the performance test to determine the impact of each change. Tools You can execute performance tests using the Appian Locust tool, which uses the open source Locust load testing framework. It provides an easy, programmatic way to develop and execute load and performance tests for Appian. Alternatively, you can use standard web application performance testing tools. These include JMeter and LoadRunner.DeliverytestingPlatformhttps://community.appian.com/success/w/article/3180/manage-your-appian-cloud-upgradeThu, 21 Nov 2024 15:06:00 GMTd3a83456-d57b-489c-a84c-4e8267bb592a:efe39475-4314-4ea0-a688-afb17b912743joel.larinAppian releases a new version of its platform quarterly. Each release brings valuable new features for both end users and designers. They also provide resolutions to prior issues and enhance security. Converting your Appian Cloud instances to the latest release is a fully automated process, and comes at no additional cost. If you run a self-managed installation of Appian, refer to this Upgrade Guide for help on updating your platform. Typically, our Support team will suggest an upgrade to the latest version within 30 days of its release. We recommend keeping your environment versions up-to-date, ideally within two releases of the current one. If your platform engages multiple Appian teams, it would be beneficial to have an Appian Center of Excellence leading the process. Performing version upgrades is an essential part of platform maintenance and can usually be scheduled just two weeks after a release is made generally available. Not performing these upgrades can mean expiration of Support Services for your installation. During the upgrade process, Appian will make every effort to minimize service interruptions by performing maintenance activities outside of regular business hours. 1. Make a plan Every new version of Appian is backwards compatible, so your applications should run as usual post-upgrade. If however you choose to leverage a new feature, or there are significant UI changes as part of the upgrade, it’s possible your users will be affected by the change. Therefore, it's important to make a plan and communicate changes effectively throughout the upgrade process. Some important steps in the planning process include: Review Appian Release Notes Identify and alert stakeholders of any significant changes Make plan to test and deploy upgrades Before initiating your cloud upgrade, take some time to review the Release Notes and Product Webinar for the latest Appian release. This will help you identify new features your developers can utilize and create a list of deprecations that may require revisiting. Ensure that you're reading the latest set of release notes, or the version applicable to your upgrade, by selecting the version drop-down menu and selecting the latest Appian version. As you review the Release Notes, keep an eye out for any UX changes, as you may need to notify users of these improvements and how it affects the application experience. Once an impact assessment of the upgrade has been made, identify all stakeholders, including end users, developers, and support staff. Notify these stakeholders about specific changes either through a site banner or via an email detailing the upgrade. Good communication is fundamental to a successful upgrade. Lastly, you should draft an upgrade deployment plan before initiating the upgrade process. This plan should take the following into consideration: Upgrade Timeline You may plan to upgrade your test environment on Monday, while scheduling your Dev and Production environments for Friday of the same week. Your upgrade cadence can be discussed with Support when scheduling your upgrades. The takeaway here is having adequate time to validate the test environment before upgrading Dev and Production. This is important to note since you can’t deploy code from higher to lower versions of Appian (23.2 to 23.1), and as such deployments will be paused during upgrades. Test Case Identification Before you upgrade your environments, you should determine test cases and validation procedures for each environment. This might include things such as: Smoke testing Regression testing Automated testing See the Appian Testing Guide for a comprehensive overview of testing in Appian. 2. Schedule your upgrade Authorized technical support contacts will receive an email notifying them about the exact date, time, and duration of the maintenance window to upgrade their site(s). If the proposed upgrade schedule doesn’t fit your needs, or you want to do a staged rollout for your environments (recommended), you’ll need to update the upgrade schedule directly from the Cloud Installation site provided in the upgrade email. You can also coordinate with the Appian support team by opening a support case on Forum. The support team will help you establish an upgrade sequence, and talk through any unusual circumstances or considerations for your upgrade. Every environment that is hosted on the Appian cloud will need to be scheduled for an upgrade. The Test environment is often upgraded first to limit the number of interruptions in Development and Production. This also allows for the possibility of rolling back and aborting the update if needed. The Development and Production environment upgrades will be scheduled shortly after the Test upgrade, with some time allotted for testing in between. Communicate with support if any changes are necessary to the schedule, and be sure to fully validate your test environment before upgrading the Development and Production environments. Keep in mind that there will be a pause on deployments while updates are being made to a given environment. 3. Perform a trial run Once the cloud upgrade is completed in your testing environment, revisit your upgrade deployment plan to perform the necessary tests. Smoke testing is a good way to quickly check for any major issues, while regression testing allows you to examine the upgrade in greater depth. See our Appian Testing Guide for a complete overview of testing in Appian. To reduce the amount of manual effort involved in testing, Appian also has Automated Testing you can employ throughout the application development lifecycle. We recommend implementing automated testing early in your projects, as it will greatly reduce upgrade testing costs and allow for a faster, smoother update process. Be aware that updates to your automated tests may be needed if UX changes have occurred in the new Appian version. Changes that affect your plug-ins and integrations should also be noted. The Deprecations and Removals sections of the Appian Release Notes are a great place to start testing for such changes. 4. Complete your upgrade Once you've fully validated the upgrade in your Test environment, you should upgrade Production, followed by Development. Ending with the Development environment gives you the option of handling last minute hotfixes and avoids blocking your development efforts. Smoke testing should be again be performed in Production and Development to test for critical application functionality. In the unlikely event that you experience something unexpected after the upgrade, contact Appian Technical Support for assistance. Support will usually be able to provide a work around, or help plan an application hotfix to resolve the issue. If the issue can’t be resolved in this manner, you'll also be able to restore to the latest backup pre-upgrade. All of these options should be discussed with Appian Technical Support to ensure any issues are addressed appropriately. Be prepared to support your developers and end users post-upgrade, particularly if there have been UX or integrations related changes. If changes are significant enough, be sure to revise your supporting documentation and training materials.environmentsConfiguration ManagementPlatform