When testing interfaces in Appian during the normal development cycle, I frequently find myself typing random text into form fields. The nerd I am, I wanted something to make this more convenient. Browser support JavaScript in bookmarks. This is called a Bookmarklet. And it has direct access to the current web page. So I needed… Read More Lorem Ipsum Generator
In process models, connectors have properties. In this post, I am going to explain the option “Enable Activity Chaining” in more detail. Chaining is Bad! Yes, really! Let me briefly explain that, so we can discuss valid use cases in the next section. It thwarts load balancing Appian process instances across the available execution engines.… Read More Process in Chains
Do you guess what this is? It is the way your computer stores the header of this post. Computers do not store actual text, but numbers. Then, someone created a mapping between numbers and letters and called this the ASCII table. That was back in 1963. The ASCII table maps the numbers 0–255 to various… Read More Bits, Bytes & Character
In this post, I want to discuss a way of how to use values stored in constants in the database. The more specific use case is status values. Now I know that when propagating a fully normalised data model, you would store status values in a reference table and just store these as a foreign… Read More Constants and the Database
File upload in Appian is a story full of misunderstandings! Well … what?! This is just about uploading a file! We need to go back to the beginning of Appian to understand what is going on here. The Beginning Appian started as a kind of workflow supported document management system. To upload a file, we… Read More File Upload in Appian
In Appian, there are certain situations in which I need to check the data type of a rule input or local variable. While rule inputs have a defined data type, like Integer or Text, I can use the ANY-type in cases I need more flexibility. Find a list of all data types here: https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/latest/Appian_Data_Types.html Then,… Read More Data Type References
Process alerts in Appian notify you when any severe problem in a process happens. By default, these alerts are sent by email to the mailboxes of one or more Appian user accounts. While this works pretty well, there are situations where this is just not enough. Let’s see what other options we have. Ticket System… Read More Process Alerts API
Appian has built in user management. It is great for simple setups or demos. For integrating Appian in an enterprise environment, we need a bit more. We require centralized management of user accounts and permissions. In a typical corporate environment, some form of Microsoft active directory (AD) is used. Other, so-called Identity Providers, exist, like… Read More SAML Group Sync
Process reports are one of the oldest components in Appian. I hear many developers trying to avoid them and try to replicate existing functionality by storing task and process data in the database. At the time I started with Appian in 2010, building Appian UI meant creating portal pages and populating them with process reports… Read More Searching in Process Reports
An essay about the naivety of Large Language Models meeting the naivety of business users. Update (03/20/2024): Find some scientific background from the founder of Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram here “Can AI Solve Science?” (Stephen Wolfram Writings). Navigating the Ethical Minefield of Business Process Automation In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, Large Language Models… Read More Meeting of the Naive
