01 introduction to appian 6

8/10/2019 01 Introduction to Appian 6

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Copyright © 2009 Appian. All rights reserved.

Introduction to Appian 6Malcolm Ross

Director Product Management





Appian 6 – Server Maintenance

What Customer Maintains the Most Production AppianServers?

Appian – 3 Internal Production Appian Environments (Experience, Intranet, Access) – 40+ Production Appian Anywhere Environments – 100+ Appian Development / Test Environments

Key Appian 6 Server ImprovementsFast Setup of Distributed Environments with new Network Topology Config File

Consolidation of all Config files into a single Suite.Properties file

Consolidation of all Log Files into a single Log




Appian 6 – Java Architecture

Updated Appian Java Architecture – Updated Java JRE from 1.4/1.5 to 1.6 – Updated JBOSS from version 4 to version 5 – Updated BEA Weblogic from version 8 to version 10.3 – Updated IBM WebSphere from version 5 to version 7.0 – All Java Routines consolidated into the Java Application Server – Replacement of Apache James Email handler with JBOSS Mail Resource

Adapter – Replacement of Active MQ JMS with Java Message-Driven Bean (MDB)

handled by the Java Application Server – Consolidation of Log Files into a single Log file managed by Log4J – Consolidation of Server Property files into a single Suite.Properties file for

all Appian server configurations –

Continued work from 5.7 on simplification of file structure of Appian servercomponents


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Appian 6 – The BPM Application

Appian BPM Application

P r o c e s s

R u l e s

F o r m s

G r o u p

s

a n d R o l e s

P o r t a l a n d

D a s h b o a

r d s

R e p o r

t s

D o c u m e n

t

M a n a g e m

e n t

C o l l a b o r a

t i o n

a n d F o r u m s

• One-Click Deployment• XML Definition for all components• Simplified Change Management•

Fast UI Construction• No Customization, No Coding



Appian 6 – Application Designer

Simple Navigation to Each Library of Re-Usable Content Types

New Application Builder Interfacewhere components are organized intological Applications



Appian 6 – Check Dependencies

Automatic discovery of connected objects for clear changemanagement and packaging of new applications



Appian 6 – End-User Portal

New Application Centric Navigation – Displays all BPM Applications the user can access

The Appian HOME Application

• Components• Home Dashboard• User Profile• Bookmarks• Personal Pages

• Configurable Security – Can be disabled or enabled for select users




Granular UI Control Over Reporting Channels

Filtering

Printing andSharing

Ad-Hoc Reportingand Customization



Appian 6 – Enhanced Features

Web Page Channel Improvements – The web page channel type has been enhanced to support the dynamic display of

pages based on process data – The URL configuration can be defined using an expression that reads from

process variable data. When the page is viewed, the latest process data is usedto determine the page to show inside the channel body

– Existing Web Page channels continue to function as before.




Intuitive URLsSimple Web URLs to navigate to any application or tab inside the End-User Portal• Bookmark any application or tab• Send simple URL’s to navigate to pages• Use the browser Back and Forward button to navigate visited applications and tabs

URL Structurehttp://[appian server name]/suite/apps/[ app name] /[page name]

http://appian/suite/apps/ IT_Request /Staff_Dashboard



Appian 6 – Document Management

Document Management Enhancements – All document management functionality has been consolidated in the

document tab. – The “ Advanced Interface” has been deprecated. All functions from the

previous separate “ Advanced Interface” have been rolled up into the mainuser interface.




Date, Time, and Time Zone Handling – The time zone of the operating system on the server hosting Appian 6 no longer

has to be configured to GMT

– Time Zone String Display - Display name for time zones in a string has changedfor running processes to GMT +/- hh:mm where hh:mm represents the houroffsets from GMT. The following expression functions are affected by this change(tostring, text, touniformstring, and any time a datetime is concatenated with astring)

– Time data type is now independent of time zone. No time shifting occurs whenthe data type is displayed in various time zones.

– Process / Time Zone awareness – Each Process Model may now be configured tohave it’s own default operating time zone to simplify the definition of date/time

fields as to which time zone the date/times apply.




Date, Time, and Time Zone Handling – A new process model property (pm!timezone) allows access to the time zone

configured in the Process Model Properties.

– A new timezoneid() expression function gives access to the ID of the time zonebeing used in the current expression evaluation context.

– Timers now have an additional input to specify what time zone the time should beevaluated in.

– Dropdowns containing time zone names and ID’s now use the generic time zonename instead of the standard time name to better reflect that daylight savings timeis taken into account when selecting a time zone.



Appian 6 – New Content Expressions

New Expression Functions

community()Returns information for community.

Syntax: community( communityId, property ) {dateCreated, description, id, name, numberOfDocuments, parentId, parentName, active}

folder()Returns information for a folder

Syntax: folder( folderId, property) {changesRequireApproval, creator, dateCreated, forum, id, inheritSecurityFromParent, knowledgeCenterId,knowledgeCenterName, knowledgeCenterSearchable, name, numberOfDocuments, parentFolderId, parentFolderName, pendingApproval,searchable}

knowledgecenter()Returns information for a knowledge center

Syntax: knowledgecenter(knowledgeCenterId, property) {autoApproveForReadOnlyAccess, changesRequireApproval, communityId,communityName, creator, dateCreated, description, expirationDays, forum, id, isSearchable, name, numberOfDocuments, size, type}

linkto<OBJECT_TYPE>internal()

Generates links to Appian objects which will load using the AJAX content update framework instead of reloading the entire page

message()Returns information for a message

Syntax: message(messageId, property) {anonymousAuthor, author, averageRating, datePosted, depth, id, parentId, ratingCount, subject,threadId}




AJAX Loading of Web Content Channel – Links created within the Web Content channel new related target content within

the channel instead of refreshing the entire page.

AJAX links for Web Alerts – Links to alerts viewed inside the Appian web interface now reload target content

within the channel instead of refreshing the entire page.

Deprecation of Tags – Due to changes in URL generation, (h:link> and <h:write> tags are no longer

supported. Use of these tags should be changed to <asi:link> tag instead.