Thursday, May 1, 2014

Appian BPM 7.5

#AppianBPM 7.5
Release date April 25th 2014.
This below features are most exciting to me.

# Advanced Task Management :
  Allow process task rejection and reassignment by managers or users as appropriate.

# Editable Grid improves ease of use, allowing data to be edited within the grid, similar to a spreadsheet.
  This feature of editable Grid was in 6.x and was removed in 7.0 and now its back in 7.5
 Also the formatting the grid column was very important. Good Appian heard about this.
  a!gridTextColumn and data property should be used to do this.

# New Interface Designer
This new feature gives designers more flexibility in building SAIL forms and a competitive edge compare to other platforms.
**Very important to NOTE this is not a drag and drop design feature. Its like coding in eclipse or visual studio and get auto completion of operations/functions. Based on cursor location corresponding function param details are shown and function name completes. (Auto suggest, Syntax highlight, live code documentation )
We had to refer to documentation for every function for signatures.
 Excellent for developers.
Only hoping the interface designer is stable.
Copy paste/option toggle not to render immediately and refresh
Performance of the SAIL UI with visual charts etc, Will help developers to do a better job

#SAIL a!textField label position is one of the most important feature that I like.
It was a hassle in 7.4 for a client I worked the placement of label was not good. Had to use instructions instead of label. NOW with more options I believe UI development will have more choices.

Must thank Suvajit, VP Development at Appian for his teams efforts. Hope people at appian world might have seen his presentation.

#Configuration manger
Not tested yet but Appian administration of 7.5 seems to be easier than ever. A whole new configuration manager is something to get excited for Admins.

#Integration Connectors
I am excited about the Microsoft connectors especially with MS Dynamics. Cant wait to play with these and bring great value to the clients.
Even though MS provides SOA/WS approach lets see what Appian Integration connectors bring to the table.
Developers in MS Dynamics knows well about IOrganizationService  and this is internally called.
Appian provides Connector functions for these and most of them have few parameters like user, pwd and endpoint and its corresponding endpoint function inputs.
Note: All Connectors require some configuration by Administrators before developers can use.

a!dynRetrieve(
            scsExternalSystemKey: cons!DYN_SCS_KEY,
            usePerUserCredentials: true,
            endpoint: cons!DYN_ENDPOINT,
            parameters: _ )

 Other Connectors are for CMIS, SharePoint, Siebel, SAP and SalesForce.
 Disclaimer: Connectors are maintained or coded by undisclosed 3rd party and not Appian itself.
 But one good thing is there are good Appian engineers out there if any problem arises.

#More space for users in Reports
When using reports Users always wanted more workspace on the screen to play on the data.
Appian removed the left side space making more room for Reports. Probably could be configured.

Overall version 7.5 was all about developers and end users being happy and use Appian efficiently.
Still concerns are How to make the Admins life easy in the Upgrade process.
Cloud folks are covered as Appian does it, but what about the on-premise clients.
Most of them have 3 or 4 environments Dev/QA/UAT/Prod and coping up with appian release speeds is not easy as Admins spend more than half a day for each environment to get it up with lots and lots of manual steps in Upgrade process reading the long wiki pages.

This release has been just this week and more to explore.... Stay tuned..

Rayudu Addagarla is an Independent BPM Contractor and owns Siorys Consulting Services 
Has 5yrs of Appian BPM version 6.x and 7.x experience. and 15yrs (USA) of  related IT experience.
Working with Top financial clients.
Onshore offshore model experience. 
Appian BPM Architecture and Hands on development experience.
Expert in working with the toughest Business teams you might have.

Keywords: Appian BPM 7.x 7.5 SAIL Process Improvement and  Management Work Social
Related post:
http://raybpm.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-high-level-overview-of-appian-bpm.html