Dan's Top 10 Appian Updates from 2024

Last year’s Appian releases were full of visionary new features that continue to broaden Appian’s capabilities as a business orchestration and automation platform: Case Management Studio, Process HQ, tons of new AI features… but for me, it’s some of the smaller things that I am most excited about. Here are my personal favorite updates from 2024:

10 - exportWhen parameter on read-only grids (24.4)

This allows you to independently control which grid columns appear to the user, and which are included in exports. Now if we’re building a grid and it “needs” to have 30 columns on it, we can suggest a compromise by maybe only showing 10 columns in the grid, but including all 30 in the export. 

9 - Native multi-factor authentication (24.1)

Everybody wants multi-factor these days, but until this release you needed to configure SAML authentication to authenticate users against an external identity provider. Now it’s available entirely out-of-the-box! Even if you do have an external IdP, this feature could still be useful for helping secure admin accounts outside of your IdP.

8 - Group management log (24.2)

There have been so many times I’ve been asked for a full audit trail on group membership changes. We’ve even implemented a group management component to do this here at Macedon, but with the flaw that it only provides auditing if you use the component. I’d love to see someone make a front-end UI using one of the log reader plugins to make this available to business admins and auditors.

7 - Synchronous Start Process smart service (24.4)

It’s now much easier to configure a Start Process node, AND you can run it synchronously which was previously only possible with Sub-process nodes. This change allows us to use Start Process in more scenarios, which may be beneficial if load balancing is important or if your process model context is dynamic. Keep up the good work here, Appian! Eventually I’m hoping to see the old sub-process node deprecated entirely in favor of Start Process for even simpler process design.

6 - Comments on records (24.2)

Once you’re uUsing record events, you can now enable commenting on records, including the ability to @ mention users. This feature is already a solid replacement for existing comment components, though there are a few enhancements that would be nice (please let me customize the notification emails). Appian seems to be continually improving this one so I’ll keep my fingers crossed for 2025.

5 - Links on a!tagItems (24.3)

Yes, this is very high up on my list for how trivial it is. And you could have recordLinks on tags prior to this release. Even so - the ability to have a!dynamicLinks on tags is something I have been looking forward to for a long time, so I am super excited for this one. It’s a little detail that, alongside other several similarly small little details over the years, can help you craft that perfect user experience.

4 - Pane layout (24.1) with headers (24.3)

Now you can have independently scrollable sections on a page with a fixed header above them. This earns the #4 spot because I feel almost every single site has a page that can benefit from this, particularly by having a pane to keep your navigation or other page controls fixed while the user scrolls the main content of the page.

3 - Portal within iframe (24.4)

When Portals came out in 2022 it opened the door to a ton of new use cases for unauthenticated users, but until now they were only accessible by going to the portal URL. Now you can sneakily embed an Appian portal directly into an existing website, providing a truly seamless experience for things like submitting data to be processed by Appian. This feature has a lot of potential and I am really excited to see how people get creative with this in 2025. 

2 - Default test cases for expression rules (24.4)

“But Dan - you could already add test cases to expression rules. This really only saves you a couple of clicks! How dare you rank this #2!”

Hey now, this is MY list so I can put whatever I want on it. But also, test cases aren’t used as extensively as they should be. Test cases could easily save tons of time and headache, especially when maintaining existing code, but when you’re making a new rule it can be tough to convince yourself it’s worth the effort when they are so hidden and hard to use. Now with this seemingly small quality of life change in 24.4 it makes using test cases that much simpler, which I think will be enough to push more developers to use them. I’d love to see this same treatment for Interfaces next.

1 - Dynamic URL parameters (24.2)

And here it is - the #1 feature in my opinion from 2024 is ranked #1 because of its potential to be used on every single site page, and because it has surprisingly gone under the radar. URL parameters for sites actually came out in 23.4, and in 24.2 the URL parameters dynamically update as the user interacts with the form. This lets you do some really cool stuff. 

First, it makes it way easier for users to bookmark pages or share links with their colleagues for content that isn’t a record view (and honestly, you might want to consider using URL parameters INSTEAD of record views). For example, maybe you have a dashboard with various subsections. You drill into one of those subsections and apply some filters to a report that you think a colleague could find interesting. Now, with URL parameters configured, you can copy that URL and share the exact screen you’re looking at with a colleague. 

Second, you can generate easily readable links.  Say you have a case management application and you want to pull up case #3940. Now you can just go to /sites/yoursite/page/cases?caseNumber=3940 (and again I think it’s worth considering using this pattern instead of record views). With properly implemented row-level security you often won’t need to use the encrypted URL parameter feature, but you will need to do a little extra work to ensure you can’t break the app with a bad URL.

Lastly, using URL parameters allows users to use their browser’s Back button, something that not everybody cares about, but some people really do. Just be careful not to overuse the URL parameter feature otherwise it might become painfully annoying to try to use the Back button.

Honorable mention - Process autoscaling (24.4)

This feature sounds like it will be really powerful, and there is already some good documentation and best practices around it. It has the potential to totally reshape how we design and execute processes in Appian, but I still have a lot of questions and concerns. Without more detail I would be hesitant to use it except in very specific situations, and even then I’d want more info. Currently this feature is available to test on Community Edition but is otherwise a separately licensed feature even for those with Advanced or Premium tier licenses.

Did not make the cut:  Case Management Studio, Process HQ, and Generative AI skills

I am not convinced on these features quite yet, but Appian continues to invest heavily in all three of them so we will see what 2025 brings. 

For Case Management Studio it’s hard for me to see when you’d actually save time by starting with CMS and making tons of customizations to it, versus just building a custom app (which will better fit your use case). 

I fully buy in to the potential of Process HQ, and actually think Data Fabric Insights is great as-is, but the Process Insights feels clunky and hard to understand. 

Lastly, the Generative AI skills are great in theory, and those who know me know I am all aboard the AI train, but they have a lot of limitations and performance problems that you can avoid by using something like OpenAI APIs.