Book Image

Low-Code Application Development with Appian

By : Stefan Helzle
Book Image

Low-Code Application Development with Appian

By: Stefan Helzle

Overview of this book

This book is an exhaustive overview of how the Appian Low-Code BPM Suite enables tech-savvy professionals to rapidly automate business processes across their organization, integrating people, software bots, and data. This is crucial as 80% of all software development is expected to be carried out in low code by 2024. This practical guide helps you master business application development with Appian as a beginner low-code developer. You'll learn to automate business processes using Appian low-code, records, processes, and expressions quickly and on an enterprise scale. In a fictional development project, guided by step-by-step explanations of the concepts and practical examples, this book will empower you to transform complex business processes into software. At first, you’ll learn the power of no-code with Appian Quick Apps to solve some of your most crucial business challenges. You’ll then get to grips with the building blocks of an Appian, starting with no-code and advancing to low-code, eventually transforming complex business requirements into a working enterprise-ready application. By the end of this book, you'll be able to deploy Appian Quick Apps in minutes and successfully transform a complex business process into low-code process models, data, and UIs to deploy full-featured, enterprise-ready, process-driven, mobile-enabled apps.

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Current Title:

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Low-Code Application Development with Appian
Stefan Helzle
Apr, 2022 | 462 pages
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Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
Learn more on Discord
1
Section 1: No-Code with Appian Quick Apps
Section 1: No-Code with Appian Quick Apps
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Creating an Appian Quick App
Chapter 1: Creating an Appian Quick App
Login and first contact with Appian
Naming your Quick App
Defining case data
Setting permissions and generating an app
Testing your app
Summary
Further reading
3
Chapter 2: Features and Limitations of Appian Quick Apps
Chapter 2: Features and Limitations of Appian Quick Apps
Managing record items in Quick Apps
Managing tasks in Quick Apps
Managing documents in Quick Apps
Reporting in Quick Apps
Modifying a Quick App
Summary
4
Chapter 3: Building Blocks of Appian Quick Apps
Chapter 3: Building Blocks of Appian Quick Apps
The basic workings of the Appian Designer environment
Introduction to Appian Records
Checking the Appian process models
Learning about Appian interfaces
Understanding Appian expression rules
Summary
5
Chapter 4: The Use Cases for Appian Quick Apps
Chapter 4: The Use Cases for Appian Quick Apps
Managing conference attendees
Advanced task management
The simple software development process
Summary
6
Section 2: A Software Project with Appian
Section 2: A Software Project with Appian
The meaning of software development
Software development using Appian
Starting a software project using Appian
7
Chapter 5: Understanding the Business Context
Chapter 5: Understanding the Business Context
The people at Tarence Limited
Discovering the IT landscape
Motivation for the project
Implementing low-code Business Process Management (BPM)
Summary
8
Chapter 6: Understanding Business Data in Appian Projects
Chapter 6: Understanding Business Data in Appian Projects
Learning objectives
Main business data entities
Adding relations
Adding details
Adding application data
Finding the right level
Summary
9
Chapter 7: Understanding Business Processes in Appian Projects
Chapter 7: Understanding Business Processes in Appian Projects
Learning objectives
Useful methodologies
As-is process
Software-driven processes
Task-driven processes
Case management
To-be process
Summary
10
Chapter 8: Understanding UX Discovery and the UI in Appian Projects
Chapter 8: Understanding UX Discovery and the UI in Appian Projects
Understanding UX discovery
Supporting people doing their tasks
Understanding management needs
A wireframing introduction and tools
Designing screens in an Appian context
Summary
11
Section 3: Implementing Software
Section 3: Implementing Software
12
Chapter 9: Modeling Business Data with Appian Records
Chapter 9: Modeling Business Data with Appian Records
Creating the application object
Custom data types
Data stores
Records
Relationships
Best practices
Summary
13
Chapter 10: Modeling Business Processes in Appian
Chapter 10: Modeling Business Processes in Appian
A first simple process
Persisting data
Adding the process to the record
Adding related actions and record actions
Completing the process
Best practices
Summary
14
Chapter 11: Creating User Interfaces in Appian
Chapter 11: Creating User Interfaces in Appian
Technical requirements
Creating interfaces from scratch
Adding validation logic
Creating dynamic interfaces
Creating reusable interface components
Best practices
Summary
15
Chapter 12: Task Management with Appian
Chapter 12: Task Management with Appian
Technical requirements
Assigning tasks
Dynamic task assignment
Escalations and exceptions
Process reports
Completing the process
Best practices
Summary
16
Chapter 13: Reporting and Monitoring with Appian
Chapter 13: Reporting and Monitoring with Appian
Data sources and preparation
Aggregating data
Visualizing data
Adding interaction
Best practices
Summary
17
Section 4: The Code in Appian Low-Code
Section 4: The Code in Appian Low-Code
18
Chapter 14: Expressing Logic with Appian
Chapter 14: Expressing Logic with Appian
Decisions – simple logic in a visual designer
Constants – managing literals and application configuration
Expressions – constant logic expressed in text
Best practices
Summary
19
Chapter 15: Using Web Services with Appian Integrations
Chapter 15: Using Web Services with Appian Integrations
Technical requirements
HTTPS, authentication, and JSON
OpenAPI basics
Connected systems and integrations
Using integrations
Best practices
Summary
20
Chapter 16: Useful Implementation Patterns in Appian
Chapter 16: Useful Implementation Patterns in Appian
Technical requirements
Solution patterns
Process patterns
Interface patterns
Summary
Why subscribe?
21
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Chapter 5: Understanding the Business Context

In this chapter, you will be introduced to the fictional company of Tarence Limited. It is a well-established firm, selling a wide variety of products to customers all over the world. Tarence Limited will be our background scenario for creating a feature-complete Appian application.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • The people at Tarence Limited
  • Discovering the IT landscape
  • Motivation for the project
  • Why use a low-code approach?

The business challenge that our fictional company wants to solve is the high-process costs for the validation of incoming supplier invoices. There is already a system in place that automates the simple steps of matching bank transfers to invoices. This works well, but if the matching fails, the process ends up with a lot of manual work, such as email, Excel, and phone calls. The estimated effort for each manually processed bank transfer is about 15 minutes. Outliers...

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