Appian has released the latest version of the Appian Low-Code Platform, with enhancements that bring together process mining, workflow, and automation.
The release also features Appian Portals, a method of expanding the reach of Appian applications to external users. The company says Appian Portals is the new front door to Appian applications. With Appian Portals, designers use low-code to build and manage secure external websites that capture and expose data from Appian applications.
Appian Portals does not require external users to log in, and it scales to support usage levels. Appian says this makes it easy to use your Appian applications for a broad range of public information, self-service, account onboarding, and similar use cases, such as quote requests, account registration, license or permit applications, and more.
Key benefits include:
- Increase business agility: The ability to quickly respond to changing business conditions is especially important at the digital contact point where organisations transact with customers, partners, and the public.
- Improve the customer experience: Integrate enhanced customer experiences and data into your workflows and systems to deliver faster and more responsive service.
- Meet increased demand: Organisations can quickly provide services (such as vaccine registrations or tax refund status) through a web portal that is easy to publish, manage, and scale.
- Ensure security and compliance: Appian Portals inherits the security capabilities of the Appian platform and the traceability of processes and data to simplify regulatory compliance.
"Appian Portals is a game-changer for us," says Matthew Richards, CIO of Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA!).
"We have more than half a million members across the continent, and we use Appian to manage their Local Union's relationship with the International Union. With Appian Portals, we're enhancing the member experience by delivering more immediacy, allowing them greater self-service, and deepening our engagement with them."
Appian Process Mining
The latest version of Appian includes Appian Process Mining, a tool to analyse, improve, and monitor business processes. Appian says this can reduce the process mining data burden by using low-code actions to extract, transform, and load business-process data. Enabling users to perform complex data transformations even if they don't have in-depth technical knowledge.
Appian also now features the Mine Process History plug-in that lets users automatically transform and import process data from Appian into the Process Mining module for further analysis. This time-saving measure helps customers start extracting insights right away.
"Traditional process mining is impeded by the effort required to prepare process data and the effort required to turn mining insights into improved workflows," says Malcolm Ross, deputy CTO at Appian.
"With Appian, you spend less time consolidating data for mining, and the insights you gain are immediately actionable in new workflows and automation. That's the value of a unified platform."
Enhanced security
Security is integral to the development process. Ross says it's critical that the right people, and only the right people, have access to specific data when it comes to enterprise data.
"In the past, controlling who can access which rows of data required technical leads and data experts," he says. "The new record-level security in Appian eliminates the need for experts to configure and maintain security."
App owners can specify who can see which records with record-level security by configuring security rules in the record type. Security rules translate complex security requirements into plain language, making them easy to configure and maintain. For example, if a user can view a customer, they should also be able to view that customer's support cases.
