Best practices for Application Import/Export

 

 Best Practices for Appian developers

Appian best practices are like a check list, use these checklists at different stages of your development cycle as described to ensure application success and reduce technical risk. Each section provides guidance for when and how often you should use these.

17.Best practices for Application Import/Export :-

1.Change Management :-

While Appian versions most individual components, it is still important to have a change management process in place.

Store application-related scripts, code, documents, etc. in folders within the main application’s folder. Housing this code in Appian folders provides versioning and should be included in the application package. For example, a Vendor Management application folder structure could consist of the following hierarchy:

Vendor Management

•VM Application

•VM CSS

•VM Icons

•VM Images

•VM Reference Docs

•VM Reports

•VM SQL

•VM Templates

•VM XSDs

VM Requests

 •VM-0001

•VM-002

•…

Note also that the security needs of these folders are different: very few people should be allowed to change the system documents in VM Application, but the entire user community requires read/write access to the project folders in VM Requests.

Document which plugins, including the version, are used by the application. This list should be referenced when standing up a new environment, upgrading an existing environment, or attempting to use a newer version of a plugin.

Applications should not be imported as named users. Process models imported or published as named users will stop functioning if the named user is deactivated. General Application Design.

When creating rules it is important to segregate rules that are consistent across environments and rules that will change based on which environment they are in, and then update the environmentally dependent rules on import to a new environment. For example: drop down constants will always be the same, but email fields in the development environment will be assigned to the developers and when the application is imported to the test or production environment those assignments will have to be changed to test or actual users. To make such rules easy to find, they should all be in an environment dependent folder, and when the application is imported all the rules in that folder will be easy to find and update so they are not overwritten with the development-environment versions.

2.The Dependency Checker :-

The dependency checker does not check for everything, so it is important to add certain items to the application as they are created. The following types of objects should always be added manually as they are created:

   •Rules, constants, and their folders that are used only on dashboard channels

   •Constants or rules utilized in the assignment expression for swim lanes.