Go from no-code to low-code and translate your business requirements into full-fledged enterprise-ready applications Key Features Digitize and automate your business processes quickly using Appian's powerful low-code functionalities Understand enterprise data models and turn them into actionable Appian Records Use declarative code-style UI building to design intuitive UIs and reusable components in Appian Book Description 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. What you will learn Use Appian Quick Apps to solve the most urgent business challenges Leverage Appian's low-code functionalities to enable faster digital innovation in your organization Model business data, Appian records, and processes Perform UX discovery and UI building in Appian Connect to other systems with Appian Integrations and Web APIs Work with Appian expressions, data querying, and constants Who this book is for This book empowers software developers and tech-savvy business users with a new tool that'll help them increase efficiency by a huge margin and speed up the delivery of new features to meet the demands of business departments. Business users with a maker's attitude finally have the chance to develop their own business applications, as low-code drastically reduces the complexity of traditional software development. Prior experience with automation solutions and low-code programming is needed to help you get the most out of this book.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• Dedication
• Contributors
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Section 1: No-Code with Appian Quick Apps
• 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
• 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
• Chapter 3: The Building Blocks of Appian Quick Apps
  • The basic workings of the Appian Designer environment
  • Introduction to Appian Records
    • Source & Default Filters
    • Tempo
    • List
    • User filters
    • Views
    • Related Actions
    • Performance
  • Checking the Appian process models
  • Learning about Appian interfaces
  • Understanding Appian expression rules
    • Object dependencies in Appian
  • Summary
• Chapter 4: The Use Cases for Appian Quick Apps
  • Managing conference attendees
  • Advanced task management
  • The simple software development process
    • Requirements management
    • Product backlog
  • Summary
• Section 2: A Software Project with Appian
  • The meaning of software development
  • Software development using Appian
  • Starting a software project using Appian
• Chapter 5: Understanding the Business Context
  • The people at Tarence Limited
    • Christine – Business Owner
    • Paul – Product Owner
    • Melanie – Key Stakeholder
    • Igor – IT Architect
    • Beth – Key User
    • You
  • Discovering the IT landscape
    • Business architecture
    • Information architecture
    • Technology architecture
  • Motivation for the project
    • Cost reduction
    • Scaling up
    • Team upskill
  • Implementing low-code Business Process Management (BPM)
    • The potential of Appian
    • The expectations of companies
    • Goals versus potential versus change
  • Summary
• Chapter 6: Understanding Business Data in Appian Projects
  • Learning objectives
  • Main business data entities
  • Adding relations
    • One-to-one
    • One-to-many
    • Many-to-many
  • Adding details
    • UID
    • External IDs
    • Name
    • Description
    • Created
    • Modified
    • Status
  • Adding application data
    • Process data
    • Audit trail
    • Monitoring
    • Reporting
  • Finding the right level
  • Summary
• Chapter 7: Understanding Business Processes in Appian Projects
  • Learning objectives
  • Useful methodologies
    • Business-Process-Modeling-Notation
    • Five-Whys
    • Ishikawa diagram
    • SIPOC
  • As-is process
  • Software-driven processes
  • Task-driven processes
  • Case management
    • Basic principles
    • Theses
  • To-be process
  • Summary
• Chapter 8: Understanding UX Discovery and the UI in Appian Projects
  • Understanding UX discovery
    • User experience
    • User interface
  • Supporting people doing their tasks
    • Scope
    • Information
    • Input
    • Orientation
  • Understanding management needs
  • A wireframing introduction and tools
    • Understanding wireframes
    • The benefits of wireframes
  • Designing screens in an Appian context
    • Record
    • Task
    • Report
  • Summary
• Section 3: Implementing Software
• Chapter 9: Modeling Business Data with Appian Records
  • Creating the application object
  • Custom data types
    • Creating the CDT
    • Creating more fields
    • Creating more CDTs
  • Data stores
    • Creating the data store
    • Managing the database
  • Records
    • Creating records
  • Relationships
    • Adding many-to-many relations
  • Best practices
  • Summary
• Chapter 10: Modeling Business Processes in Appian
  • A first simple process
    • Creating the model
    • Adding a process variable
    • Adding the start form
    • Testing the model
  • Persisting data
  • Adding the process to the record
    • Assigning the process
    • Cancel behavior
  • Adding related actions and record actions
    • Updating a record
    • Deleting a record
  • Completing the process
    • Modifying the Create Invoice interface
    • Setting up the case
    • Assigning the first task
  • Best practices
    • Process modeling habits
    • Process data flow
  • Summary
• Chapter 11: Creating User Interfaces in Appian
  • Technical requirements
  • Creating interfaces from scratch
    • Record views
    • Process start forms
    • User Input Task
    • Sites
  • Adding validation logic
    • Date validation
    • Range check
  • Creating dynamic interfaces
  • Creating reusable interface components
    • This happens next
    • Formatted amount field
  • Best practices
    • User experience
    • Expression mode versus design mode
    • Performance view
    • Variable flow
    • Local variables
    • Rule inputs
    • Reusable components
    • Debugging
  • Summary
• Chapter 12: Task Management with Appian
  • Technical requirements
  • Assigning tasks
    • Reassignment behavior
    • Re-assignment privileges
    • Process model security and reassignment
  • Dynamic task assignment
    • Assigning tasks using process variables
    • Assigning tasks using decision tables
  • Escalations and exceptions
    • Escalations
    • Exceptions
  • Process reports
    • Creating a process report
    • Display a process report
  • Completing the process
    • An interface for Clarify Invalid Invoice
    • Modify initial verification
    • The task and interface for Assign Invoice
    • Logic to finalize the invoice and the case
  • Best practices
    • Using groups
    • Task due date
    • Task exceptions
  • Summary
• Chapter 13: Reporting and Monitoring with Appian
  • Data sources and preparation
    • Monitoring process activity
    • Reporting
    • Periodic data measurement
    • Storing measurements
    • Preparing the case record
    • Measuring data
    • Completing the measuring process model
  • Aggregating data
    • Cases over time
    • Current case status
  • Visualizing data
    • Status over timeline chart
    • Case status donut chart
    • Case grid
    • Billboard cards
  • Adding interaction
  • Best practices
    • Stakeholder groups
    • Historic reports
    • Make reports interactive
    • Composing reports
  • Summary
• Section 4: The Code in Appian Low-Code
• Chapter 14: Expressing Logic with Appian
  • Decisions – simple logic in a visual designer
    • Input configuration
    • Output configuration
    • Decisions summary
  • Constants – managing literals and application configuration
    • String literals
    • Groups
    • Data store entities
    • Documents
    • Process models
    • Constants summary
  • Expressions – constant logic expressed in text
    • Programming paradigms
    • Inputs, locals, and outputs
    • Data types
    • Dictionaries and maps
    • Working with lists
  • Best practices
  • Summary
• Chapter 15: Using Web Services with Appian Integrations
  • Technical requirements
  • HTTPS, authentication, and JSON
    • HTTPS
    • HTTP request
    • HTTP response
    • Security
    • JSON
  • OpenAPI basics
    • servers
    • paths
    • components
    • OpenAPI summary
  • Connected systems and integrations
    • Creating a web service
    • Integrating the web service
  • Using integrations
  • Best practices
    • Validate incoming data
    • Wrapping integrations
    • Security
  • Summary
• Chapter 16: Useful Implementation Patterns in Appian
  • Technical requirements
  • Solution patterns
    • Process versus case management
    • Recording audit trails
    • Record security
    • CDT first versus database first
    • Waiting for external triggers
  • Process patterns
    • Creating process chains
    • Using subprocesses
    • Multiple Node Instances
    • Building loops in processes
  • Interface patterns
    • Building wizards
    • Tabbed interfaces
    • Designing for reusability
    • Expression rule patterns
    • Managing collections of constants
    • Universal null check
    • Nested indexing
    • Validating IBANs
    • Flexible looping predicate
    • Additional Appian modules
    • IDP
    • RPA
    • Process mining
    • Appian Portals
  • Summary
• Index
• About Packt
• Other Books You May Enjoy