With the new year well underway, you might be feeling like all the new initiatives, lists of priorities, and looming project deadlines are endless—and you’re probably wondering how you’ll get it all done.
Appian is here to help. Our 23.1 release is full of useful updates that make development faster, like the ability to create a portal without building any custom integrations (which doubles the speed of portal development); auto-generated user record type relationships when you add a user type field to your data source; automatic sign-in for RPA bots that saves you time; object search for Appian Designer to quickly find what you’re looking for; and missing object reminders for packages so you can add missing objects with just one click.
Explore the latest Appian features.
View documentation, release notes, discussion board posts, and tutorials on Community.
Appian 23.1 release highlights for developers.
1. Appian Portals updates help you build portals twice as fast.
With Appian Portals, you can build websites that connect your external end users to your apps without authentication. The experiences you create through portals—like claim reporting, grant applications, and customer onboarding—are often some of the most frequent ways your audience will engage with your brand. And these interactions are a critical part of creating great user experiences.
In 23.1, we’ve made it easier than ever to work with data in portals. Now, you can create an entire portal without building any custom integrations, simplifying the portal design experience.
You can also further empower your audiences with the ability to start processes and query records directly from a portal. And, you can create multi-page portals with custom-branded headers, helping you create better, more seamless user experiences.
Read more about using Appian Portals to design total experiences.
2. New data fabric capabilities make it even easier to work with records and secure your enterprise data without writing code.
With Appian’s data fabric, you can dramatically reduce the time it takes to deliver new applications and simplify system integrations. This unified data model is key to unleashing digital innovation around data.
In 23.1, we’ve added some features that make it even easier to work with records. Appian now auto-generates user record type relationships, so when you add a user type field to your data source, Appian will automatically generate a relationship to the user record type. Additionally, when you use codeless modeling to edit or delete an existing record field, Appian will automatically reflect those changes in your source. You can also now quickly and easily organize record fields, user filters, record actions, and more—simply drag and drop rows to the exact place you want them.
23.1 makes it even easier to secure your enterprise data and speed up data design. You can now secure all your data from a central location. Also, you can use no-code security rules inside record views to select when views appear to which users by answering two simple questions.
Read more about all the data fabric updates in the 23.1 release notes.
3. Automatic sign-in for RPA bots on virtual machines saves you more time.
23.1 brings automation to your automation, with improvements that make it easier to set up and manage your robotic process automation (RPA) bots and make more informed decisions as you design and test your automated processes.
If your organization uses unattended robotic tasks, you’ll need to maintain a set of robots that stay online and available for whenever a robotic task needs to start. With our new automatic sign-in feature, you can address this more easily than before by allowing Appian to sign in to your virtual machines on demand and automatically to execute robotic tasks.
When you enable this option, Appian uses designated credentials to sign in to your host machine and launch the agent as the specified user. Once the agent is online, the robotic task begins. And once it’s done with that task and determines that there’s no other work to do, your Appian bot signs out.
Learn more about what you can do with Appian RPA.
4. Curate your custom styles with Appian’s new design library.
With Appian’s new design library feature, you can curate a collection of tailor-made layouts and components that allow you to easily govern interface design, promote best practices, and create a consistent user experience in every application.
A new tab in the interface palette lets you drag and drop from the design library so that you can seamlessly incorporate your design standards into any interface, saving you major time and streamlining your design workflow.
Read more about the design library in the 23.1 release notes.
Want more from Appian?
Join us at Appian World 2023! Connect with fellow process automation and digital transformation pros, get face time with Appian product experts, and boost your skills with product, business, and training sessions. The agenda for the event is jam-packed with valuable experiences: Attend Developer Day to gather, share knowledge, and learn about the latest developments in the Appian Platform. Or apply to participate in the 2023 Live Build Challenge, a head-to-head competition where six developers will build an app live on stage to try and win the $10,000 prize.
Appian Community is the home of Appian Developers. Dig into the platform, learn best practices, and get coached toward certifications that will speed up your projects. Rather than giving you pre-fab models, we empower you with the skills and automations you need to get started quickly while tailoring a project to your specific application needs.
Read the documentation and release notes to find out more about Appian 23.1.
