Chapter 12: Task Management with Appian

We use Appian to bring business process management to a file. Looking at your application, you will immediately see that the Appian process models represent the business process. But what about the management?

You will now learn how to assign tasks to groups and individuals, and how to use Appian to automate the management of your business process using escalations and exceptions.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Assigning tasks: Defining the pool of users that should complete a task
• Dynamic task assignment: Assigning tasks based on business logic
• Escalations and exceptions: Managing tasks and business exceptions
• Process reports: Querying real-time process and task data
• Completing the process: Adding the final task to the invoice validation process
• Best practices: Considerations on task assignment

Technical requirements

• You will find the code mentioned in this chapter here: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Low-Code-Application-Development-with-Appian.

Assigning tasks

In Chapter 7, Understanding Business Processes in Appian Projects in the Task-driven processes section, I claimed, "No task, no work!"

This means that we have to assign concrete tasks to people so that they have something to do. But this does not mean reducing people to brainless robots. In the end, the intellectual challenge lies more in completing a specific task than in knowing what to do next.

Let's have a look at the details of how task assignment in Appian works.

In the IVP Create New Invoice process model, you already added the Initial Verification User Input Task activity and assigned it to the IVP Users group:

1. Open the properties dialog of that node in the model:

Figure 12.1 – The assignment of the Initial Verification task

The configured behavior allows any member of the IVP Users group to accept and then complete the task. By accepting a task, the user takes over responsibility for...

Dynamic task assignment

When closely looking at the Assign to the following field in the node properties dialog, you will see that you can define the field value using expressions by clicking the small editor icon:

Figure 12.5 – The assignment field and expressions

Attention

Any value or expression you enter in the editor will always be appended to the list of existing values in that field. This can be confusing and lead to unexpected behavior. Clear the field before opening the editor and make sure that the content of the field matches your expectations.

We will now discuss two examples and then use one of them to extend our invoice validation process.

Assigning tasks using process variables

Appian identifies a user by its login name and a group by its numeric ID. You already do that in the owner field in the IVP Case CDT. To store a group, you would use a field of the integer type.

To assign a task to the owner of a case, you enter...

Escalations and exceptions

Let's quickly revisit our business process diagram:

Figure 12.11 – The invoice validation process diagram

The last task interface you created is IVP_F_InitialVerification. You added a date picker field to allow the user to define a due date for the next task in the process. Let's complete that task and create the next one, Receive Data, which already has a clock symbol next to it, indicating that it should have a due date:

1. Open the IVP Create Case process model and open the properties dialog of the Initial Verification task. In the General tab, change the value for Task Display Name to the following:

   "Verify Invoice #" & pv!invoice.number

This allows your users to identify a specific task by the invoice number. We will use that in the next section when discussing task reports.

2. Then, go to the Forms tab, which looks like this:

Figure 12.12 –...

Process reports

In Appian, processes are running inside an in-memory high-performance transaction management system. Metadata of running processes and tasks is made available by the Process Analytics component in real time. Think of it as a database that you can use to query data about processes and tasks.

I will now show you how to create a process report that shows the tasks assigned to a user. Then, we will create an interface to make this data visible.

Creating a process report

Appian includes a selection of ready-made process report templates. Never change these templates, but create a copy. Then, modify this copy to fit your requirements.

To get started, use the Tasks for User template to create the new IVP Tasks for User process report. Store the new report in the IVP Artifacts folder:

Figure 12.21 – Create a process report

Appian will not directly open the Process Report Designer, so click the name to open it. You will now see...

Completing the process

At this point in the book, you have all the necessary basics to complete a business process. You know about records, processes, interfaces, and the other small pieces to turn that into an application. Let's now identify and create the missing parts.

Currently, your Appian process model should look like this:

Figure 12.30 – The Appian process model

Your business process model should look like this:

Figure 12.31 – The invoice validation process diagram

The missing parts are as follows:

• An interface for Clarify Invalid Invoice
• Modification of the Initial Verification
• A task and interface for Assign Invoice
• Logic to finalize the invoice and the case

Let's understand each in detail.

An interface for Clarify Invalid Invoice

Let's think briefly about the tools that we need to provide to a user to resolve the discrepancy between the orders and...

Best practices

We discussed many aspects of assigning tasks in Appian in detail. I would like to recap the most important ones.

Using groups

When talking about task assignments in Appian, the most essential best practice is to use groups whenever possible. When you need to split up groups to reflect certain organizational structures, just do that.

Let's discuss an example in more detail. We want to assign tasks based on specific skills to maximize efficiency. First, create groups for each skill and add people based on their individual skills. Then, create groups for each task and add the skill groups that best match the specific requirements.

The assignment of people to skill groups as well as the assignment of skill groups to tasks can be made available to managers, allowing them a maximum of flexibility.

Task due date

Next, each task has a due date! Why would you assign a task if you aren't concerned about when it is completed? Add escalations to make...

Summary

With this chapter, you have completed the first iteration of your invoice validation business process in Appian! And you've learned a lot about assigning tasks, using groups and users, and even dynamic assignment based on business logic.

You are now familiar with variables in the process, tasks, and interfaces, and how data flows in an Appian process model. You can also load data from the database, modify it, and save it back.

In the following chapters, we will enhance this process together, adding better status tracking, activity logging, and so on. Specifically, in the next chapter, we will take care of the topics of monitoring and reporting.