Appian Reviews

Appian is basically for workflows and workflow approval.

In a banking scenario, suppose as a customer, I apply for a loan. That loan needs approval from a manager. In addition, I will need to provide documents like my Social Security, personal details, company details. There are levels of information that can be maintained in the back-end. If you are the manager you can check that I provided all this information and, based on the criteria, you can approve a loan of 300 or a loan of 400, all within the back-end.

An advantage of this tool is the area of workflows, mainly for back-end users. It is not for end-users.

Another advantage of this tool is its reports and records. You can maintain dashboards, layouts. If you with a Java solution, it takes six months time. If you use this tool, you can finish in one or one and a half months' time. It took us six and a half months time to develop a small application in Java, but within this tool, we developed it in one and a half months, including the records and reports.

Also, there is a version coming out every six months with performance improvements.

You can develop a back-end UI and back-end reports using this tool.

It needs a better UI. There has been a lot of development in version 18.1 but we still need more for it to compete with other BPM tools.

Stability depends on the development. If you do proper development the stability is okay. Whenever you are getting data from the database, you have to write more code rules, more views. It will take a long time. Going forward, you can have performance issues. Initially, it works fine, but going forward, you are hitting performance issues whenever you create the views to get the data from the database. That's what I found in my previous project.

I used Oracle BPM. I switched because, as a developer, the market was becoming completely saturated and I was not getting any jobs.

The setup is straightforward. No complaints, no issues.

I hear the price was hiked a little recently. Initially, it was low. But it's okay compared to Pega.

IBM has Business Process Manager, Oracle has its BPM as well.

If you are looking for back-end solutions, this tool is 100 percent a fit. So Appian BPM for the back-end and, if you want a front-end, I don't suggest using Appian BPM. The Appian back-end is only for internal users, not for end-users. For end-users, you can use Java.

Being able to model requirements in BPMN 2.0, get agreement from business and IT, and then have Appian BPMN 2.0 compliant engine execute the diagram. This has created executable requirements and speeds up the SDLC process greatly.

• Transparency of process flows, including number of instances of the process in-flight
• Identification of bottlenecks,
• Average time to completion of tasks and process, etc.

The employee onboarding process went from a mass email saying who is arriving for their first day, and just hoping all the things necessary got set up: phone, computer, badge, desk, login accounts, role specific access and accounts, etc. The Appian platform took from a blind mass email to full transparency with reporting, and greatly improved efficiency and effectiveness, as well as making continuous improvement possible.

Form creation and SAIL proprietary language still basically require programming. The claim a BA type can do everything is hogwash. They should be honest and say a developer is needed for web service integrations, etc. and complex forms; and a BA type can do the rest - requirements, architecture (collaborating with architects), design, process model, testing, deployment, and support. That is incredible powerful, but to say a developer is never needed is a lie.

Two years.

Very few.

No.

Poor. Very helpful at times and willing to go above and beyond, but very expensive, so overall poor.

Yes. IBM, Oracle, and Activiti open source. A different organization I was with selected Appian.

Complex: Data strategy and authorization to push data to the cloud was a big hurdle. How organizational data is going to be pushed to Appian, updated by Appian, and pushed back to the organization with or without approval steps needs to be planned and executed strategically.

It is expensive, but powerful. I would recommend comparing against cheaper licensing products and open source.

No.

Have 20% of a programmer as a resource, plan the round trip data integration, and get all approvals needed.

Appian is a platform that focuses on human-centric workflows around processes. It facilitates requests for policies or incidents involving groups of people. The application manages the workflow between individuals to negotiate and confirm these policies.

Appian is managed and upgraded regularly.

The most productive aspect of Appian lies in its ability to develop interfaces, particularly user interfaces. Creating user interfaces is highly productive when these interfaces are integrated with the original database. In such cases, using record types proves to be a very efficient method of handling data. The synergy between interfaces and record types enhances productivity.

The case management studio is still immature, but it looks very nice. However, the VPN should be improved. The case management system needs improvement, but it has some promising features. Appian has the commitment to continuous improvement. With each new release, they enhance the platform for all users.Currently, making changes requires too much backend development work. They're working on streamlining this process, particularly with VPN integration. As it stands, storing everything in memory doesn't effectively handle large datasets. Transitioning VPN processes to a more traditional database approach would greatly improve scalability and usability in real-world scenarios

When the sentences are too long, they become difficult to manage. The scalability is low, when they become complex. The integrations are fine. There are some minor errors and details, but it does a great job in explaining errors within Appian. Internally, there is much information to help you understand what's going on, but not always. Sometimes, it's difficult to know what's happening, but these instances are rare.

Architecturally, there is an issue with Appian that it tends to put all the applications in the same infrastructure. Big customers resort to having several installations of Appian to deploy different applications in different infrastructures. They face the problem of managing assignments. Appian should make it easy to deploy different applications in separate infrastructures. Additionally, there needs to be a way to unify them because without using VPN, users are left without a unified inbox. Applications can't use the VPN and have to resort to their own solutions to show users their work, leading to inconsistency. Since each application is different, it becomes crucial to have a centralized point where users can find their work. Even if the applications are split into different installations, there needs to be a single way for users to find all their work.

I have been using Appian for two to three years. We are the using V24 of the solution.

The solution's stability is better.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution is difficult to scale. 1,000-2,000 users are using this solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability a six out of ten.

I have used SoftEther VPN.

I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The platform was set up by third party.

The solution is expensive. 

I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

We evaluated Outsystems. Appian is much proactive to create solutions applications.

The most frustrating aspect is its DPM offering. It fails to support VPN due to its limited scalability. You can only use the VPN for isolated cases. When attempting to apply it in a real-world scenario with multiple applications, it becomes unusable due to its lack of scalability. It boosts everything into memory. 

It is very easy to develop interfaces and access data with Appian. The local code acts as a communicator. The interfaces function as record types, and the logic you program use special rules, which resemble a kind of functional language exclusive. This combination of user interfaces and record types, along with the special rules, is very productive. You typically need to write much less code compared to other platforms

Intergration is good.

I recommend the solution, One should evaluate the VPN needs very closely. Not everybody needs VPN, but those who do should take a closer look to avoid surprises. You can use VPN in Appian, but it's somewhat different from what you might expect.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution is used for automating software processes for creating internet sites for internal usage. The solution can also be used to make the process easier for external entities. Appian can be deployed on the cloud and on-premises.

The solution helps by providing an automated out-of-the-box process that helps us quickly publish applications within six weeks without requiring any customizations.

The most valuable features are the low coding and low code data.

The solution needs more features. For example, a way to connect to our viewing database, to record, and more interface and component design.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for 20 years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support for Appian was just expanded to support multiple regions.

I previously used APEX Oracle Application Express and OutSystems. From a local perspective between the two solutions, I prefer to go with OutSystems. Overall I prefer Appian because it has a VPN engine compared to OutSystems which is just a workflow engine.

The initial setup is straightforward. The average deployment takes around two days and requires around 30 percent of our developers.

We complete the implementation for our customers.

In general, our customers are satisfied with the return on investment.

The price is high.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We have multiple environments. We can move our application from one environment to another environment through a governance process and approval through the application manager.

The solution is easy to maintain and very configurable.

The use cases are for complex business-process oriented applications. This is the main use for large customers.

We're not using it ourselves. We're selling it and we are implementing services and projects for other customers. 

The low-code capabilities and, of course, the business process management features are the most valuable aspects of the solution. 

It has a very easy setup.

The technical support is excellent.

It's scalable.

The stability is good.

I cannot speak to any missing features. 

The UI of Appian is more internal. Recently, there has been an addition of an external user portal for the customer-facing stuff. It's still coming out. There will be more features for external users.

I have been using Appian for about a year and a half.

Appian is very, very stable. Thousands of organizations use it. It's got 99.99% uptime in AWS. It's very robust. I didn't encounter any problems with it.

It's scalable. It can scale horizontally and vertically. Some features like the portals can be implemented on Kubernetes, which means that they are scalable to implement.

Technical support is great. Every service request is answered within the hour. It's very, very exceptional.

Positive

I was an integrator for IBM BAW, Business Automation Workflow. And afterward, Pega, and then Appian. My experience with the other platforms was somehow not very good. With IBM, it's very complex. The product is very, very complex, and you need a lot of higher-skilled people to do a lot of stuff. Also, maintenance and management are very difficult. When you can go into Pega, the low-code stuff of Pega is a bit trickier to acquire. It is more complex to develop solutions with it. Also, the business part of Pega is less advanced and is more limited. You can't do everything you want there.

The initial implementation is very straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex or difficult. It's a five out of five in terms of the ease of setup.

The implementation strategy is the Appian standard implementation strategy, as it is a SaaS.

The time it takes to set up varies. For small features, it can take up to two weeks, and larger ones can take months. Usually, it's a fifth or tenth of that time if a company is doing a standard setup. 

The amount of maintenance depends on what your strategy is for deployment. If you're going into transformation and you're going to migrate a lot of business processes in the organization, you need to do it in parallel so, you'll have to employ enough personnel to do it. For a simple solution, two, three, or four people will suffice.

In one case it has been known to reduce process time by about 85%.

It's a SaaS solution. The solution is moderately priced. I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of affordability.

Appian being a complete automation platform, the initial amount covers everything. You then have to pay for specific capabilities separately.

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'm a business partner with Appian. I'm an integrator. 

If a potential new user is going to evaluate it, they should look at the whole picture, not at the specific features. All in all, Appian gives the best coverage of all the features needed for an automation platform. It comes bundled with RPA and VPN and low-code and process-mining discovery and document intelligence and portal for external users and the data capabilities, data visualization capabilities, which no other tool gives, gives them in one package. 

They should look for and interview users of Appian to understand the product as well. There are a lot of different ideas in the market. The reason I chose to go with the Appian is the reason that it best suits businesses that wants to jump to the next era to perform the digital transformation in the smoothest way, in the most complete way. This is the benefit of Appian.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

Normally, we are building platforms. At the moment, we are running 19 big projects, and we had never used Appian before. One of our customers is a big consulting company, and one of their customers wanted a project with Appian.

They don't have Appian developers, but we have a very good team. They reached out to us and they had some projects in 2022 with Appian, and they asked for our support. I gave my BAs and PMs an introductory level Appian course, and now some of the developers are doing the associate and lead developer part for Appian.

The application life cycle is very clear. I started learning it and giving some workshops to my team. Creating the users and the building is very structured. Documentation is nice and it's easy to learn.

There's a nice fundamentals course that I can ask my project managers to easily learn, while the other local, no-code platforms don't have that option.

The certification is pretty expensive, and it doesn't allow for a tailored UI. I'm a little bit disappointed with the exam. It's different from the preparation, training, and sample exam.

One of my lead developers failed to pass this morning. I'm a bit sad because it's $200. If I ask 10 of my developers to get a certificate, it's $2,000. It's a scaleup company, so we have more than 60 people at the moment, but I can't ask most of my developers to get the certificate.

From a developer point of view, I can't try this in the free version because you can't buy one or two subscriptions. You need to get the minimum package for premium, which is about one hundred seats.

From the first day, I wanted to see the capability of reaching other functions, Google Cloud services, and cognitive services. There is already an OCR, intelligent document that comes in the My Cloud and which Appian gave me as a sample. I can't build it because it uses the Google cognitive services as a backend, and this is the thing that we couldn't try. 

You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first.

Something I would like to see improved is an SQL database connection.

We have been using Appian for over a month. We are still on the trial license instead of the full license.

I'm happy about the stability. It looks promising for me.

I can't predict how many developers it requires. It really depends on the type and size of the app and the capability of the developers.

We run a one-hour workshop from scratch. My developer can create the users' data, custom data types, a small UI, and a nice flow and read right from the databases easily. In one hour, he can complete as many tasks that normally take many days.

The scalability is a bit limited for the SQL databases because for some of my cognitive services, I'm using no SQL databases in the cloud. Appian doesn't support it. Appian only supports relational databases. There is no database for the unstructured data.

We are building platforms, but normally we are fully in Azure and the whole platform is in Azure, but because some of our customers and potential customers want to use Appian, I'm preparing my team for such opportunities.

You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first. Certification is expensive.

Appian is like a butter knife, not a Swiss Army knife. It will serve the business user's solution. It'll create a very good thing and the application is clear.

I really enjoy it because the PowerApps from Microsoft mature and are internally connected to other platforms inside Microsoft.

However, it doesn't explain the learning part very well non-technical people. There is a separation, but in the Appian fundamentals, this course is just for the BAs and the PMs. If they want to lead a project with Appian, this is the minimum standard that they need to know. At that point, it's easy for me to train project managers and business analysts. I think that's the advantage of Appian.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

My humble advice to someone who is looking to implement this solution is that they need to replicate. It's a so-called no-code platform, but it's not no-code because it has its own coding site. That's why they need to build one of their own solutions with Appian first to understand the how-to-dos first and become more confident. Luckily, the learning curve is not that steep.

Appian can be used to helps organizations build applications and workflows.

The solution's most valuable features are the regular periodic and quarterly updates, they are very useful updates. They keep improving the solution more often, and that helps the platform or code always be up to date with the latest features.

The solution could improve by being more responsive when dealing with large quantities of data. Additionally, they can make the decision or rules engine better. It cannot handle too many rules or too many decisions at once.

I have been using Appian for approximately six years.

The solution is stable.

The technical support is amazing. They have high availability when attending to tickets. The extent to which they go to support you is amazing. They go down deep into the issue you are facing and get you to the right expertise. You can access support through forums and the telephone which they respond quickly with details on a solution.

The standalone and distributed environment installations are straightforward. There are clear instructions, documentation, and support available. However, the installation into a distributed environment can be more challenging.

I have had assistance from Appian support for the implementations.

The license is a bit expensive and the pricing model is sometimes confusing for new users or business users. It is difficult for them to know what volume of usage they will have to be able to purchase the best-suited license at the beginning.

I rate Appian an eight out of ten.

Appian is a very low code platform. It's very easy to learn and use. It provides a lot of built-in functionality to address common business use cases, like user and task management, record and data management, and robust reporting on both business and process data.

Appian has greatly improved how quickly we are able to build and deploy technology solutions for our business partners. We're delivering a lot more than we used to and at a lower cost. It has proved especially useful for building regulatory applications, which are usually very time-sensitive and have to be delivered very quickly with hard deadlines.

The main challenge with Appian has been our inability to customize the user interface. It has it's own built-in UI components and doesn't provide much flexibility to customize or extend those components. This is becoming less of a problem in newer releases of the product as they continue to enhance their UI capabilities and introduce new slick features, such as sites, billboards and embedded interfaces.

More than four years experience spanning development, deployment, and administration for versions 7.4 through 17.3.

No, we have not encountered any significant stability issues with Appian. The product is very stable across all its different versions.

We have been able to easily scale Appian to meet our needs and haven't hit an upper threshold yet. We've encountered performances issues now and then, but we have always managed to resolve them through code, configuration changes, or additional hardware.

Appian technical support is generally good, especially for high severity issues. They are usually able to quickly bring in experts who can be very helpful in quickly narrowing down issues and driving resolution.

We wanted to consolidate multiple existing legacy desktop applications into one unified web-based platform and Appian was one of the best options available.

Pretty straightforward, since we had people with the necessary foundational system administration background, and Appian was very engaged early on to help us get up and running.

I don't have enough exposure to pricing and licensing.

Oracle BPM, Pega, and D+H.

Excellent BPM tool: The best among all the ones I've tried.

To get the most out of the product, put the right team in place first. Follow the Appian recommended setup/development/initial rollout best practices and do things right the first time.