If in the press release, the publisher reveals that it is preparing version 21.2 of its low-code development platform, then the latest additions seem to be inaccurate. In fact, the new version will be shown to developers in a webinar on May 25, and then officially released in June. Some features seem to come directly from Grinding 21.1.
And, in fact, the changes provided in 21.1 meet the goals stated in the 20.4 note. “We release updates every quarter. Generally, we don’t provide Big Bang functionality, but provide incremental enhancements that complement our tools,” said Malcom Ross, by-product strategy and chief technology officer of MagIT Appian.
So what are the real new features of version 21.2?
Appian Records allows data from different systems to interact
One of the main new additions is Appian Records, a tool for centralizing and synchronizing data from different sources that can be utilized by applications.
“If you take a closer look at the history of this feature, we introduced it to the Appian platform from version 20.3 in August 2020. In December last year (20.4), we made sure that when you update your source, we also make sure that Appian Records The data in is updated,” Malcom Ross recalled.
Since the launch of version 21.1 in March, Appian Records has synced up to 250,000 rows from different sources, up from 100,000 before. The editor also enhances the data visualization capabilities of the tool.
“In version 21.2, we added the ability to perform connections and establish relationships between data,” Malcom Ross said. “This allows you to connect to multiple relational databases, web services, Salesforce, and other environments, and then combine the data into a single composite view within the Appian platform.”
This multi-dimensional table should help link customer data from CRM (such as Salesforce) and ticketing services (such as ServiceNow) to illustrate the CTO, thereby simplifying the development of dashboards, case management, and even RPA bot deployment.
Similarly, Appian previewed its 21.1 adjustments to Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), a tool for extracting data from documents driven by computer vision and machine learning models. The preview function allows key-value pairs to be extracted into PDF.
“If our customers prefer solutions from other RPA or AI vendors […] We keep our platform open. ”
Matt CalkinsPDG d’Appian
In June next year, IDP will integrate native OCR, “no need to use third-party software.” However, Appian’s CEO Matt Calkins retained the position he strongly defended last year in favor of “best in class.” For example, IDP provides access to the AutoML feature of Google Cloud.
“We have our own RPA capabilities and artificial intelligence. If our customers prefer solutions from other RPA or AI vendors, that’s great. We keep our platform open,” Matt Calkins said at the meeting.
“We first made sure to connect to RPA robots from vendors such as UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere. The same is true for machine learning models. We have integrated with Google AI, Azure AI, and other market participants. We know that our customers use different We don’t want to impose a single development environment for these functions,” Malcom Ross confirmed to MagIT.
Appian equips its RPA with a “low code experience”
However, the publisher intends to strengthen its own functions and make its platform a management space for these “best-in-class” components. Therefore, in version 21.1, Appian proposed the possibility of managing more robots in its low-code RPA tool.
In addition to performance and cost metrics and other commands reserved for the Blue Prism robot, the publisher also launched an OCR tool in March 2021 designed to detect clickable icons in Citrix and Windows environments.
Since the launch of version 7.7 of its own robot creation software Appian RPA on April 16, Appian has added a new library that can be accessed from the AppMarket. In version 21.2, the editor simplifies the interface of developing robots through drag and drop. The CTO stated that Appian RPA has benefited a lot from the acquisition of Jidoka in January 2020, but the tool is mainly based on Java code and does not benefit from a “low code experience”.
“If these are basic functions related to workflow, orchestration, and automation, we will work hard to integrate them into Appian products to speed up the overall implementation,” CTO said. “I think that when you see Microsoft building a bundle between Power Automate and Power Apps or UiPath trying to expand its capabilities to cover processes, it is a natural trend in the market to provide an integrated automation platform. Managed by users,” he commented .
For low-code development, the publisher intends to make real-time recommendations on the code to detect missing expressions and best practices to be followed during process modeling.
In what the publisher calls “low-code DevSecOps”, we can identify a long list of adjustments aimed at facilitating application deployment and monitoring. Appian has significantly improved its packaging inspection tool to detect possible conflicts or errors before going into production.
For its part, the company claims to have strengthened the security of its platform. It has better VPN management when deployed on AWS, fixes its use of the TLS 1.2 protocol, and also adopts new DDoS protection services.
Appian experiment of microservice architecture
“Our customers can pay a fixed amount, know exactly how much the product costs each year, and use it as a universal tool.”
Malcolm RoseAppian by-product strategy and chief technology officer
In addition, the publisher also launched Appian Unlimited, a licensing model whose pricing depends on the number of developers. “Instead of choosing transaction-based pricing, dynamic pricing, or pricing per object—such as the number of robots—our customers can pay a fixed amount and know exactly how much the product costs each year. Another, and use it as a response A universal tool for automating all challenges,” Malcom Ross boasted. “In 12 months, you can build all the applications you need and pay the same price in the second year.”
Starting from version 21.2, the Appian Unlimited license will include the “Unlimited Robots” option that previously charged €5,000 per month. The manager promises that existing customers will benefit from free RPA resources and can choose between their current licenses or choose the unlimited mode at the next contract renewal.
In addition, the publisher is launching a free lifetime community edition without DevOps features. In addition to RPA resources, it is limited to 15 users, 250 BPM and 50 RPA per day.
Finally, at the Appian World conference dedicated to discussing the future of low-code, Malcom Ross assured that applications created using the platform will be based on microservices. The publisher intends to prove this possibility through the Appian Portal, and is currently offering a beta version. “Our platform is based on containers managed by Kubernetes, but customers cannot control specific application elements. Portal specifically allows the integration of UX, business logic and integration into a microservice container, which can be deployed in the cloud and benefit from this This kind of structural flexibility,” the chief technology officer said enthusiastically.
However, Appian Portal will not be released from the beta version in the next version. “We will definitely continue to experiment throughout the development life cycle of the 21.x version, because this not only has a technical impact on the way applications are handled and the complexity of managing microservices, but also a SaaS-compatible subscription model must be adopted. This structure,” Malcolm Ross warned. “We may start this work when version 22.x is released,” he concluded.
