Tracking Milestones: How to Configure Record Events in Appian



Keeping track of exactly who does what—and when—is absolutely crucial if you want to understand your business and improve how it operates. For our fictional company, Acme Auto, developers are utilizing record events in their fleet management application to accurately track milestones and collaborate on vehicle maintenance activities.

Let's walk through how you can easily configure these events in your own Appian applications!

Getting Started with Record Events

First, it is important to know where to apply events. You will typically want to configure events on the record types that represent your major business processes. For Acme Auto, this is the "AA Maintenance" record type. Keep in mind that to be eligible for record events, your record type must use a database as its source and have data sync enabled.

Step-by-Step Configuration

  1. Generate the Events: Navigate to the Events page on your record type and click GENERATE EVENT RECORD TYPES. (Note: If you already have existing record types built to store these events, you can choose to use those instead).
  2. Define Your Milestones: Next, a dialog will ask you to identify the different types of events that can occur during your process. When brainstorming these event types, focus on identifying meaningful milestones that will provide real insight into your workflow. Appian offers common event types you can easily include, such as Created, Updated, and Commented On.
  3. Add Custom Events: For a maintenance process, you might add custom events like Requested, Started, Completed, Paused, Canceled, and Assignment Changed. Always remember to write these custom events in a list and format them in the past tense.
  4. Review the Generated Objects: To store all of this new data, Appian will generate two new record types behind the scenes: one to capture the Event History and another to store your event types as a lookup. You can also choose to configure a Reply Thread record type, which seamlessly enables comment threading within the Event History List component on your interfaces.

The Golden Rule: Timing is Everything

Here is the most important tip for developers: you should set up your record events first!

If you configure your events before you generate your record actions and views, Appian handles the heavy lifting for you. Your generated summary view will automatically include an event history component where business users can collaborate directly in the comments. Furthermore, any generated create or update actions will automatically be configured to write both the records and the events simultaneously.

If you wait to configure events later, you will be stuck doing all of this additional configuration manually! By setting up record events early, you give your business users a transparent, chronological view of exactly what is happening in their most important processes while saving yourself valuable development time.

Location: India

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