Appian vs. SharePoint Designer (discontinued)

Appian works great for automating manual processes and integrating multiple systems through its toolset. It gives great flexibility for establishing rules for approvals, routings, escalations, and the like. Because of the low code toolset, it's very easy to deploy and make changes as needed as processes evolve and as the organization learns to utilize the system better. Minimal maintenance is required to support the applications build on the platform. Some of the automated testing integration with tools like Jenkins is limited so that may be an issue for some.

Incentivized

SharePoint does not provide, out of the box, a tool to create / update workflows from web. You have to use SharePoint Designer in order to create them. If you need to implement custom workflows for specific business processes, then SharePoint Designer is well suited. SharePoint Designer allows you to create workflows with task approval, email notifications, assign variables and update SharePoint Lists / Documents properties. In our company, we have created specific workflows for : - Purchase order - RH forms validation like annual employee review - Dematerialized existing forms and validation

Incentivized

• Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation.
• Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market.
• Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development.

Incentivized

• 2013 Workflows - Loops: You can build loops to work while a value (not) equals something, or N number of times. You can insert Parallel Blocks to do multiple things at once, or to watch for multiple things, and when 1 thing finishes, cancels the others and moves to the next step or stage.
• 2013 Workflows - Stages: Previously all we had were steps, which worked sequentially. With the Concept of Stages, we can create blocks of steps and based on the data collected during those functions, we can tell the workflow to go to a different Stage in the workflow based on a set of 1, or multiple, Conditionals in a transition area after each Stage. Giving you the power to develop multiple entire processes and skipping to the correct part of the workflow, rather than going through 20 conditionals to find out you needed to do action 31.
• 2013 Workflows - REST API: the "Call HTTP Web Service" is a very powerful tool, but hard to understand if you have never seen it done, or have a guideline. It works very similar to the requirements in PowerShell to connect and get and post data to SharePoint using the Rest API. You can also use this to manage permissions on List Items, Lists, Sites, and Site Collections. Best part is when developed correctly, it is SUPER FAST!
• Intentionally Building Infinite Loops: I have built multiple review process from Managing Certifications to Updating Published Documentation, that monitors when an Item, based on provided approved metadata, when the "Author" needs to review the document within the given amount of time. They will get e-mails with links asking if changes are needed. If not, it is routed to the Approving Executive, and the Workflow Automatically updates the Metadata to push out the review dates to the next date, based on metadata provided on how how often the document should be reviews. By using conditionals in the transition of stages, it basically starts over, and goes into a parallel block to allow the monitoring of multiple values of metadata to move to the next stage. Very Powerful when you want to automate these types of process. It truly is a "Set It and Forget It" process.

Incentivized

• Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field.
• Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work.
• Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing.

Incentivized

• In the newest version of SharePoint Designer, they have gotten rid of the Design view which makes what used to be quick and easy changes much more code-intensive. This makes it harder for non-IT users and is more risker for all SharePoint Designer users.
• SharePoint Designer workflows have a lot of functionality, but there are also some crucial limitations, such as not being able to put lookup fields in email subjects or using parenthesis to separate/group logical conditions.
• Although this goes along with the Design view, there really isn't a good user interface anymore for adding conditional formatting and styles in views/pages.

Incentivized

We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian

It is a helpful tool that we use every day.

Incentivized

Appian is a low code environment, because of this, a very good visual interface is required. Appian is providing a feature-rich dashboard [that] we can use for building the dashboards and other interfaces. Appian also provides patches and releases to enhance these features. A developer can start off development just by going through a basic course from the Appian learning community.

Incentivized

Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.

Incentivized

Support is good from Microsoft. They are quite responsive when we raise a ticket but SP Designer support will be ended by Microsoft in the near future as they have got new techs like PowerApps and Flow to achieve the same functionality SP Designer does and even more than that.

Incentivized

As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.

Incentivized

Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.

Incentivized

It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.

Incentivized

Appian has enormously transformed and keeps on updating the product every quarter to meet the latest needs of the world with new innovations & technologies being integrated within the platform. What gives more pleasure than a product that keeps on continuous[ly] improv[ing]?

Incentivized

I haven't used anything else like this. I use different products for workflows and forms, but they aren't listed in the listings for this page. Instead of using it for workflows or forms (deprecated 2 years ago), I use Nintex. For everything else, I have what I need in the Modern version of SharePoint online

Incentivized

• I believe it has negatively impacted our release dates. There may have been a misunderstanding as to the learning curve, even though it is "low code."
• The look and feel of the applications created using Appian have uniformity and it's easier to have "reuse" between applications.
• There is less developer control when it comes to features. I think this mainly has to do with the amount of plugins available. I would think there should be many more available plugins. But again, our use case is probably different than most others.

Incentivized

• For my needs, I have not found SharePoint Designer useful for my day to day maintenance of SharePoint. It is useful for viewing all the objects that make up the SharePoint site.
• It is not as intuitive in regard to setting up Workflows. I have yet to use it to set up workflows in SharePoint. Maybe if I needed more complex workflows, it would be beneficial.
• I like to use SharePoint Designer for moving around files within SharePoint sites.

Incentivized