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20.3 Release Highlights: Synced Records

Appian Contributor
September 21, 2020

Editor's note: In last week's post, we looked into record-powered grids. In this post we'll look into another great feature introduced, Synced Records. Stay tuned for improvements to Intelligent Document Processing, DevOps capabilities, and UI improvements.

Information lives in silos across the enterprise, causing inefficiencies and delays for your workforce. Records can provide that single-pane-of-glass view that users look for. However, some external data sources are slow, or even worse, rate limited by the vendor hosting that data. Appian's new feature, Synced Records, offers a solution to this problem.

Starting in 20.3, developers can flag a record to periodically cache in Appian instead of data from the original source. You do not want to configure this for every record, but when necessary, synced records provide much faster response times for users.

So, now you have more great low-code options in Appian to fit your app to the unique conditions in your enterprise. But how does it work? Once a day, Appian caches data from the source record and stores it locally in an Appian database highly optimized for data querying.

This feature is designed for two primary use cases. The first target for synced records should be reference data that's extensive, but doesn't update much. A good example of this is a contact list in a CRM. The other great use case is to leverage synced records when the system of record throttles or rate limits APIs.

If you know Appian, you know that we love to continuously improve our platform. Synced records are no different. Be sure to sign up for future product release webinars to see more great features around this feature. Stay tuned next week for a deeper dive into another great records feature, synced records.

To experience 20.3 for yourself, register for a free trial today.