Malcolm Ross, VP of Product Marketing at Appian, provided Appian World Attendees with an in-depth look at the upcoming Appian 7. He started with a quick look at 2011 product highlights, which included global hosting expanded to Singapore (Brazil is coming in 2012), recognition as the highest-security BPM product (FISMA and GOV Cloud certified), and Appian's fast pace of innovation (4 platform releases in 2011 alone).
Ross talked about six elements of enterprise IT - events, process, data, interface, social, and systems. Typical enterprise integration struggles to combine these disparate elements -- Appian 7 integrates them easily. Appian 7 features seamless interaction, tight integration, and one intuitive interface, all accessible from any device.
Ross showed off the attractive new interface for Appian 7, which focuses on intuitive, user-friendly access to data and processes. The top navigation highlights news, tasks, records, reports, and actions.
Appian 7 features business user friendly records. It integrates and spans records across multiple data stores, and quickly enables process orchestration, social collaboration, and reporting. Dynamic filter facets allow users to easily search across all records, with flexible record details in the listing. All the data is fed directly from RDBMS data source, and Appian process instances.
Appian 7 also debuts a new dashboard design environment. Users can create multiple dashboards per record, render dashboards on any device, and apply row-level security.
Reporting is another big change -- Appian 7 features detailed BAM reporting, external data sources reporting, and interactive reports. Users can share reports in the news feed, and access them from any mobile device. Improvements include column search, dynamic quick filters, and rapid column sorting.
Actions in Appian 7 include start points for common processes, searchable metadata, and a favorites function for quick access. Users will also be able to search across tasks and organize them by type. Social tasks is a new feature - instantly create a task from news events, records, or reports. No process model required!
The news feed in Appian 7 is intelligent and event-driven; it's an example of social business done right. It enables rapid and simple document sharing, and allows users to collaborate on any object - images, documents, reports, records, events, and processes.
One of the most dramatic updates in Appian 7 is the introduction of social profiles - dynamic user profiles. Users can follow other users for updates and activity in their news stream, and share kudos to acknowledge contributions. Managers can also track user skills for optimal collaboration.
The Appian 7 interface is based on this simple statement: develop once, deploy anywhere. From desktops to mobile phones, users can access Appian 7 anywhere, optimized for each device. No matter how they're using Appian 7, they'll be able to access all key data, reports, processes, and people. The web interface features an HTML 5 interface, with a common UI framework that works across all major web browsers. The mobile interface enables enterprise mobile BPM -- without mobile developers!
Ross ended the presentation with a live demonstration on his iPad, showing off the power of mobile in real time. To get your own demonstration of Appian 7, please request a call.
