Standard Object Names

We recommend the following naming conventions for Appian objects. Adapt these standards to your environment as needed.

Appian Object Recommended Naming Standard
Applications
  • Published applications. These applications contain the navigation items and their names are used to group together Actions.
    • Use a short descriptive name that is meaningful to the end users.
  • All other applications. These applications are not published and are commonly used to promote artifacts between environments.
    • Use a short unique prefix to identify your application such as HRO for an HR Onboarding application. This prefix is used for naming all objects related to the application.
    • Use a short descriptive name.
    • Include the type of the application e.g. CDTs and Data Stores or All Contents.
    • Suffix the name with a version number such as v1.0.

Example: For the first release of an HR Onboarding application, the published application is named HR Onboarding and the application bundle used to promote the remaining artifacts is named HRO HR Onboarding All Contents v1.0..

Record Types
  • Use a short descriptive name that is meaningful to the end users. Do not use the application prefix as record types are designed to be enterprise-wide entities.
  • For record type views, use a short name that best describes the subset of the record data that is represented in the view.

Example: For our HR Onboarding application, the onboarding data and milestones are displayed in the Onboarding view of the enterprise Employee record type.

Tempo Reports
  • Use a short descriptive name that is meaningful to the end users. Because a Tempo Report is composed of several graphical elements (grids and charts) as well as editable fields used to filter and sort the report data, the Tempo Report name should not be narrowed down to a specific timeframe or subset of the data.
  • Do not preface the report name with the application specific prefix.
  • Do not suffix the report name with Report.

Example: For our HR Onboarding application, the Tempo Report HR Onboarding Department contains several charts with dynamic filters to show the number of onboarded employees by month and department, a line chart of the average completion time of the different phases of the onboarding process over time as well as a grid of the onboarded employees' details.

Actions
  • Use a short descriptive name that is meaningful to the end users. Actions are grouped by applications' name using filters so using the application prefix is not preferred.

Example: For our HR Onboarding application, the HR department has access to the action Start new employee onboarding within the filter Human Resources.

Custom Data Types
  • Provide descriptive names for your custom data types (CDTs).
  • Preface the name with the application specific prefix.
  • Use a custom namespace for yours CDT to group them and associate them with a specific application. Changing the namespace requires editing the XSD for the CDT.

Example: The CDT representing a new employee in our HR Onboarding application is named HRO_Employee. Its namespace is defined as urn:appian:hro

Changing a CDT namespace results in the creation of a new CDT unrelated to the original CDT. All references to the original CDT in process models, rules, reports, etc... must be manually updated to the new CDT.

Variables
  • Use camel case for defining variables.
  • Use the suffix List to indicate that the variable is a multiple.

Examples:

  • firstName
  • salaryAdvanceAmount
  • generalExpenseList

Using camel case helps differentiate words without adding clumsy underscores.

Rules and Constants
  • Preface the name with the application specific prefix.
  • Optionally, use an additional prefix to group related rules and constants.
  • For Constants, use uppercase for all letters.
  • For Rules, use pascal case.

Examples: In our HR Onboarding application, rules and constants are named as follow:

  • HRO_ComputeBaseSalary() for the business rule that computes the base salary of an employee.
  • HRO_IMG_CAREER_HISTORY_ICON for the constant containing the career icon.
  • HRO_GetEmployeeOnboardingTasksStatus() for the query that retrieved the status of the onboarding tasks for an employee.
Groups
  • If the group is not intended to be seen directly by the end users, preface the name with the application specific prefix. For example, the administrator group of the Employee record type is never used by the end users and is named HRO Employee Record Administrators
  • If the group is intended to be seen directly by the end users such as a Tempo audience group, use a short descriptive name.
  • Create a parent group named for each application.
  • Name child groups according to their security role.
  • Each application should include the following child groups at a minimum.
    • Application Administrators
    • Application Users

Examples: Our HR Onboarding application has the following groups:

  • HRO HR Onboarding is the parent group of the application.
  • HRO Administrators is the group containing the application specific administrator.
  • HRO All Users is the group containing all users that have access to the HR Onboarding application.
  • HRO Human Resources is the group containing the Human Resources employees that handle task assignments for the HR Onboarding application.
Process Models
  • Preface the name of the process model and the process model folder with the application specific prefix, except for models that will be used in Related Actions and the display name has been setup to use the process model name.
  • For running process instances, preface the name with the application specific prefix and include key data points that help identify the process instances in a Process Report.

Examples: In our HR Onboarding application, the main process model is named HRO Onboard New Employee and a running instance of this process model is named HRO Onboard John Doe - 2014 01 01.

Knowledge Centers and Communities
  • Preface the name of the knowledge center and the community with the application specific prefix.

Examples: In our HR Onboarding application, the application's community is named HRO Community and each onboarded employee has a dedicated knowledge center named HRO Employee Name Documents.

Process Reports
  • Preface the name with the application specific prefix.
  • Store reports in the application community. Apply the appropriate security so that users can see the reports.
Images For displaying images, do not link to images on the application server (such as /suite/bank/bank_picture.jpg). Upload all images to the application community in Appian Document Management and apply the appropriate security so that all users can see that image. Then create a Constant to reference that image.
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