Overview

To make your portal public, use the Portal Publishing Manager. The application packages up all your interface precedents, portal details, configurations, and extra credentials, and publishes them as a unique URL that can be accessed by anyone, even if they don't have an Appian account.

Before you publish, you'll need to configure your basic portal details, then you can optionally add a service account, reCAPTCHA credentials, and branding configurations.

This page walks you through the steps to publish your portal.

Step 1: Set up service account permissions

If your portal allows end users to upload, download, or view documents or write or query data, you'll need to give them access to the relevant document folders and databases through Appian. To do this, you'll grant the service accounts permissions to the relevant objects in Appian.

To give end users the appropriate access to your portal:

1. Add your service account to an Appian user group.
2. For uploading documents, grant the user group Editor permissions to the document folders they'll be uploading documents to. They will also need at least Viewer permission to any folders and knowledge centers that the document folder is in.
3. For viewing or downloading documents, grant the user group Viewer permissions to the document folders that they will need access to.
4. For writing or querying data from a database, grant the user group Viewer permissions to the data store or record type that they'll need access to.
5. For querying data from a record type, grant the user group Viewer permissions to the record type that they'll need access to. Also be sure to configure the source security, as well as any necessary record-level security.
6. If you are using a web API, grant the user group Viewer permissions to the web API.
7. For starting a process, grant the user group at least Initiator permissions to the process model.

Step 2: Access the Portal Publishing Manager site and click Publish New Portal

In order to publish, update, or delete a portal, you'll need access to the Portal Publishing Manager site in your Appian environment. Access is granted to this site through the Portals Publishers group. This is a pre-made group that comes with the Portal Publishing Manager application. By default, everyone in the designer role is included in this group.

This group is used to control permissions for all portals in your environment and can't be used to grant access to individual portals. If you have multiple portals in your environment, all users in the Portals Publishers group have access to publish, update, and delete any portal in your environment.

1. In your Appian environment, make sure you are in the Portals Publishers group.
2. From the navigation menu , select Appian Portals Publishing Manager.
   • If you don't see this site, make sure you are in the Portals Publishers group.
3. Click Publish New Portal.

Step 3: If you're using a connected system, set up your import customization file

If you're using a data source connected system to connect directly to an external database or if you're using an integration with a connected system, set up an import customization file containing the necessary properties.

1. Download a template import customization file for your application.
2. Open the template import customization file.
3. Uncomment the appropriate lines and update the values.
   • If you're connecting directly to an external database using a data source connected system, include your data source connected system connection information, including the connection URL, username, password, and maximum connection pool size.
   • If you're using a connected system with an integration, include any connection information, such as an API key or username and password.
4. Save the file.

Step 4: Set up portal details

To publish a new portal, first set up the basic information about your portal under Portal Details:

1. For Portal Name, enter a URL-friendly name to identify your portal. The name must be different from any others in your Appian environment.
2. For Interface, select an interface to publish using the picker.
3. If you are using a connected system, under Application Properties Data, upload your import customization file.
4. Under Internationalization Information, make sure the listed internationalization settings are what you want for the portal.
   • Administrators can configure the internationalization settings for the environment in the Administration Console.
5. For Display Name, enter a name to show on the browser tab next to the favicon.

Step 5: (Optional) Add Google reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a feature that allows you to monitor your portals for potentially malicious or fraudulent activity from bots. Appian works with Google’s reCAPTCHA services to provide this feature. Since reCAPTCHA requires you to use both Appian and Google, you need to set up reCAPTCHA in both Appian and Google.

For guidance on using reCAPTCHA in your portal, see Configuring reCAPTCHA.

Get reCAPTCHA keys from Google

When you set up reCAPTCHA in the Google Admin Console, you first need to create a project. Note your project ID, which you will use to set up reCAPTCHA in the Portal Publishing Manager.

After you've set up a reCAPTCHA project in the Google Admin console, you need to set up your API and site keys. Follow the steps in Google's documentation for creating the API keys and site keys.

The API key (or secret key) allows your Portal to communicate with the reCAPTCHA server. The site key allows you to use reCAPTCHA on your Portal. Since Appian only supports v3 reCAPTCHA, make sure your site key is a score-based site key. Follow Google’s instructions for adding your domain name or any other necessary information for your reCAPTCHA keys registration.

Add keys to the Portal Publishing Manager

To add reCAPTCHA to your portal:

1. Under Google reCAPTCHA, click Use Google reCAPTCHA to protect your page.
2. In reCAPTCHA Site Key, enter the reCAPTCHA site key provided by Google.
3. In reCAPTCHA API Key, enter the reCAPTCHA API key (or secret key) provided by Google.
4. In reCAPTCHA Project ID, enter the reCAPTCHA project ID provided by Google when you created the project.

For more reCAPTCHA guidance or further information on setting up and using reCAPTCHA, check out Configuring reCAPTCHA.

Step 6: (Optional) Configure portal branding

In addition to allowing your users to complete their workflows and tasks with ease, your portal should also fit seamlessly with the look and feel for the rest of your organizations.

To ensure that your Portal matches your branding and style requirements, configure any or all of the following branding fields:

1. For Favicon Image, add an icon that will appear in the browser tab or URL bar.
2. For Input Shape, select either the Squared or Semi-rounded shape that will be applied to all input fields and selection fields in the Portal.
3. For Button Shape, select either the Squared, Semi-rounded, or Rounded shape that will be applied to all buttons in the Portal.
4. For, Accent Color, select a color that will be used for the buttons, links, active field border colors, milestone bars, and section titles in your portal.
5. For Loading Bar Color, select a color that will be the bar at the top of the page that indicates when the system is processing.

Step 7: If your portal uses documents or data source connected systems, add a service account

Service accounts allow you to manage security for your portal by giving your end users access the data and documents in your portal. For more information, check out Service Accounts in Portals.

Only add service accounts to the Portal Publishing Manager if they are used for documents or connecting directly external databases using a data source connected system. Any service account that is used to connect to a database using an integration and web API (as described in Working with Data in Portals) doesn't need to be added in the Portal Publishing Manager.

To add a service account for your documents or direct connection to an external database:

• For Service Account, select the service account with permissions to your data and documents. If you can't find your service account in the list of available service accounts, make sure that it's in the Service Account system group.

Note that after you publish your portal, an API key will automatically be created for your service account. This key is added to the Web API Authentication page in the Admin Console. You don't need to do anything with this key.

If the service account doesn't have the correct permissions, you'll see an error when you publish or update your portal.

Step 8: Publish your portal to the public and test it

After you publish your portal, be sure to fully test it to make sure everything is working correctly.

To publish and test your portal:

1. Click PUBLISH. The publication process can take up to 5 minutes. During this time, your portal won't be accessible.

   Note:  Do not try to update or publish your portal until it is fully published, or it could cause an error.

2. After about 5 minutes, on the confirmation page, click the portal URL to open it.
3. Fully test your portal. Fill out all of the fields, whether they are required or not, and go through all of the steps in the portal.
4. If you find any errors, be sure to update your portal after you address any issues.