The capabilities described on this page are included in Appian's advanced and premium capability tiers. Usage limits may apply. |
Cases are a vital part of case management applications and represent a a series of tasks of to complete or a multi-step problem to solve. Once a case is created by a user, the new case kicks off a workflow, which is a process with numerous case workers and tasks involved in resolving an issue or completing a process. Case management studio allows you to manage both the cases and workflow in a centralized place.
An individual case is made up of data submitted by a user about an issue or request and provides case workers with the information they need to complete the case. In case management studio, there are two main containers for cases that allow you to define exactly the data you and your users need, as well as configure how it is captured and displayed: case categories and case types.
This page will provide a brief overview of what case categories and case types are and how to configure them.
In case management apps, case categories and types work together to create data structures that are both simple to understand and allow you to efficiently reuse data fields throughout your app. A case category is a container used to organize similar or related case types and share common data fields across them, allowing you to easily organize case types based on your own set of criteria. A case type is a smaller container within a case category that holds the case specific data, tasks, and workflow for a specific kind of case.
You can configure case categories and case types to fit the overall organizational and data needs for your use case. For example, a case management app for a real-estate company might have a case category for all cases and requests related to their residential rental buildings. The case types in this case category might be maintenance request from residents, new resident applications, resident renewal applications, etc.
Case categories consist of two tabs:
Case types consist of five tabs:
Before you can create case types and workflows for your case management app, you first need to create case categories.
To create a case category:
Once you've created a case category, you can open it and view the case category details on the Details tab. Both case categories and case types use the Details tabs as their default landing pages.
From the Details tab in a case category, you can:
From within a case category, you can create a new case type.
Enter the following case type settings:
Field | Required | Description |
---|---|---|
Category | Yes | The case category that they case type is contained in. |
Name | Yes | The name of the case type. |
Prefix | Yes | The case type prefix. This helps to distinguish your case type from others with similar names. |
Description | No | Context about your case type. |
Default SLA | No | The service level agreement to apply to your case type. |
Default priority | Yes | The priority to apply to all cases in this case type, unless otherwise specified. |
Default Assigned Group | No | The group that will handle all cases in this case type, unless otherwise specified. |
You can also create a new case type from the All Case Types page by clicking CREATE CASE TYPE in the case category card.
From the Details tab within a case type, you can:
Both case categories and case types have Data tabs, where you can view the the data fields associated with the case category, case type, and all cases respectively.
Note: You can also view all of the data fields common to all case types in your app and the structural data hierarchy in the Data tab of the All Cases page.
In the Data tab in a case category, you can:
From the Data tab in a case type, you can:
Data fields are the types of data you can include and configure in your case categories and case types to get the information that you need to complete tasks and resolve cases.
Data fields can be specific to a case type, shared by all case types in a case category, or shared by all case types in the app.
Using a combination of both shared and specific data fields not only allows you to easily set up data fields once and use them across your app without having to recreate the field, but it also allows you to hone in on the specific data needed for a case type without having to apply the unnecessary data fields elsewhere.
When you create a case category, add data fields to it that will be common to all case types in the category.
To add data fields to a case category:
Note: You can also add data fields to all cases or a case category from the Data tab in a case type.
Once you've added data fields to your case category, you can add data fields to your case type.
To add data fields to your case type:
You can also add multiple new data fields at the same time, for both case categories and case types.
Note: Note that Appian enforces a data modeling best practice that allows you to only have two Long Text data fields shared across all cases, two Long Text data fields in each case category, and two Long Text data fields in each case type.
When creating data fields, it is important for the overall health and performance of your application to choose the data type that best matches the kind of data you need from each data field.
There are 7 data types to choose from:
Here are some examples of common data field and data type pairings:
Example of data to enter | Type of data field |
---|---|
Short written response | Short text |
Phone number or any series of numbers that uses formatting | Short text |
Written response of a paragraph or more | Long text |
A numerical total, measurement, or any number you could perform a calculation on | Number (integer) or number (decimal) |
Month, day, and year only | Date |
Time of day, plus the month, day, year | Date and time |
True/false or yes/no responses | Boolean |
Reference or lookup data used in dropdowns, like statuses | Choice list |
Creating a well-defined architecture for your data is called data modeling. In case management apps, a data model is a representation of all of the information available in the case categories and case types for your application. To learn more about data modeling throughout Appian, check out Data Modeling with records.
If you're unsure about where and how to start creating data fields, we can suggest names and data types for you.
To generate suggested names and data types for new data fields:
Tip: If a generated data type for a field is a choice list field, you'll need to add the choice list options before finishing creating the data fields.
The Intake Form tab is only in case types and allows you to create, edit, and preview an intake form that end-users of your process will use to initiate case creation.
In the Intake Form tab, you can use the form builder to create and edit an entire form without using any code.
To create and configure a new intake form using the form builder:
Forms built in the form builder can be further customized and configured by a low-code developer in Appian Designer. These customizations can include anything from adding components not offered in the form builder to allowing users to as save drafts of forms. To learn more, see Configuring forms as interfaces.
The Workflow tab is only in case types. From the Workflow tab in a case type, you can:
Tasks represent the actions and steps taken by users in order to complete the case workflow.
Milestones are color-coded categories for your tasks that you can optionally create to help visually organize and easily distinguish different tasks. Milestones are case type specific and tasks can only have one milestone assigned to them.
You can edit workflows by modifying the flow and order of tasks, as well as adding tasks and task blocks, at any time; even for in-progress cases. This allows for flexible and resilient workflows that can adapt as your case management process evolves.
To configure the workflow for your case type, start with adding tasks:
In the Create Task dialog, configure the following task properties.
Property | Description |
---|---|
Name | The name of the task. |
Task Type | The kind of activity the task represents. There are three task types: confirmation, decision, and document upload. |
Default Assigned Group | The group that has permission to perform this task, unless otherwise specified. |
Default SLA | The service level agreement to apply to the task, calculated in business (working) days. |
Question | The question for your users to answer. Questions are required for the Decision task type. |
Response Options | The optional responses for your users to choose from. Response options are required for the Decision task type. |
Description | Description of the task. This text box contains many text formatting options, so you can write the best description of the task, including instructions, for your users. |
Once you have created tasks you can add them to your case type workflow. To add these new tasks or previously existing tasks to your workflow:
Once you've created and added tasks to your workflow, you can now add milestones to help visually organize your tasks. Milestones are specific to the case type in which they are created and can only be added or edited in the Workflow page of that case type.
To add a milestone:
To add a milestone to a task:
Once you have milestones created, you can add a milestone to a task directly from the Add Tasks dialog.
Task blocks are groups of tasks that are chained together to create flexible pathways within a workflow. Task blocks aren't specific to a case type and can be reused across all case types.
You can view and add relevant task blocks to your workflow from the Add Tasks dialog, but you can't create or edit task blocks within a case type. For instructions on creating a task block, check out How to Create Tasks and Task Blocks.
To add an existing task block to your case type workflow:
The Summary Page tab is only in case types and allows you to configure the summary page in Workspace that users will see when they view any case in the case type.
From the Summary Page tab, you can:
The Display Data section of the summary page allows you to choose the specific data to show users.
To select data fields to display:
Edit forms allow users update case data. These forms are created using the form builder, the same no-code tool that's used to create intake forms. To create an edit form, you can either copy the case type's intake form or make a new edit form from scratch.
To create an edit form based on the intake form:
To create an edit form form scratch:
Congratulations, you've finished setting up your case type!
Hop over to the Details page to see your completed Configuration Status. Or check out visualizations and previews of your data and configurations on the Data, Intake Form, Workflow, and Summary Page tabs of your case type.
If you need to make changes to your case category, case type, or forms, you can either edit them in Studio or make further configurations to their corresponding objects in Appian Designer.
How to Create Case Categories and Case Types