Requesting a Custom Domain

This page applies to Appian Cloud only. It may not reflect the differences with Appian Government Cloud.

Note: Customers must be on the Foundation, Professional, or Signature Success Plans to use custom domains.

Overview

When Appian Cloud environments are created, they are assigned a subdomain under the appiancloud.com (commercial regions) or appiancloud.us (US GovCloud regions) domain. However, Appian Cloud customers can request to customize the Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) of their environments to provide a personalized experience to end users.

This page outlines the steps required to change the FQDN of Appian Cloud environments to a custom domain.

About Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN)

An FQDN consists of three parts:

Subdomain: The first segment of the FQDN delineated by a period.
Domain: The main part of a domain name which represents an organization or entity.
Top-level domain (TLD): The last segment of a domain name, coming after the final period.

For example, in prod-environment.apps.mycorp.org, prod-environment is the subdomain, apps.mycorp is the domain, and org is the TLD.

Valid FQDNs

Valid domains and subdomains:

Only use alphanumeric (A-Z, a-z, and 0-9, case-insensitive) and hyphen characters.
Use 1 to 63 characters.
Do not start with or end with a hyphen.

Valid TLDs:

Only use alphanumeric (A-Z, a-z, and 0-9, case-insensitive) characters.
Use 2 to 63 characters.

FQDN configuration

Appian Cloud environments use 3 FQDNs. By default, these are:

	Commercial regions	US GovCloud regions
Main FQDN	`ENVIRONMENT_NAME.appiancloud.com`	`ENVIRONMENT_NAME.appiancloud.us`
Static FQDN	`ENVIRONMENT_NAME.appiancloud-static.com`	`ENVIRONMENT_NAME.appiancloud-static.us`
Dynamic FQDN	`ENVIRONMENT_NAME.appiancloud-dynamic.com`	`ENVIRONMENT_NAME.appiancloud-dynamic.us`

Only the main FQDN is visible to end users.

Example

Your company domain is mycorp.org and you have an environment called production-acme currently using the appiancloud.com domain, available at production-acme.appiancloud.com. You want to customize this environment to use mycorp.org so that end users can access the environment using the FQDN production-acme.mycorp.org. Appian Cloud will take care of the two remaining FQDNs using the default domains.

Old FQDN	New FQDN
`production-acme.appiancloud.com`	`production-acme.mycorp.org`
`production-acme.appiancloud-static.com`	`production-acme-mycorp-org.appiancloud-static.com`
`production-acme.appiancloud-dynamic.com`	`production-acme-mycorp-org.appiancloud-dynamic.com`

You can also customize all 3 FQDNs, if you so choose:

Old FQDN	New FQDN
`production-acme.appiancloud.com`	`production-acme.mycorp.org`
`production-acme.appiancloud-static.com`	`production-acme.mycorp-static.org`
`production-acme.appiancloud-dynamic.com`	`production-acme.mycorp-dynamic.org`

Note: When customizing a domain, the static, dynamic, and main FQDNs must be unique. You can use any valid FQDN configuration to customize the domain; each FQDN does not need to include the type, like static, dynamic, or main.

Configuring custom domains

Download and fill out the Appian Cloud Domain Name Change worksheet for all environments that will be configured with a custom domain
Open a new support case with Appian Support to request a domain change, including the filled out worksheet.
Appian Support will generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) covering your environments and add it to the support case.
Use the generated CSR to obtain a set of signed, PEM-formatted certificate files from your organization's certificate authority. Do not generate a separate key or reuse a previously provided CSR.

Caution: To use portals in the environment, you must use a certificate signed by a public certificate authority; privately-signed certificates are not compatible with portals.

The certificate issued by your Certificate Authority should list the FQDNs of all your Appian environments in the Subject Alternative (SAN) field. You can only use a single certificate that covers all your Appian environments.
Upload the certificates to the existing support case so that Appian Support can deploy your certificate files to Appian Cloud infrastructure.
For public access environments, Appian Support will provide you with a DNS name of a load balancer.
Set up name resolution in your DNS infrastructure:
- For public access environments, create a CNAME record in your DNS server for each environment FQDN to Appian Cloud load balancer.
  - If you wish to reverse-proxy from another service to your Appian Cloud environment(s), such as your own content delivery network (CDN) provider or Web Application Firewall (WAF), instead of pointing your CNAME records directly the the Application Cloud load balancer, you will need to point them to your third-party service, and then configure your service to proxy traffic to the Appian Cloud load balancer.
- Consult the documentation for VPN only or dual access configurations if you are setting up your environment in one of these access options, as additional steps are required.
Appian Support will schedule a maintenance window to apply the new FQDN for each environment listed on the certificate.

Note: Server Name Indication (SNI) must be enabled by clients to access custom domain Appian Cloud environments.

Certificate renewal

When a certificate is close to expiration, Appian Support will notify you via support case.

If there is any change in the certificate field information, download and fill out the Appian Cloud Domain Name Change worksheet . Submit the completed form in the support case.
Appian Support will provide you with a new CSR covering all your environments.
Upload the signed certificate and the chain of trust in the support case.
Appian Support will deploy the certificate files to Appian Cloud infrastructure. This action does not require any downtime.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my Appian Cloud environment use three different domains?

The static and dynamic domains are used for background web requests to support features such as the Document Viewer Component and Component Plug-ins. These domains are needed for security purposes. Review the Post Install Configurations for more details.

Do I have to change the subdomain portion of my environment's FQDN?

You do not need to change the subdomain portion of your environment's FQDN.

What are the requirements surrounding the subdomain portion of the environment FQDN?

The subdomain portion of the environment FQDN must comply with the following requirements:

Subdomains should be representative of your organization.
Subdomains should be unique. That is, each subdomain must be different across environments.
Subdomains cannot be generic or include the word "appian" in their name.

What private key lengths are supported for custom domain certificates?

The default RSA key size is 2048 bits, however 3072 bit or 4096 bit keys are also supported. If you wish to use a key size of 3072 bits or 4096 bits, specify this requirement to Appian Support in the support case.

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