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Publishing Process Models as Web Services

The capabilities described on this page are included in Appian's standard capability tier. Usage limits may apply.

Note:  We recommend designers instead use web APIs and the Start Process smart service to expose process models to external systems.

You can configure your process model so that it can be launched by a web service call. When the model is published as a web service, a WSDL is created that describes the parameters that must be passed and the protocol used to pass them. Authentication credentials must be passed as parameters to the web service.

Custom data types cannot be passed as parameters (variables required at the start of a process) to process models exposed as web services.

Publishing process models as web services

  1. Under the Integrations section of the Admin Console, click Legacy Web Services
  2. In the new tab, click Add Service
  3. Browse to select the process model you want to publish
  4. Provide the Service Name and Service Description for the process model

  5. Click Publish. The following WSDL URL is published for your process model

    1

    http://... /suite/webservice/processmodel/<SERVICE_NAME>?WSDL

    <SERVICE_NAME> refers to the name you assigned previously (in step five).

Web service credentials

Systems wishing to start a process published as a web services need to pass in a valid username and password to successfully start the process. These fields should be part of the SOAP request message.

  • Usernames and passwords are passed in plain text. We strongly recommend using this feature with SSL enabled.
  • The username and password submitted when calling the web service must be those of the Appian user account that is intended to start the service.
  • The user account must (at a minimum) hold initiator rights for the process model that is exposed as the web service.
  • The user account must not be configured to authenticate via SAML
  • Credentials used to start a process must be stored on the remote system. Take precautions to ensure that these credentials are stored securely.
  • Credentials stored on remote systems must be kept synchronized when user account passwords expire.
  • If you have a third-pary Single Sign On (SSO) solution configured to restrict URLs by redirecting unauthenticated requests to the login page, the URLs for the web services (suite/webservice/*) must be excluded so that calls to the WSDL and endpoint are not redirected.

Removing a published process model

Select the published process model you want to remove. Click Delete.

Data type formats

The following formats must be used for date and date/time values passed to an Appian process using a web service.

Date

yyyy-mm-dd

— For example —

2010-06-23

Date/time

yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss
  • The letter Z must be appended to any date/time values to indicate that the time is offset from UTC/GMT/Zulu time.

— For example —

2009-12-01T19:28:31Z

See Also

Call Web Service Smart Service

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