When COVID-19 hit, college students freaked out, universities went remote, and millions of students struggled with the impersonal functionality of Zoom—even with tropical backgrounds. But more than that, the pandemic exposed the shortcomings of legacy student information systems (SIS) that stymied university efforts to limit virus spread and help anxious students cope with pandemic stress. But sometimes it takes a crisis to start a revolution.

No code and low code test automation are becoming widely adopted and will help address the evolving challenges faced by businesses today. However, what is the difference between no code and low code? When is it useful for an organization to adopt? How useful are their capabilities? Will this dampen the need for skilled Automation Engineers, Software Development Engineers in Test (SDET), or traditional Quality Assurance (QA) Specialists?

There’s a reason for this. Low-code allows developers to visually build impressive UX, create interactive diagrams, and leverage pre-built templates to make their work easier and their lives happier. And with every release of Appian, we bring more features that make low-code a joy for developers. Read on for our developers’ top 5 highlights from the Appian 22.1 release. Try the latest Appian release for free.

The way we interact with organizations has changed. Experiences have gone remote, mobile, and virtual over the past few years and there is no going back. According to Gartner, organizations providing a Total Experience in this new era will outperform competitors by 25% across key satisfaction metrics. But what is Total Experience? It is the combination of customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), user experience (UX), and multi-experience (MX) to transform business outcomes.

The front door to your organization. Connection is key. No matter what industry you are part of, you need—you want—to communicate and interact with your most important audiences: customers, partners, citizens, suppliers, and more. And you don’t necessarily want to ask loads of questions or require users to provide login credentials for every interaction. This could result in unhappy users who abandon the process and look to one of your competitors for what they need.

Every five years, LIUNA, the Laborers' International Union of North America, hosts a convention attracting over 1,400 delegates. The labor union needed a way to quickly build a public portal using the Appian Low-Code Platform to reach these delegates without requiring them to create an account or log in. They chose to join the Appian Portals beta program to meet their needs. Appian Portals securely connects external users to apps without authentication.

Insight is a funny thing - everyone wants more of it, but sometimes, when we get it, we realize what we truly don’t understand. I got a major dose of insight recently when I used Appian Process Mining to take a look at how we could optimize some of our workflows, specifically content creation. At Appian, we have an AMAZING Creative team - and I’m not just saying that because we work together. I’m saying that because if they didn’t work here, I would hire them, without question.