Redacting Files in Appian

Apryse WebViewer offers a complete toolset to redact your documents in Appian. You can open files from Appian, externally hosted documents on the web, or from your local machine. Once you have completed redacting a document, you may save it back to Appian, download it, or send it out.

You can turn on redaction by setting the enableRedaction parameter to true. Note that setting the fullAPI parameter to true is required on older versions of WebViewer to make the functionality work, in newer version (3.1.1+) this is enabled automatically.

Redacting a document will remove the visual information on the document as well as any underlying metadata or text string/data embedded into your document. Once redaction is completed and the document is saved, you are unable to undo this process according to ISO standard.

Therefore, redactions are not applied immediately. WebViewer first places a redaction mark onto the document whenever you place redactions. This is a red rectangle that highlights the area to be redacted (marked for redaction). You may hover over this area with your mouse to get a preview for the redaction itself. Once you apply the redaction, the area is blacked out and the information is removed from the document. Do not forget to save the file to complete the process.

You have a multitude of redaction tools that accomodate multiple workflows using the viewer UI.

• Text hightlighting redaction tool
• Redaction area tool
• Redact pages tool
• Redaction panel search tool

Use the text highlight tool and click on the redaction button to create a redaction mark. You can also do this from the Redact tool ribbon by selecting the redaction tool and highlighting text.

Go to the Redact tool ribbon and select the redaction tool. You can either highlight text with this tool or draw a rectangle/box to redact an entire area by drawing your redaction mark and applying the redaction.

Go to the Redact tool ribbon and select the Redact Pages tool. Select a page, multiple pages, or pass page ranges to remove entire pages from a document. The tool places redaction marks on your selected pages, then redacts the entire pages when page redaction marks are applied.

You can open the redaction panel from the Redact tool ribbon. On the top right of the panel you can search for keywords, each search result is selectable. This allows you to place redaction marks in bulk to allow for faster processing.

You can use the search bar on the redaction panel to search for patterns within your document. The following patterns are available:

• Phone
• Email
• Credit Card

You can select them from the search results and add multiple redaction marks this way to reduce manual steps required for redaction.

Note that you can save your redaction marks before applying them. This enables a review workflow where multiple users can come in and work on the same document.

An example could look like so:

• User A processes a document by placing redaction marks using the tools listed above
• Once all marks have been placed, User A can save the marks as XFDF and ask a Reviewer, User B, to take a look at the processed documents
• User B, the reviewer, can place comments on each redaction, they can ask for changes, or add their own additional marks or remove marks where necessary.
• The comment panel allows users to approve/decline changes. This allows for interactions between multiple users, which allows for change requests, approval workflows and more. Users can also discuss using the comment threads, reply to comments, and come to a final decision on how the redacted document should look like.