Task persistence and integration ease have been key benefits
What is our primary use case?
Swimlane is used for tasks that need multiple task owners. For instance, with bank applications, if you're opening a new account or need KYC, the application might undergo several stages - from submission to bank manager approval, back to verification, and finally to signers for signature purposes. Swimlane allows the movement of tasks to multiple users, being assigned to a single person, a specific user, a group of people, or a customized role.
Moreover, once a task is assigned using Swimlane, it's visible on the portal of each group member, allowing any of them to perform an action on the task.
What is most valuable?
Swimlane's persisting feature makes managing tasks very easy. When a task is assigned, it remains visible to all members it's assigned to, making it easy to manage and follow. Its integration within Appian allows tasks to stay active and notify users regularly.
Another benefit is it reduces workload with minimal coding, requiring just drag-and-drop for setting assignments. It's both time and manpower efficient.
What needs improvement?
Swimlane should enhance its integration features beyond the current task assignment, reaction, and persistence capabilities. It should support integrations with multiple signals or queues.
Additionally, Swimlane's tight coupling with Appian standalone applications limits its scalability. It should be exposed so external clients can use it without needing a local setup. This would improve its dynamic adaptability and scalability.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Appian for around 8 years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
If you have already used your tool inside any Appian Studio, which is already built on Appian technology, then the Swimlane will be available to it, and it's a component you can integrate very easily. It is just a drag and drop thing. Drag and drop and assign some values.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
If the event is written correctly, then Swimlane is a hundred percent accurate. It will always determine which person to assign, and what to do, for that claiming thing. I haven't seen any production issue or anything coming up because of Swimlane.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Swimlane is not scalable because it is not exposed. Currently, it's a manual component that requires configuration through coding. If it were exposed or ported to a cloud platform, it could achieve better scalability. Swimlane should have the capability to be moved out of Appian and integrated with other platforms.
How are customer service and support?
Appian community is there for technical support. You can raise a ticket or incident, and it gets addressed based on priority. Additionally, working with a firm that has a dedicated person for support is beneficial.
If the primary support contact is unable to assist, tickets must be created within the Appian community, though sometimes response times extend for weeks.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
If we consider options outside of Appian, Java has many similar solutions, but within Appian, the task assignment capability is uniquely provided by Swimlane.
How was the initial setup?
For the initial setup, the licensing needs to be handled appropriately. Existing applications wanting integration must have their process structures within Appian, as Swimlane isn't exposed. A process image is necessary in Appian to use Swimlane, which can be a drawback.
What other advice do I have?
The best part of Swimlane is the persistent notifications and its ease of integration, requiring minimal coding. While it lacks response features, it can be integrated with messaging or queue services to achieve this. Any incident response requires additional integration since Swimlane itself doesn't react to incidents.
Real-time data in terms of persistence is configurable, and without config, tasks persist indefinitely until completion. If using Appian versions below 11, integration features for Swimlane aren't available. By default, Swimlane lacks built-in intelligence, needing coding for integration.
Although the Swimlane is beneficial and reduces manpower requirements, it's hindered by its lack of exposure. If exposed through services or endpoints, its functionality could be accessed without needing a local standalone application.
On a scale of one to ten, this solution deserves a rating of nine.
Efficiently designs architecture and streamlines team responsibilities
What is our primary use case?
We use
Swimlane primarily to design the entire architecture of the customer journey from onboarding to settlement. As a multinational IT service company in India, we work with many channel partners, both external and internal, with numerous components and vendors.
Swimlane helps us assign respective work to the right teams, making it clear which team does what work, how they will do it, and where they will get the data. Additionally, Swimlane helps us confirm the roles and responsibilities of each component or company involved.
What is most valuable?
I find Swimlane very trendy and easy to design with. As a solution architect, I use various software, and the most important thing is that Swimlane is an easily designed and learnable software. I can make designs quickly, and it is very user-friendly.
What needs improvement?
I would prefer to have more colors added to represent different risks or notations, which can be used for the prioritization of risks and the significance of information.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Swimlane for around four years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We don't do any setups or integrations. We use Swimlane directly from Google to work on it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is always stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Swimlane is highly scalable.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Swimlane, I used MS
Visio and
draw.io, and BPMN diagrams for automation and orchestration.
How was the initial setup?
There is no initial setup required. We access it directly from Google.
What was our ROI?
Swimlane saves us 80 to 90 percent of our time by quickly helping us design the journey and efficiently passing information to various components.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Swimlane eight out of ten. I recommend it to others because it is very easy to learn, easy to express information with, and it significantly saves time and enhances overall efficiency.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Visual representation of multi-user workflows improves documentation clarity
What is our primary use case?
I have been in software IT for more than seventeen years, writing technical documentation, including those for developers. While writing, I often need to create
Swimlane diagrams to explain and document workflows. In particular, when there are multi-user workflows involved, I use
Swimlane to depict the sequence of events, who initiates an action, where it goes, any approval required, and the subsequent actions.
What is most valuable?
Swimlane is a very effective way to represent workflows involving multiple users. It provides a clear visual representation of the flow, user actions, and the stages these actions occur at. It helps in clearly identifying the roles, timeline, and actions involved in the workflow, offering a comprehensive depiction of the entire process.
What needs improvement?
Swimlane is currently two-dimensional. If a third dimension could be added, it might be more useful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been in the software IT field for more than seventeen years, during which time I have been using Swimlane for various tasks.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any stability or performance issues with Swimlane.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Swimlane is scalable. It can support various projects involving multiple users efficiently.
How are customer service and support?
I have not specifically worked with tech support, but I have created content for it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have previously worked with UML diagrams and sequence diagrams.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I primarily use free tools provided by my company, like PPT or diagrams.net, for creating diagrams.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have previously worked with UML diagrams and sequence diagrams.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Swimlane to individuals who document processes and flows. It is a valuable tool for providing a visual representation. I would rate Swimlane as an eight out of ten. My rating for the overall solution is 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Enables efficient automation of alert and phishing triages while reducing manpower requirements
What is our primary use case?
I use
Swimlane as a SecOps automation platform. I utilize it for automating alert triages, phishing triages, and case and incident management. It streamlines the work for analysts and facilitates automating security processes.
How has it helped my organization?
Swimlane enables two SOC analysts to work efficiently as much as ten analysts would without Swimlane, which translates to significant manpower savings.
What is most valuable?
Swimlane is highly customizable. I can do anything in the platform, from integrating my email inbox to automating tasks and creating cases for analysts. It is easy to integrate with multiple tools due to its drag-and-drop connectors. The marketplace offers more than two thousand playbooks and components, easing the configuration of SOC solutions.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see improvements in the minor bugs that occur with each update, as some features might have issues. Additionally, in the orchestration tab, it would be helpful to have a list of playbooks where a particular asset or connector is used.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Swimlane for one year.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Due to Swimlane's high customization capabilities, initial setup depends on specific requirements. It might require time to customize and deploy. However, Swimlane allows for tailored solutions as per our needs.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any stability issues with Swimlane.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Swimlane is highly scalable since it is deployed in the cloud. Its scalability automatically adjusts based on usage.
How are customer service and support?
Customer service is commendable. When I raise a ticket, they reply within half an hour with an initial response, signifying that an agent has been assigned and is working on the issue.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Swimlane is my first and best experience ever.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward due to Swimlane's customization capabilities. They provide standard solutions, but adjustments are needed based on requirements.
What about the implementation team?
Swimlane offers technical account managers based on the purchased package, assisting with the deployment process.
What other advice do I have?
Swimlane performs well on both Windows and Mac. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Swimlane as nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
I use Swimlane for everyday work to investigate and sort cases.
What do you like best about the product?
I like that Swimlane is highly customizable and easy to use. I am able to navigate very easily while effeciently performing my work as well.
What do you dislike about the product?
One of the downsides of Swimlane has to be the stability. Swimlane can sometimes get bogged down due to the amount of system errors.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Swimlane is grea for organizing our cases. I can effectively use filters to lower the amount of results when attempting to narrow in on a case.
Reliable and intuitive SOAR platform.
What do you like best about the product?
I love the personalization Swimlane offers and how robust it is for each user. I am able to set up my own reports and it works with our SIEM, Elastic, flawlessly. Support from Swimlane is always prompt and we rarely have downtime that significantly affects our work. Any bugs found can be reported and new features are constantly being developed.
What do you dislike about the product?
Initially, there can be a lot going on and it can be confusing until you get comfortable with Swimlane and setting it up in your environment. The process is well worth it and you learn a great deal about the SOAR from the process.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Swimlane is helping us organize alerts and events from our SIEM.
I have used swimlane as an analyst and have had a little experience working with the backend.
What do you like best about the product?
I like how customizable the tool is and how easy it is to adjust it to your liking. I have ran into a lot of problems with the tools I use to perform my job but have never been able to fix it but with Swimlane, I can easily go in and adjust specific items with ease to perform most efficiently.
What do you dislike about the product?
Swimlane has been slow at times with working through tasks and will sometimes go out while doing my everyday work. This isnt too frequent but can be annoying at times when I have to catchup after the downtime and make up the work on the time I lost.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Swimlane is helping me to automate my work by giving me a simple and easy-to-use interface to work through cases and be able to function as efficiently as possible. This makes my investigation time quicker and allows me to focus on the more important cases.
Integrations Galore
What do you like best about the product?
I'm especially impressed by its seamless integration capabilities and the customizable dashboard. Support is awesome, Easy to implement simple integrations.
What do you dislike about the product?
The workflow pages can seem cluttered and hard to navigate when it gets complex
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Swimlane is solving many problems to help elminate manual tasks that will free up analyst time to accomplish other things.
Powerful Automation with Swimlane
What do you like best about the product?
Swimlane provides us with a comprehensive view of our entire toolset. With Python, we can creatively brainstorm solutions to problems that were previously unfeasible without the flexibility Swimlane provides. This enables us to respond quickly to various operational issues, compliance problems, and security incidents.
What do you dislike about the product?
We utilize the original Swimlane Platform, which is built around Python. To leverage Swimlane to its fullest potential, having a Python developer to assist with implementation and customization is recommended. While Swimlane offers out-of-the-box integrations, tailoring them to your specific needs is necessary. Swimlane provides professional services to assist with it all. It's worth noting that Swimlane Turbine is a low-code solution that isn't dependent on Python development experience.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
High Mean-Time to Resolution Metric (MTTR):
The primary goal we achieve with Swimlane is the reduction of the Mean-Time to Resolution metric. We can efficiently bring in detections, correlate them into incidents, identify and enrich organizational assets, enhance indicators of compromise with both open and closed-source threat intelligence, address alert tuning requirements, and respond to and remediate incidents when required. By consolidating all relevant information in one place for our analysts and eliminating the need to switch between multiple tools, we effectively reduce the Mean-Time to Resolution metric. This solution addresses several challenges encountered in our Security Operations Center, including dealing with alert fatigue, reducing user errors with data entry, and accelerating the resolution of incidents.
Synchronizing our Alerting Toolset:
When an incident is closed out in Swimlane, it automatically closes all alerts associated with the incident generated by their respective tools. This automation reduces the need for manual intervention and ensures our toolset maintains accurate information. For senior leadership, this provides accurate vendor-specific dashboards based on different tool-specific metrics. For our analysts, it provides a method to locate incidents in Swimlane based on comments left in other tools.
Synchronizing our Threat Intelligence:
When actionable threat intelligence becomes available, we utilize Swimlane to synchronize indicators of compromise with our toolset. This proactive approach detects and prevents activity in our EDR, NDR, SIEM, ESG, etc., based on findings from our own incidents as well as open and closed-source threat intelligence providers. Our analysts can focus on the current alerts and incidents rather than manual tasks like updating lists of indicators.
Overall intuitive platform for case management and automation workflow.
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use once you are somewhat familiar with the product. Custome applications allow integration with many tools within your environment. Migration and backup tasks are straight forward wiht no issues,
What do you dislike about the product?
Support is sometimes slow to respond. Also had issues with upgrades/pdates failing requiring engineers to diagnose issues.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Case management for Incident Response. Also helping us with security response actions, cutting down the time our analysts take to espond.
