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SpiffWorkflow — Visual workflow builder
SpiffWorkflow allows Citizen Developers to automate, monitor and improve a set of complex tasks and business decisions. It uniquely combines BPMN, a widely adopted and researched notation, with Python, a popular and easy to learn programming language.
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@naveed_rehman Sure, good question. There might be times when a tool like SpiffWorkflow would be superior and times when just using python or another custom code solution might work better. SpiffWorkflow could be a better fit if:
* You don't want to worry about installing and deploying code, but you just want to start solving problems
* You or your teammates could benefit from a picture of what is going on, rather than just code
* You or colleagues need a user-friendly interface or have limited coding expertise
* You want to allow business people to update business processes rather than requiring developers for all maintenance and updates
* Scalability is a concern, and you prefer to let a system handle scaling up your processes as your needs grow
* You have multiple use cases that need to communicate with similar APIs, and people can simple plug in the same connector
Some of these cut both ways (with picture vs code, perhaps you find code more clear and intuitive), and therefore it will depend on your context which you choose for any given situation. There are times when I would reach for custom code. But SpiffWorkflow also provides a good middle ground, where it can help you get going quickly for the easy stuff and not trap you or limit options as requirements change as your organization grows in the future. Thank you for checking out our product!
A coworker from 5 years ago used to tell me programming was going away because the workflow app he was using could solve any problem.
Being able to build and manage complex workflows is super daunting. Can this app help generate docs from the workflows as well to help out other team members so they can better understand what is going on under the hood?
@kingromstar predictions are hard. :) Yes, building complex workflows is daunting, but the way you handle it is piece by piece, always keeping a working system along the way, until eventually you satisfy all of the requirements. Documenting a business workflow was the original goal of BPMN. The diagrams are meant to be constructed so that people can look at them and understand what is meant to happen. Explicit documentation is also a part of the standard. Keeping everyone on the same page is where SpiffWorkflow excels. Thanks for your comment!
@dan_funk Congrats on the launch SpiffWorkflow team! Honestly, I'm not so familiar with the concept of BPMN. Can it connect some other software with Python code and run the process automatically once the workflow has been created? The visualization part looks amazing.
@dan_funk @atsuhiro_teshima thank you so much for the suppport. BPMN is a hidden gem. It really depends where you’re from whether you’ve ever even heard of it. It’s an international standard for creating business processes of arbitrary complexity using a text based format that is also designed to be visualized as a diagram AND executed. Yep, you can connect the python code in SpiffWorkflow to python code elsewhere using built in API connectors, and yep, SpiffWorkflow runs the process automatically!
Congratulations on the launch @burnett
I love automation tools.
Is it similar to IFTTT, N8N (No-code) or more of Python coding?
How different is it from others?
@vijayatech_labs yeah, our team has been having a great time participating in the launch festivities. Automation is super cool. :) Comparing SpiffWorkflow to ifttt and n8n, sure, sounds fun.
ifttt is a simpler tool with different intended use cases. If you have two apps you’re trying to connect together, that is the ifttt sweet spot. Turn on my lights when I send a tweet, for example. You are welcome for that excellent real world use case. SpiffWorkflow can also do this sort of thing, but if ifttt already has the applet to support the simple use case you desire, and you are unlikely to change what you need in the future, that’s probably the way to go.
n8n is great product. It is a closer analogue to SpiffWorkflow because it was designed to support complex business processes, branching, merging, timers, etc. SpiffWorkflow is different from n8n in two primary ways: 1) SpiffWorkflow uses the excellent BPMN standard and 2) SpiffWorkflow is python-centric while n8n is JavaScript-centric. SpiffWorkflow also has an open source license while n8n has an interesting source available license that they actually invented. They are all honestly useful tools, and worth considering in different situations.
I've been introduced to SpiffWorkflow about 1.5 years ago and I have a background in integration and enterprise service bus. Spiff allows you to diagrammatically create workflows that touch multiple systems, with the goal of making the workflow easy to read, so that business people can read and understand how processes and the lifecycle of things works, without needing to always talk to a developer for specific details. I personally have worked with the Sartography team over the last 1.5yrs to help develop Spiff to our organisation's needs and build workflows in BPMN which federate the understanding of processes across the organisation. Initially we looked at Camunda and thought we like the functionality here however there are many things that we would like to change, with a special focus on making Spiff a user-facing tool, rather than an admin back office tool. We have managed to achieve this and the tool is now sleep and user interface self-explanatory.
I see great potential in Spiff over the coming years, as it gets adopted by larger organisations! I wish the team all the best and would love to see them succeed, where Spiff is direct challenger to established players like Camunda, but provided in an open-source license so that developers around the world come together and continue it's development.
@harmeet_singh7 thanks for your comments and great support in helping us make SpiffWorkflow the product it is today.
I've been a core contributor to SpiffWorkflow for many years, as it has slowly evolved from an excellent open source Python library into a full featured web application. I believe it can change how we work together.
I would call this initial Product Hunt release a "coming out" event, a "bar mitzvah" for our braces-wearing, acned, but soon to be handsome project.
As you assess the project, we hope to hear what would make it more approachable - how we could make that first few minutes a moment of discovery and delight. But we hope that you will also see the great bones. While our front-end application is just coming together, our core python library is older than Product Hunt itself. And while we’ve had only a handful of clients, they are all still with us, assuring that we can solve deep and difficult problems not minutes, but hours and years into a deployment.
In the meantime, we already have a tool that can make it obvious to all of your colleagues (with pictures!) how your organization runs. And, like self-documenting code, this documentation stays in sync with reality, because the pretty picture also builds a functional app.
Looking forward to your comments, today, and in the weeks, months, and years to come.
@shun_skt_93 yeah, this is a good take. Also, like Zapier but for organizations. And like Zapier but for managing complexity.
@tommy_li2 thanks for your support and please request a demo if you have a potential use.
YeyPin