Camunda 8 Community. Get more features with Control Center
If you decide to deploy Camunda 8 Community in your business, you need to keep one thing in mind: to benefit from all its functionalities, you might have to purchase the Enterprise licence, which is quite expensive. Without the licence, your ability to control, support and monitor processes might be somewhat compromised.
So, what can you do if licensing costs are too high for you but you still want to enjoy advanced process management features in your production environment? Read on to learn about an interesting alternative.
What is the Control Center extension for Camunda 8 Community all about?
There is a good reason why Camunda now ranks as one of the most popular business process management platforms. It offers flexible tools and mechanisms that allow you to define, implement and monitor your processes. It can be adapted to different needs and use cases, and scaled up in step with growing demands. In addition, the platform is very easy to add to existing IT infrastructure and integrate with different systems, databases and applications.
Since Camunda Community is released under an open-source licence, everyone can access its source code, which can be modified and distributed in accordance with the licensing terms and conditions. Altkom Software has used it to develop an original extension that enables similar outcomes as Camunda Enterprise but at a much lower cost.
In this article, we will describe the features we have made available as part of our product, the Control Center extension for Camunda 8 Community. What is this solution all about? What is its purpose? How can it support your business and app development and maintenance?
Answers to these and other questions follow below.
Camunda Community 8. Limitations
The free version of Camunda 8 Community comes with certain limitations that may slow down your operations or make it impossible to tap the full potential of the platform. On the other hand, the paid version, Camunda 8 Enterprise, offers the full range of functionalities and extended features, but also involves relatively high and constant payments, which deter most companies.
With Camunda 8 Community, you can’t:
- review detailed process statistics;
- filter your search per process variables;
- reassign tasks from one user to another during an ongoing process;
- easily introduce process changes without having to restart the environment.
Well aware of all these limitations and mindful of what our customers need, we have developed a dedicated solution to complement the free Camunda 8 Community platform. Known as the Control Center, it allows you to tap the full potential of the free version and adds extra features only available in the paid Enterprise edition.
Feature: inactive process instance search
Camunda 8 provides the Camunda Operate tool that allows you to search for inactive processes and set inactive process filters (using different criteria, such as process duration, process type, task status, etc.).
The inactive process filter allows you to quickly and effectively identify suspended processes or processes that require action so you can better control them and take the necessary measures, e.g. restart processes, reassign tasks, solve problems or take other remedial steps.
It is important to point out that the feature improves your business management and enables you to promptly react to emergencies or stopped processes and take informed decisions based on current data and information available in Camunda Operate.
The features of the free version of Camunda are only available for use outside the production environment (i.e. in development and testing). To use them in production, you need to purchase the Camunda Enterprise Edition or Camunda SaaS.
Control Center. Access to historical process instances
Our Control Center offers all the features of Camunda Community, but also allows you to search by historical process instances (as well as process variables) and sort instances by start or end time. This gives you quick and easy access to process history so you can verify data, perform an audit, check compliance or identify a need for revision, e.g. if a claim is filed or any irregularities are reported on the user side.
Feature: process search by variable
The free version of Camunda 8 Community does not enable searching through active or inactive process instances by selected process variables entered by users (e.g. by e-mail address, birth date, city code, etc.).
This feature is only available in paid versions: SaaS and Enterprise.
Control Center. Process search by variable
Our original extension allows you to search active and historical process instances using input variables, i.e. search and filter process instances based on variable values attributed to process data. For instance, if a business process includes a variable that stores a specific e-mail address, users can search process instances to find those whose variable includes the e-mail address in question.
This feature is useful for data analytics and business process management, allowing you to quickly find specific process instances based on predefined business criteria; you don’t need to enter the process ID. This approach works wonders and delivers information practically in real time, making it capable of responding to the business needs of nearly any enterprise.
Feature: access to detailed process data from GUI
The free Camunda Operate tool offers a range of features for process data analytics, including process preview, task monitoring, metrics, data search and filtering, basic reporting and incident monitoring. However, it is important to remember that the full Community version can only be used outside of production; the features available in the production environment are rather limited.
What about our extension?
Access to process variables
Our Control Center enables access to process variables (Fig. 3), which means you can easily retrieve detailed data and verify their accuracy in the event of an audit.
Process diagram preview
From the same level of the Control Center, you can also view detailed process maps that present instance paths in visual form (Fig. 4). Moreover, if the process is looped or reversed, either automatically or through the “Go To” feature, any given action will carry data on how many times the process has gone through this particular step (shown as a number on a grey, elliptical background).
This feature, we believe, is indispensable during the app maintenance and development process and has been implemented from scratch by Altkom Software. It allows you to visually identify the current stage of the process and see how many times a given user has gone through each step. The diagram also provides information about incidents or any cancelled actions in the same format as instance path data are displayed (except that the elliptical background is a different colour, e.g. red or orange).
Monitoring process step duration
The tool also allows you to check the start and end times for each step of an active process instance, so you can get an idea of their duration.
To improve effectiveness and optimise future processes, you can use this feature to retrieve historical process duration data and use it to automate or optimise any bottlenecks. This will help you boost performance and reduce task costs.
Manual tasklists
This feature of the Control Center allows you to view all the tasks that are executed manually, so you can see who needs to perform a manual task for the process to advance to the next step and thus identify bottlenecks and areas for automation.
Active incident preview for specific process instances
Our Control Center also provides a preview of all active incidents in an active process instance; you can also get detailed error data in the form of code.
Differences: process Diff
Process Diff takes two input data sets from different versions of the same process and aligns them for comparison. You will find a description and visualisation of the feature, along with its different options, below. As you can see, you can filter by added elements (fig. 8), deleted elements (fig. 9), diagram changes (fig. 10), modified elements (fig. 11) and modification tables (fig. 13).
Process Diff speeds up the onboarding process of analysts and other specialists new to the process. It also allows you to compare process versions in detail, which often proves indispensable in a dynamic environment that may require you to revert to features from a year ago (several versions back) or perform a historical process audit at any moment.
Added elements
The diagram on the right shows, in green, all the added elements that were not present in the original version of the process.
Deleted elements
The diagram on the right shows, in red, all the diagram elements that are absent from version 55 (meaning they have been deleted).
Diagram changes
Elements in the process versions under comparison that were either added or deleted.
Modified elements
The feature allows you to see all the steps that have been modified and differ between the two versions but have not been added or deleted from the diagram.
Modification table
This feature allows you to view all the previously discussed modifications that might have been introduced to the diagram, i.e. added or deleted elements, diagram changes or modified elements. The only difference is in how the data are presented; in contrast to the previous features, this one presents the data in textual form.
Viewing all process modifications
The Control Center also allows you to view all diagram modifications. As it allows you to select individual modifications, the tool is ideal for comparing between different process versions.
Feature: Hot Deploy. Introducing process changes without restarting the environment
To modify processes (add steps or modify forms) in the free Camunda Workflow, you need to restart your environment before changes can be introduced into production. This is a severe limitation in a world where any minute of app downtime may entail financial losses and hurt the image of your organisation.
Hot Deploy in the Control Center
In the Control Center, we added Hot Deploy, a new feature that allows you to modify processes practically in real time and without the need to restart the environment. This works like introducing and launching a new process version. Process instances launched earlier continue to work in their previous versions, while new launches start a process instance already in the new version.
This means you can maintain, e.g. sales app continuity and avoid risking any potential profits. Fig. 14 shows a screen where you can see the features offered by the popular Camunda Modeler (to the left); other functionalities are described in the comments.
The production features presented here already work in the Control Center available for Camunda 7 Community. Hot Deploy is on our product road map for the Control Center extension for Camunda 8 Community and will be released between the second and the third quarter of 2024.
Feature: Go To. Moving active process instances
In the free version of the Camunda Workflow engine, you can move active process instances from step “x” to step “y”, but there are no native or built-in features to help you do that. This means you need to create the relevant tools yourself or look for ready-made solutions available in the community.
Camunda Operate allows you to move an active process instance or multiple instances, but all the actions have to be done manually, i.e. you need to cancel an instance, select the target step, add the “move” action, apply changes, etc., which requires many steps and is very time-intensive.
Go To in the Control Center
Our Control Center extension allows you to move both single and multiple active process instances. This is incredibly useful whenever incidents occur in individual steps or you need to move users from step “x” to step “y” without having to terminate the process (e.g. if the process is ongoing during a promotional period).
Fig. 15. visualises the process of how to move a process from “x” to “y” and presents a four-stage verification procedure. This is one of the two features on our product development road map (the other one is Hot Deploy), which are dedicated for deployment into production in the Control Center extension for Camunda 8 Community between the second and the third quarter of 2024.
Feature: process migration
Camunda Community does not include a process migration feature, leaving, however, the door open in the form of Java API. To get the full feature of process instance migration between versions in the production environment, you need to upgrade to the Enterprise version and purchase a full Camunda Operate licence.
Process migration in the Control Center
Our Control Center allows you to migrate process instances launched in your selected version. An additional advantage of the feature is automated validation, which prevents unwanted actions, e.g. migration of the start event to the end event. Crucially, process migration can be done in bulk; there is no need to introduce each change individually.
Feature: incident resolution
Incident resolution in Camunda 8 is possible with Camunda Operate, which includes features such as: incident identification, performance monitoring, error analysis, interactive incident resolution and progress tracking.
Incident resolution in the Control Centre
Apart from the standard solutions offered by Camunda Operate for Camunda 8, our Control Centre enables bulk actions. If there are many errors in the active instances of a single process, you can easily fix them comprehensively and restart the planned action (e.g. system integration or automated mail dispatch) once you have modified the processes.
Fig. 17. Control Center: incident resolution
Feature: task reassignment
In Camunda 8, you can reassign tasks between users in two ways: using the Camunda Tasklist user interface or using Camunda Operate. Neither of these options, however, support bulk actions and both require you to provide the process ID before you can search through the process database to reassign users.
Task reassignment in the Control Centre
Our Control Centre allows you to reassign tasks from one user to another in bulk, which means that if a specialist in charge of a process takes an extended leave, you can easily shift all their tasks to another person to ensure business continuity. Figs. 18, 19, and 20 visualize the steps of the reassignment process.
Fig. 18-20. Control Center: task reassignment. Task selection, user selection and confirmation
Feature: engine configuration and management
Our Control Center allows you to configure and manage multiple active Camunda engines at the same time from just one platform. This is incredibly helpful if you have many independent initiatives going on and need to manage them all effectively. The simplest example would be when you have DEV, TEST and PRODU environments and need to manage them all without having to switch between environments constantly.
Camunda 8 Community + Control Center. Conclusions
While it offers many useful business process management features, the free Camunda 8 Community shows certain limitations when compared to its Enterprise version. The features of our Control Center, however, will perfectly complement the free Camunda 8, extending the platform through the addition of indispensable tools that are sure to appeal to process analysts, developers, maintenance teams and all other Camunda Platform users.
The Control Center extension provides access to extra features such as search by variables, inactive process instance filters, incident resolution, task reassignment and advanced process migration, which significantly expand the potential of the free Camunda Community version. The extension perfectly complements the platform to enable effective business process management and boost performance.
More articles
