Workflow Automation Blog

Distributed file systems (DFS) have existed for many years and implementations have evolved from being accomplished with hardware solutions to being accomplished with software.  In the old days, hard drives were combined using different RAID configurations to achieve DFS solutions.  Depending on the RAID level, disks were made to either replicate between each other or act like a single drive.  Now, operating systems have evolved to manage DFS and cloud-based drives and file systems inherently offer distributed file systems.

The two biggest changes to the product with this release are 1) FlowWright is now a fully multi-tenant software applications, and 2) FlowWright now supports Distributed File Sychronization. 

In distributed processing environments where multiple FlowWright servers automate and integrate processes and systems, files must be synchronized across multiple servers.  FlowWright's Distributed File Synchronization feature accomplishes this.   In a typical customer scenario, where multiple servers are being used the challenge is to ensure all processes have access to real time file and data info, regardless of which server created or houses the information.

At FlowWright’s heart is its workflow engine.  Over the years, we have added more dedicated engines that power important functionality.  Most recently, v9.7 includes a new service/engine to perform distributed file synchronization in distributed environments.  Now, FlowWright also ensures that engine configuration changes are picked up and acted upon without impacting execution and performance.  

A “Place Holder” step is just a pass-through step for organizing in the case of some workflow designs, and especially important to use in some circumstances where a synchronize step is used.  Here is a good example of where a placeholder step is needed in a workflow routing a task whose results lead to a synchronized step:

FlowWright version 9.7 introduces an extremely useful feature: Inter-Process Communication (IPC.)  IPC provides a pathway for workflows to communicate with each other - or even communicate within the same workflow.  To start with, let’s examine communication within the same workflow.

FlowWright has always supported multi-tenancy from an engine perspective,  Many customers who embed FlowWright's workflow capabilities into their applications and products see their users use their own application UI rather than using FlowWright's UI.  And still some customers wanted to leverage FlowWright's UI elements and its engines in  Saas multi-tenant environments.  The main goal of SaaS  - Software-as-a-Service is to have one copy of software serving many tenants or customers.

FlowWright REST API traditionally was secured using basic authentication with a username and password.  Now, with the release of v9.7 of FlowWright, we support OAuth-based authentication.  OAuth is secure - and popular with web application developers.  Many applications (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, HubSpot, SugarCRM, SalesForce) support OAuth authentication.

Business process management is cyclical process involving planning, implementation, and evaluation.  Workflow plays a key role.  The diagram below illustrates this process.

A warehouse, by definition, holds inventory and enterprise workflow software supplements and extends warehouse management software capabilities to create more robust traceability for warehoused assets.