Elsa Workflows / Community

In this meeting, we take a look at the progress of Elsa Studio, a Blazor re-implementation of the Elsa 3 workflows designer + re-hosting options in other applications built with technologies such as React, Angular, Vue, etc.

During this call, we:



- Briefly discussed the addition of the MongoDB persistence provider

- Looked at the Elsa Studio Blazor progress and discussed various related topics.

In this session:



- A new API to access activity output directly

- A Dapper implementation of the persistence abstractions

- Elsa Studio progress updates

Elsa workflows Community Meeting 36



- Orchard Harvest 2023

- Orchard Core



Register here for the Orchard Harvest conference for FREE to watch my talk on Elsa Workflows: https://orchardcore.net/harvest

A brief update on Elsa Studio, a Blazor implementation of the workflow designer.

- Default activity inputs

- Plugin API updates

- Dashboard

- Documentation updates

- Documentation updates

- Sample application demonstrating webhooks and RunTask activity

- Refactored JSON serialization

- Workflow Contexts

- Tooltips fixed by @Daxton (#3845 Tooltip Fixed Positioning by Daxton47 · Pull Request #3920 · elsa-workflows/elsa-core (github.com))

- Tests

- Installed features

- Roadmap to RC

- Elsa 2.11 dashboard showing wrong version.

○ Should do a 2.11 release

- Flowchart logic improvements (looping + joining)

- Refactored background activity execution

- Refactored scheduling

- Fixed timer activity

- Quartz.Net

- Hangfire

- CRON activity

- Activity cancellation

- Activity descriptor modifiers

Topics:

Topics:

- Question from the community: Status of the company yet to be founded? Trying to establish a legal company within the next month to offer paid consultancy service and support

- Plans on establishing an App Store for Elsa for free and paid activities and workflows

- Release of Elsa 2.11, bugfixes (espescially Kafka), perfomance improvements, upgrades to new packages, small features

- Chat GPT helped fixing a problem in the Elsa V3 source code 😆

- Explained the usage of events in Elsa V3 with inputs/outputs/variables and calling the event via Postman

- Debugging an error about inputs and outputs on Events

- Noticed problems with events and multiple HTTP Responses

- Explanation of workflow correlation and usage in events

- Fixes in scoped variables within sub-workflows

- Preview integration of Elsa V3 designer in other UIs

Topics

- Multitenancy

- HTTP Request activities

- Workflow contexts, create sample application

Elsa Community Meeting 27



Updates

- Revised store API

- Flow HTTP Request

- Improved JSON handling for HTTP workflows

- Improved parent/child workflows

- Added ability to upgrade composite activities

- Improved workflow instance journal

- Fixed checkbox issue

- HTTP RouteTable fixed

Elsa Community Meeting 27



Updates

- Revised store API

- Flow HTTP Request

- Improved JSON handling for HTTP workflows

- Improved parent/child workflows

- Added ability to upgrade composite activities

- Improved workflow instance journal

- Fixed checkbox issue

- HTTP RouteTable fixed

Updates
- Composite activity input/output
- Child workflow
- Fixed deadlock

Topics
- Workflow query
- CI/CD
- Bookmark system

Demos
- Workflows as activities
- Run child workflow

Bugs:
- Workflow with two starting triggers (e.g. HttpEndpoint) doesn't work as advertized
- How to return output from composite activity?
- Publish workflow is hanging

Demos
- Asynchronous activities
- Workflow driven UI by Frans

Topics
- Elsa 2.9.x
○ 2.9.2 to be released ASAP

Next time:
- Code spaces by Mohammed?
- Workflow driven UI for V3? ;)

Feedback
- How to deal with running jobs and join activities?
Master branch currently broken if you don't have .NET installed

Topics

- Demos
○ Frans & alter ego
○ Jay: dispatcher
○ Elsa 3 updates: forks & joins, auth


Links
Proposal: Parallel Processing of Branches · Issue #2872 · elsa-workflows/elsa-core (github.com)

Workflow-driven UI:
Documentation: https://medium.com/@fanekkie/part-1-ui-driven-by-elsa-workflows-6d0e868ea6c
GitHub repo: FransVanEk/ElsaDrivenUI: A demonstration project to use Elsa as UI engine (github.com)

Meeting 22
Topics

- Elsa 3
○ Documentation
○ DB-less execution
○ Secure API endpoints
- Elsa 2
Secrets module demo

Meeting 21
Topics
- Retention module optimizations
- Elsa 3 Versioning

Demos
- Auth0 Elsa 2
- Background jobs in Elsa 3
How to kill jobs?

Meeting 20
Topics
- Thinking about Elsa 3, parallel activities
- Demo from Frans: Fork & Join

Due to some technical issues alot of audio was not recorded, there will be an extra video with explanation and a small demo.

Meeting 19
Topics

- Who is Gurkan? :)
- Elsa 3 updates
○ Flowchart parallel execution
○ Activity definitions
○ Background jobs
- Elsa 2.9
Need to fix outstanding issues then release

Meeting 17
Topics

- Trailrun, mountainbiking
- Elsa 3 updates
- Elsa 3 flowchart
- Switch:
- all true cases should yield next action
- allow control of behavior (Match Any, Match First)
- Ask about bots to support writing or at least reading Q&A
Power Apps, K2

Meeting 18
Topics

- Updates
○ Activity Definitions
○ API endpoints
- Transient data/storage
- Parallel flowchart flow

Notes
- Reconsider using Input/Output variables for custom activity definitions
○ Users should be able to configure input attributes like supported syntax etc.
Bug with storage provider API

Meeting 16
Topics
- Elsa 3 updates
- If, Flow Decision, Flowchart
- Fork / Join / Parallel execution
Data processing pipelines

Meeting 15
Topics

- Elsa 2
○ Cascading dropdown lists
- Elsa 3
○ Nested activities
Workflow journal

Meeting 14
Topics

- Elsa 3 designer update

- "dependency properties" on activities in a flowchart activity to control things like "Wait Any" and "Wait All" when merging execution.

Meeting 13
Topics

- Elsa 3
○ Toolbar
○ Transposition
○ Prevent cyclic graph detection
- Multitenancy
○ What levels: record level, container/configuration level
- Composite activity stores everything, regardless of storage provider
○ Jay to create an issue
- Auth
○ Jay to write a blog post about authentication & authorization with Elsa
Add a section to homepage pointing to other Elsa related articles?

Meeting 12
Topics

- Liquid
- Elsa 3 updates
○ Activity execution events / workflow journal
○ Variables management
- Infinite loops
○ Detection
○ Workflow cancellation
§ https://github.com/elsa-workflows/elsa-core/issues/3093

Meeting 11
Topics

- Elsa 2.8 release
- Elsa 3 updates
○ Service registration cleanup
○ Resizable panels
○ Workflow instance viewer
- Demos
○ SQL syntax + intellisense
○ Cascading dropdowns
- Plugins
○ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tutorials/creating-app-with-plugin-support

Elsa Meeting 10
Topics

- Elsa 3 modularity
- SQL syntax + intellisense

- Demos
○ Elsa 2
§ Custom activity icon
○ Elsa 3
§ Label Management

Topics

- Demos
○ Elsa 2
§ History management
§ SQL query Activity + looping
§ Read HTTP endpoint input and use it when writing output.
§ Cascading dropdowns
□ Maybe demo about cascading dropdown API improvements next time :)
○ Elsa 3
§ Auto-naming activities + strategy support
§ Custom display name

# May 10, 2022

## Topics

- Steering Committee 2022-2023
- Amanda Seiken - @Amanda-SVT
- Cristina Mudura - @cristinamudura
- Frans van Ek - FransVanEk
- Jérémie Devillard - @jdevillard
- Sipke Schoorstra - @sfmskywalker

- Elsa 3
- API controllers
- Workflow Definition Handling
- Export
- Lots of designer work ahead :)

# May 3, 2022

## Topics

- Election results
- Elsa 2.7 was released :)
- Quick Elsa 3 update
- Server affinity

## Designer

**V3**

- Maybe smaller activities in activity picker toolbox
- Add search bar to activity picker
- Add new types of editors: Sequence, Flowchart (a la WF)
- Make it easy to integrate with e.g. Angular, React, Vue, Blazor

**V2**

- Make it easy to integrate with e.g. Angular, React, Vue, Blazor

# Elsa 2.8
- Need NPM preview packages on MyGet
- SQL intellisense

## Todo
- Steering committee gets access
- Create Elsa 2 project board

No description provided.

No description provided.

# April 12, 2022

## Topics

- Steering Committee Elections 2022
- Voting started. Please cast your vote here: https://pollunit.com/en/polls/elsa-workflows-steering-committee-election-2022
- 48 people voted so far
- April 30th - election results.

- Status
- Elsa 2:
- CRON UI
- Composite Activity timer
- Elsa 3
- Proto Actor
- Working on Break activity

- Demos
- Elsa 2: SwaggerGen support for HTTP Endpoint
- Questions / feedback: support for providing documentation about e.g. response type and other Swagger-specific info.
- Elsa 2: Running a cluster locally using Rider.
- Elsa 2: Testing workflows
- What happens if the workflow has more than 1 starting activity / triggers?
- Right now, it takes the first one.
- Ability to provide test values as input for triggers?
- Breakpoints - maybe makes sense only if it allows you to change values at runtime?

Next time?

- Elsa 2: demo from Mohammed?
- Elsa 2: securing HTTP Endpoint / Server / Dashboard Auth

# April 5, 2022

## Topics

- Steering Committee Elections 2022
- 9 candidates
- Voting process
- Everyone gets 5 votes
- Cast max 3 votes per candidate
- Cast votes are anonymous BUT voter must provide GitHub username to prevent multi-voting
- Status
- Elsa 2:
- HttpEndpoint route params
- Fix Composite Activity Timing/Occurrence and measurement in UI Journal
When 2.7 ?
- End of this month
- Elsa 3
- In progress :)

- Demos
- Elsa 2: HttpEndpoint route params
- Elsa 2: Workflow Context providers

- Discussion
- Elsa 3 context providers
- Add workflowContext.get argument to specify e.g. some ID

**Apologies for another video with no audio from the audience -_- **

I assumed that as long as OBS Studio is recording my headphone audio, it would include audio from the audience. Well, my assumption made an ass of u & me ;-) Needless to say, but next time I'm gonna test with an actual participant to figure this out.

- Steering Committee Elections / Candidacy
- 7 candidates
- Next week: close candidacy and start voting process
- Everyone gets one vote?
- Someone to collect votes anonymously.
- Status
- Elsa 3
- Ability to display coded workflows in designer
- Ability to store position separately from C# workflows.
- ForEach: find ways to make the Body implementation visually make more sense.
- RunAt: consider replacing this with Cron activity?
- Demos
- Elsa 3 DSL

This is the recording of the first Elsa Workflows Community meeting ever!

Unfortunately the audio of the other participants weren't recorded, so it's just me talking :D

In this video, we talk about:

- The weekly meeting itself
- Steering Committee Elections / OS Governance
- Status
- 2.6 released
- 2.7
- 3.0
- Demos
- Redacting sensitive information
- Retention policy
- Suggestion: make the "hard delete" replaceable