We’re excited to share that the Camunda 8.7 release is scheduled for 11 February 2025! This release represents a significant step in our commitment to provide a composable, open and scalable process orchestration and automation platform. This release specifically focuses on making production installation hassle-free and aims to simplify the developer experience significantly.
Seasoned Camunda users will appreciate 8.7’s streamlined architecture and simplified deployment options. This release will provide a smoother, more efficient developer experience as well as access to all the new capabilities in Camunda 8, including Camunda FEEL Copilot, SAP integration, Document Handling, and soon-to-be-released task-automation capabilities that we just announced at CamundaCon in NYC in October 2024.
Our original timeline targeted a January 2025 release. However, in the spirit of ensuring the highest quality standards, we’ve strategically decided to push the release to February. This adjustment allows us to manage risks more effectively and gives us crucial time for additional quality assurance and team enablement. We believe this approach will serve our community and users better by providing a polished and robust update.
Improved developer experience
We are streamlining the developer experience by creating a unified REST API for Zeebe, Operate, Tasklist, and the Identity components with endpoint parity. This will be a single REST API for the orchestration cluster. Our goal is to provide both a consistent and intuitive API experience to help your teams develop process automation solutions faster.
Initial changes for the REST API for Zeebe started with shifting user task management from Tasklist to Zeebe so that entity management can be centralized and Camunda can provide a more cohesive user experience. Camunda’s objective is that this Zeebe API will cover all aspects of process management, while the Operate and Tasklist APIs support data queries. Ultimately, with the 8.7 release, everything will be covered in a single Camunda REST API. With this shift, the Zeebe API will be updated to include REST endpoints dedicated to user task management.
Note: The Administration and Web Modeler APIs will not be part of the Camunda 8 REST API, as these are platform APIs outside the cluster’s scope.
Over time, there will be a deprecation process for the individual component APIs starting with the former Operate and Tasklist APIs. These will continue to be in the product for the short-term, but it is recommended to begin the adoption of the new API soon. In addition, we will begin to deprecate several Zeebe gPRC endpoints as well.
To facilitate a seamless migration, guides and documentation will be offered, covering:
- Differences between user task types
- Migration how-to guide
- Modeling support
These assets will equip customers with the tools and information for a successful migration. Our goal is to provide customers with the guidance required to transition.
With the unified API, you will be able to work with the orchestration cluster the same way you work with any other REST service. This all-in-one API will simplify learning and ease the installation process.
Faster production installation
As Camunda strives to enhance the production experience, our 8.7 release brings new features to support this goal. We have simplified our deployment options and streamlined our architecture to support an all-in-one distribution of the Camunda 8 core automation components.
With this release, we have reduced dependencies on Keycloak and the required number of databases. We also provide our new Camunda Exporter replacing the Operate and Tasklist Importer including a unified ES/OS schema. This architecture simplifies high-availability deployments.
We are also tightening our enterprise security capabilities with rearchitected Identity Management by making significant enhancements designed to provide great flexibility and control for both Self-Managed and SaaS users.
Path to future releases
The 8.7 release marks an important milestone. Our goal is to empower customers to leverage Camunda for process orchestration across diverse use cases, including those demanding resilience, high performance, high availability, and low latency. This unified distribution, with a single API, enables us to support both straightforward and complex use cases seamlessly.
Especially for the straightforward cases, this release is crucial, and it enhances the simplicity and developer-friendliness that our users have always trusted us to deliver.
Stay tuned for Camunda 8.8 in April
And don’t forget, our Camunda 8.8 release, slated for April 8th 2025, will proceed as scheduled.
Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to February. Get in touch with us if you have any questions. We’re looking forward to sharing these advancements and helping you achieve even more with Camunda!
Start the discussion at forum.camunda.io