We’re excited to share that the 8.7.0-alpha1 release of Camunda is now live and available for download. For our SaaS customers who are up to date, you may have already noticed some of these features as we make them available for you automatically.
Below is a summary of everything new in Camunda for this November 2024 8.7.0-alpha1 release.
Table of contents
Introduction to the new release blog
First, we would like to welcome you to our newly designed release blog. We have organized the blog using the following product house, with E2E Process Orchestration at the foundation and our product components represented by the building bricks. We have organized our components as per the image below to show how we believe Camunda builds the best infrastructure for your processes, with a strong foundation of orchestration and AI thoughtfully infused throughout.
E2E Process Orchestration
This section will update you on the components that make up Camunda’s foundation, including the underlying engine, platform operations, security, and API.
Zeebe
Cancel banned instances
- You can now cancel banned instances. A banned instance occurs when an unexpected, unhandled error happens in the Zeebe engine. When this happens, the process instance is frozen and will never terminate. To avoid causing confusion or taking unnecessary space, you can cancel it, effectively deleting it from the engine.
Check out the full release notes for Zeebe 8.7.0-alpha1 release right here.
Operate
With this release, we have extended the BPMN coverage of process instance migration. You can now additionally migrate process instances active in the following BPMN elements:
- Business rule task
- Error event
- Exclusive gateway
- Event subprocess with the timer start event
- Event-based gateway
- Multi-instance activities
- Script task
- Send task
- Signal event
These features are also available in 8.6 starting with version 8.6.4.
Check out the full release notes for the Operate 8.7.0-alpha1 release right here.
Tasklist
In this release, we worked on future functionality, bug fixes, and minor improvements. We hope you enjoy everything in the latest Tasklist 8.7.0-alpha1 release.
Optimize
In this release, we worked on future functionality, bug fixes, and minor improvements. We hope you enjoy everything in the latest Optimize 8.7.0-alpha1 release.
Installation options
This section gives updates on our installation options and various supported software components.
SaaS Provisioning
Southeast Asia now available for SaaS customers
SaaS customers can now create automation clusters in the Singapore (asia-southeast1) region, ensuring lower latency and improved processing speed for organizations operating in southeast Asian countries.
Self-Managed – Helm
We have enhanced the Self-Managed Helm installation option with the following:
- We now support setting logging levels for all Camunda components.
- You can now customize the Camunda Identify authentication variables.
- This release supports both “tags” and “custom properties” in the Console.
Task automation components
In this section, you can find information related to the components that allow you to build and automate your processes including our modelers and Connectors.
Web Modeler
Improved deployment experience in Web Modeler Self-Managed
Cluster configuration in Helm chart setup
Enterprise customers running Web Modeler Self-Managed now benefit from a simpler deployment experience. During your Camunda installation, you can now configure your Helm chart to decide which clusters are available from the Web Modeler by default and save their connection information. With this setup, the user only needs to select a cluster from the drop-down and add secrets and tenant ID as necessary.
Deployment stages for process applications
Predefined deployment stages are now also available in Self-Managed for process applications. Select your development, test, stage, and production clusters to ensure process applications flow easily and predictably through your deployment pipeline. Balance speed and control by only assigning a development cluster. This allows you to use Play for rapid prototyping, but then use GitHub Sync and your approved pipeline to progress through the rest of the stages.
Monorepo Git sync
Previously, you could only sync with the root folder which can cause issues. However, the Web Modeler now offers the /path option when using Git sync to unlock new use cases:
- Sync with your main branch to perform visual diffing, collaboration, and manual testing in the Web Modeler.
- Vary the /path on multiple process applications to integrate the Web Modeler with your existing monorepo containing all your code assets.
Template Generator UI integration
You can now configure and automatically generate a custom Connector template directly in the Web Modeler. You can import an existing API definition, such as an OpenAPI specification or a Postman collection. For example, download a Postman collection as a YAML file, import it into the template generator, and choose which methods to include in the generated template. This tool simplifies creating consistent, deployable templates, making Connector setup quicker and more flexible. See Generate a Connector template for a detailed guide on using the generator.
We hope you enjoy everything in the latest Web Modeler 8.7.0-alpha1 release!
Desktop Modeler
With this release, we have added the following to Desktop Modeler:
- We added support for both Camunda 8 and Camunda 7.23.
- We added new FEEL list functions and associated documentation including:
- We improved FEEL linting for the first item in a collection. Users often tried to access the first time using an index of “0” like in other programming languages. We have provided a clear message for this case.
- We added a file picker component to Forms enabling customers to handle documents within Camunda Forms.
We hope you enjoy the latest updates to Desktop Modeler included with this alpha release.
Connectors
We have included a couple of new Connectors and features in this release as well as some bug fixes.
New Connectors
The following new Connectors are provided:
- Inbound email Connector: This new email Connector catches incoming email.
- IdP extraction Connector: With this release, we have implemented a new IdP extraction outbound Connector.
New features
We have also provided some additional features to the product.
- Document handling: You can now manage documents within your Camunda process using our runtime Connector for document handling.
- Proxy: We now have a proxy exception list for handling outbound http Connector addresses.
Bug fixes
The following bug fixes were included in this release.
- SQS: We have removed the pattern validation in runtime and added support for an override description to the template.
- Email Connector: We now provide a tooltip warning and documentation around possible deletion when reading email using a POP3 protocol.
- Email Connector: We have fixed issues around process failures when sending email.
- SQS: Instead of retries, if a queue does not exist, the inbound connector will fail instantly.
- REST: We have added retries to the REST Connector if we cannot authenticate or refresh OAuth credentials.
- Azure OpenAI: We no longer send
nullvalues to the REST Connector. - Prometheus: We have re-added the
prometheusdefault config to the Connector runtime application configuration. - Webhook: We have fixed the webhook and possible http client null pointer exception.
- Email inbound Connector: We have implemented reconnect and open mechanism functionality.
Check out the full release notes for the Connectors 8.7.0-alpha1 release right here.
Camunda 7.23.0-alpha1
For information on Camunda 7, please refer to the following link on our forum.
Thank you
We hope you enjoy our latest minor release updates! For more details, be sure to review the latest release notes as well. If you have any feedback or thoughts, please feel free to contact us or let us know on our forum.
If you don’t have an account, you can try out the latest version today with a free trial.
Editor’s note: Note that this post was last updated on November 15th to reflect the complete functionality that was released with this alpha
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