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Ask HN: Do we need a better workflow solution exist, or is it already out there?

2 pointsby mattewongalmost 3 years ago
I&#x27;ve been on the hunt for some time for a workflow solution that:<p>1. bifurcates administrator vs user experiences. So for example, an admin defines a universe of possible actions, and a user defines a workflow consisting of one or more triggers that, when fired, executes some series of those predefined actions in the flow that the user defines<p>2. is no-code. If the admin must sometimes work with a config file (such as JSON), that&#x27;s OK. But none of this python or coding business-- not that I have anything against that myself, but it&#x27;s just the use case we need to address. For non-admin users, it should have a graphical UI<p>3. is versatile. For example, I&#x27;d like to be able to define an action to invoke any executable I choose, or to make any REST call I define<p>4. can dynamically chain each step&#x27;s output to any of the next steps&#x27; input. For example, let&#x27;s say I&#x27;m a regular user, and my admin has defined 2 actions I can use: XLSX_to_CSV, which converts X.xlsx to output&#x2F;X.csv, for any X, and CSV_to_SQLITE, which converts XX.csv to output&#x2F;XX.db, for any XX. Then I should be able to define a new workflow, using a UI, with a trigger that, for example, will monitor folder X that I specify, and upon receiving an XLSX file named Y.xlsx, will execute action 1 followed by action 2, to produce output&#x2F;Y.csv and output&#x2F;Y.db.<p>This should all sound pretty basic, because it is. I&#x27;ve looked at Airflow, Argo, OpenWDL and others, as well as explored whether the requirements could be met with a collection of technologies (such as something plus WuFoo together)-- but so far, they all seem to fall short.<p>The closest thing I have seen is https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;azure&#x2F;logic-apps&#x2F;logic-apps-workflow-definition-language, but that does not let an admin user define actions for regular users to then mix and match (but admittedly, it is otherwise very close to what I&#x27;m looking for).<p>Any suggestions on other solutions that may fit the bill? Or alternatively, if not, how might I go about gauging whether there might be sufficient interest to opensource a project for doing so (a decent amount of which is already built, since I needed some solution and built a workable one already, though it could use a facelift)?

1 comment

neximo64almost 3 years ago
When you said no-code, for a workflow solution it almost sounds worse. Temporal is pretty good &amp; has an admin interface.
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