SpiffWorkflow Reviews and details

Questions & Answers

1. Why should a person choose SpiffWorkflow over its competitors?

   For our BPMN competitors - we are easier to learn, and anyone in an organization can potentially automate the processes. We are particularly good for agile shops and tech startups - places that don't have or want an army of Java developers, but who want to encapsulate and model a potentially exploding number of shifting business rules in a maintainable and scalable way.

   For our No-Code competitors - Our learning curve is higher. We require some training to get going. But we don't have any "brick walls" or "class ceilings.” This is a highly general purpose tool with multiple points of extension. There is always a way to solve a problem. You are not limited by a predefined idea of what you are trying to build.

2. How would you describe your primary audience?

   We are targeting people who are intent on solving complex problems. We would serve you well as a back-office solution to a grievous and repetitive set of automation tasks. Something that is worth taking the time to train a highly motivated, but not necessarily technical person, so they can create, maintain and monitor the process. We excel at complex approval processes within a mid-sized organization. If you are building your own application that must support 1000's of minor differences between your clients, we could be instrumental in making that possible.

3. What makes SpiffWorkflow unique?

   BPMN + Python. BPMN is an intuitive flow-chart like notation that business users can easily understand, but most BPMN tools require Java software engineers to use this notation for real automation tasks. Python is the most popular language in the world, and used far outside typical software development shops - by research students, data analysts, and business managers. We've built a framework that makes designing, automating, and monitoring workflows something anyone (with patience) can learn to do. We want to place BPMN and Python in the hands of everyone.

4. Who are some of the biggest customers of SpiffWorkflow?

   • University of Virginia
   • Status
   • Multiple Series B and Series C startups that wish to remain anonymous at this time.

5. What's the story behind SpiffWorkflow?

   • 2010: The python library called SpiffWorkflow was created by Samuel Abels
   • 2018: Our consulting company (Sartography) picked up the library to build an adaptable approval process for the University of Virginia's medical research review board (a 6 to 12 month process riddled with requirements, documents, etc...). We took over maintenance of the library and have continued to extend and improve upon its features. The core library now has over 1500 stars on GitHub.
   • 2021: Jarrad Hope, the founder of Status, wanted a complete open source web application built around SpiffWorkflow. With their generous support and direction they helped us turn a great library into a great application.
   • 2023: Status and several other companies are now using SpiffWorkflow in their day to day operations and we are working hard to build out the open source community, with a Discord Server, video tutorials, and excellent documentation.
   • Current: We are currently building a rich set of extensions and connectors to lots of 3rd party apps. But our biggest push now is to make it as user friendly as it is currently feature rich. Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

6. Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

   Core Technologies

   • BPMN
   • Python

   Extensions and Connections

   • Our extension mechanism is API driven. While we currently only support Python extensions, they can be deployed separately and can define their own dependencies. Future releases will support extensions in any language.
   • Our application is designed to provide a simple user interface suitable for back-office tasks, but we have a robust messaging system that would allow the creation of new API endpoints that allows applications written in any language to communicate with SpiffWorkflow using json data structures.

   Deployment

   • While we provide SaaS, Pre-Built Docker Containers for self-hosting are also available.

   Internals

   • Database Our application requires a relational database - any database supported by SqlAlchemy should be supportable - we test against postgres, mysql, and sqlite.
   • Flask We rely on flask for our backend.
   • React We use react for our frontend components