Roadmap and Product Ethos

Introduction

This page details the planned roadmaps for the key products in the OpenFn product suite, including Lightning, Adaptors, and this Docs site. While this page will be updated periodically, you can track our realtime roadmap and progress here.

Our approach to product development

At OpenFn, we follow the Shape Up approach to help our small engineering team build meaningful products and features faster without compromising on quality. With Shape Up in place, we typically commit to projects that can be delivered in a 4-6 week period with multiple releases based on QA approval within the building cycle. We also prioritize feedback and feature requests from our users over features in the backlog.

Transparency and building what matters

Note that it's fairly rare for us to commit to delivering a specific feature more than 2 or 3 months in the future. We are committed to constantly evaluating what our user base needs most and spending the few resources we have to deliver value to them—we simply can't guarantee that what sounds like the "7th most important feature to build" now will still be on our list in 6 months.

At the same time, we strive to be as transparent and inclusive as we can in our planning processes. We have a big backlog of feature requests and GitHub issues (bug reports, stubs, even partially shaped epics or projects) that are getting voted up, commented on, and used as inspiration when we're deciding what to prioritize next.

Read on to learn more about how we work, how you can see what's coming, and how you can get involved!

What are we currently working on?

All of our team's work is tracked publicly using a GitHub Project. Three key views give you up-to-the-minute insights on what we're doing and what's on our immediate roadmap.

See Now 🚧 for what's been funded and is currently being built

See Epics 🤔 for a list of projects that we're considering, roughly-prioritized

See Bugs 🐞 for reported bugs

We will update this site monthly to reflect our progress on major items. You can also keep track of all new features, changes, and bug fixes in real-time via our Changelog.

How to get involved

We collect feedback and new feature requests via our Community site. This allows OpenFn core team and users to track, engage by upvoting their favorite and mission critical feature requests.

Upvote features 👍

1. Go to the community feature request board
2. Scroll down or use the filter and search features to see existing feature requests
3. Click on the (Vote) button beside the title of the request to upvote
4. If you want more upvotes for this feature request, share a link to the feature with your network

Request a new feature 💡

1. Go to the community feature request board
2. Click on + New Topic to create a new request.
3. Provide a very clear, concise and descriptive title for the feature (e.g., "Make the new workflow button green")
4. Describe the feature request in detail and why it's important to you. Helpful if you can add reference images and links.
5. Share the feature request on across your professional network for upvotes

Tip

When describing the feature, it is very helpful to help us understand the problem, proposed solution (if any) and similar solutions we might glean insights from if they exist.

Open an issue or bug directly

If you prefer the direct approach, you can search across all tracked issues in OpenFn's GitHub org here, comment on them, or even pick them up to work on yourself. If you don't find what you're looking for, please go ahead an create an issue in the relevant repo. We'll do our best to respond promptly!

Summary Roadmaps

How to interpret Status values in the roadmap

• Tracked means we're thinking about this, but it hasn't been designed/scoped/shaped
• Shaped means it's been scoped and ready to be picked up by an engineer
• In dev means it's currently being worked on by an engineer (see NOW)

Newly Released Features

View Product Updates to see features that have been recently delivered and, in the event that something is removed from the roadmap, an explanation of what's been removed and why.

For more granular details, the CHANGELOG is always up to date.

Lightning Roadmap

OpenFn/Lightning is the fully open-source workflow automation platform at the core of the OpenFn Digital Public Good (learn more about the product here).

ID	Feature	Status	Timeline	Δ	Description
2126	OpenFn Workflow JSON APIs	In dev	Q1'25		Expose API endpoints that allows developers to interact with OpenFn from other platforms or within jobs. e.g create a new workflow with the jobs given a JSON payload.
2815	Data Collections (all users)	Tracked	Q1'25	✨ (new)	Make data collections accessible to users by allowing project owners and admins to create and manage data collections in their projects. (See feature request.)
1880	1-Click Manual Run for Cron	Shaped	Q1'25		Allow users to manually run cron triggered workflows with a custom cursor and run now button.
1755	Control Log Levels	Shaped	Q1'25		Control what is printed in run logs by specifying log levels and allow users to disable printing console.logs, for data privacy once workflows are handling production data.
2723	Workflow Template Library	Tracked	Q1'25		Create a library of common workflows that users can easily access and clone for use in their projects.
2155	Locally-Served Adaptors	Tracked	Q1'25		Enable lightning to use local adaptors to allow developers quickly test adaptors locally without deploying to npm
2155	Easy Custom Inputs for Work Orders	Tracked	Q1'25		Users should be able to trigger a manual run with a custom input data. The input data can a raw JSON, CSV, I/O data clip or dataset from project collections
2722	Canvas & Inspector Redesign	Tracked	Q2'25	⬇️ Q1'25	Redesign the canvas and inspector to make user experience and workflow building better for users.
2524	Project Sandbox & Production Modes	Tracked	Q2'25	⬇️ Q1'25	Allow users to be able to switch between sandbox and production modes in their projects.
608	Websocket Worker Monitoring	Tracked	Q2'25		Give users better visibility of what's happening on inside the worker, especially when an error occurs during run execution.

You can follow Lightning's progress and track delivered features in the Changelog.

Adaptors Roadmap

OpenFn's open-source adaptors can connect any application, including web APIs, databases, and even raw data files, enabling interoperability with any information system (read more). Adaptors, alongside OpenFn's workflow engine, enable automated workflows that cut across digital systems.

ID	Adaptor	Status	Timeline	Δ	Description
-	OCL	Tracked	Q1'25		To ensure that mappings stored in OCL can be more easily access and processed as inputs in OpenFn/Lightning workflows
737	MOSIP 🆕	Tracked	Q1'25		Add a MOSIP adaptor that enables users to integrate with MOSIP for identity management use cases across countries.
736	OpenCRVS 🆕	Tracked	Q1'25		Add an OpenCRVS adaptor.
738	ArcGIS 🆕	Tracked	Q1'25		Add an ArcGIS adaptor for users to build workflow that manage data sync between source and online maps with OpenFn Workflows.
697	DHIS2	Delivered	Q1'25		Extend the DHIS2 Adaptor to support Personal Access Token(PAT).

Docs Roadmap

ID	Feature	Status	Timeline	Δ	Description
-	New Lightning User Guidance	In Progress	Q1'25		New documentation, videos, and other user guidance on how to use OpenFn/Lightning and how to migrate existing OpenFn/platform projects to Lightning (the new OpenFn "v2")

Have questions, feedback or found a bug?

We encourage users to post their questions on the OpenFn Community at community.openfn.org, or consider creating issues for bugs via product repository. You can also independently start contributing to the OpenFn software, adaptors, or documentation by getting started here.