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 follw the Shape Up approach to help our small engineering team build meaningul products and features faster without compomising on quality. With Shape Up in place, we typcially 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 proiritize 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 evluating 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 Next 📝 for what's being shaped and may be funded in the next cycle

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

See Bugs 🐞 for reported bugs

We will update this site periodically (ideally after each cycle, typically lasting between 2-6 weeks) to reflect our progress on major items. You can also keep track of all new features, changes, and bug fixes in our Changelog.

How to get involved

We use Canny to receive, track, engage and manage new feature requests from the community of users of OpenFn globally whilst giving users the ability to the upvote their favoritie and mission critical feature request.

Upvote features 👍

1. Go to openfn.canny.io
2. Scroll down or use the filter and search features to see existing feature requests
3. Click on the (^) beside 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 openfn.canny.io
2. Provide a very clear, concise and descriptive title for the feature (e.g., "Make the new workflow button green")
3. Describe the feature request in detail and why it's important to you
4. Share the feature request on the OpenFn community and 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)
• Delivered means it's been released (see Changelog)

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).

Feature	Status	Target Timeline	Related Links	Description
1. Extend workflow canvas to allow branch merging	Delivered	Q2 '24	Issue 2008	Allow users to be able to skip steps and also merge two steps to one downstream step in a workflow
2. Implement Generic OAuth credential type	Delivered	Q2 '24	Issue 1900	Generic OAuth client and credential support for adaptors. Users can configure their own OAuth applications and credentials for OpenFn.
3. Add path params in webhook triggers URL	Delivered	Q2 '24	Issue 1954	Support path params in wenhook URL for workflows.
4. Automatic GitHub version control	Delivered	Q2 '24	Issue 970	Use GitHub Version Control to track and review changes to your workflow. Sync an OpenFn project and workflows to a specified GitHub repository github and allow users to be able to update OpenFn projects with GitHub versions.
5. Configurable data clips and history retention period	Delivered	Q2 '24	Issue 1760	Allow project administrators to configure how long they want OpenFn to retain data clips and other artifacts related to a workorders in their projects
6. Enable workflow snapshotting	Delivered	Q3 '24	Issue 1680	Keep a snapshot of a snapshot based on a run or saved changes of the workflow. Allow users to be able to view snapshot and switch to the latest version of the workflow from a snapshot mode.
7. Enable configurable concurrency by workflow	Delivered	Q3 '24	Issue 2002	Allow users to control the limit of concurrent runs per workflow in a project.
8. New workflow triggers (Kafka)	Delivered	Q3 '24	Issue 1801	Enable a new trigger type that allows users to run workflows based on messages from a Kafka cluster.
9. AI-enabled assitants	Delivered	Q3 '24	Issue 2193	LLM based AI assitant that supports users with job writing, debugging and co-piloting their workflow design process.
10. Invite new users as collaborators	Delivered	Q3 '24	Issue 1835	Invite users who do not have OpenFn accounts to projects as collaborators.
11. Allow users to create projects	In dev	Q3 '24	Issue 1700	All users to create new projects from their dashboard.
13. Allow users to export workorder history	Shaped	Q3 '24	Issue 1698	Allow project users to be able to export workorder history. The workorder history contains ALL logs and data clips (Input and Output) associated with runs in a workorder.
12. Control log outputs	Tracked	Q3 '24	Issue 1755	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.
14. Enable manual workflow triggers	Tracked	Q4 '24	Issue 2155	Enable users to manually trigger workflow with JSON/CSV data as input data clip
15. Project datastores and buffers	Tracked	Q4 '24	Issue 2190	Allow users to configure a data store or buffer that allows temporary of storage of data that can be used in a workflow.
16. Redesign workflow canvas and inspector interface	Tracked	Q4 '24	Issue 2021	Make workflow design better to help user build workflow faster and easier.
17. Improved History page filter	Tracked	Q4 '24	Issue 1791	Extend workorder history page and enable cascading filtering. This is useful for debuging, failure recovery and auditability of the workflow.
18. Enhanced websocket worker Monitoring	Tracked		Issue 608	Give users better visibility of what's happening on inside the worker, especially when an error occurs during run execution.
19. Expanded Audit Trail and Node Authentication (ATNA) functionality	Tracked		Issue 271	Extend audit trail functionality to cover more aspects of ATNA, reference OpenHIE IOL requirement IOLWF-1.

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.

Feature	Status	Target Timeline	Related Links	Description
1. Add "magic" functions to existing, in-demand adaptors	Delivered	Q1 2024	Issue 243	Add functions, dynamic lists, and shortcuts to fast-track workflow configuration for key adaptors including HTTP, DHIS2, CommCare, & OpenMRS
2. New OpenMRS adaptor version	Delivered	Q2 2024	See existing adaptor docs	To ensure compliance with OpenMRS v3
3. Enhancements to FHIR & OpenHIM adaptors	Delivered	Q3 2024	See existing adaptors for FHIR and OpenHIM	To rebuild the existing 2021 OpenFn Instant-OpenHIE reference demo to highlight the exchange of data between existing non-FHIR digital health tools and a HAPI FHIR server. (OpenFn Lightning is OpenHIE-compliant and can be used as a workflow engine for the OpenHIE Interoperability layer - learn more here.) We also want to demonstrate data exchange between existing non-FHIR digital health tools and key components of Google’s Open Health Stack and Cloud Healthcare API
4. Enhancements to the OCL adaptor	Not started	Q4 2024	See existing adaptor docs	To ensure that mappings stored in OCLs can be more easily access and processed as inputs in OpenFn/Lightning workflows

Docs Roadmap

Feature	Status	Target Timeline	Related Links	Description
1. OpenFn and the OpenHIE architecture	Delivered	2024	See current docs	New page dedicated to how OpenHIE aligns with OpenHIE architecture; expansion of the existing small section on standards
2. New Lightning User Guidance	In dev	2024	To be hosted on docs.openfn.org	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")
3. Template FHIR Workflows	Planned	2024	To be hosted on demo.openfn.org	OpenFn can already help achieve FHIR compliance, but we will build and document reference/template workflows to demonstrate how OpenFn/Lightning can automate data exchange, registration, and/or reporting workflows between non-FHIR data systems and FHIR APIs.
4. Template Alerting Workflows	Not started	2024	See OpenHIE docs; to be hosted on demo.openfn.org	To demonstrate how OpenFn can facilitate one-way communication to a client or provider listed in the HIE (from the OpenHIE standard spec)
5. Template Shared Health Record Workflows	Not started	2024	See OpenHIE docs; to be hosted on demo.openfn.org	To demonstrate how OpenFn can allow external systems to automatically save and retrieve information from the HIE (from the OpenHIE standard spec)
6. Template Aggregate Reporting Workflows	Not started	2024	See OpenHIE docs; to be hosted on demo.openfn.org	To demonstrate how OpenFn can support aggregate data exchange of health indicators, leveraging the ADX data standard

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 independetly start contributing to the OpenFn software, adaptors, or documentation by getting started here.