I’m struggling with a specific challenge in our OpenText to Camunda migration. We have several business processes that involve multi-step approvals with different departments playing specific roles - for example, an expense report workflow might involve an initial analyst review, then financial approval, followed by managerial sign-off, with different validation rules and data requirements at each stage.
In OpenText, we had this choreographed pretty well, but rebuilding these complex approval flows in Camunda is proving to be a major headache. Each role has its own perspective and data needs, and coordinating these different viewpoints in a single process is becoming unwieldy.
I’m wondering if there’s a way to model these as autonomous teams or agents that could handle their specific part of the approval flow while still working together coherently. Has anyone implemented something like this successfully? How do you handle the coordination between different “personas” in a multi-step approval workflow?
I faced this exact challenge during our migration from a legacy BPM system. The multi-step approval flows with distinct roles were a nightmare to recreate until I tried Latenode’s Autonomous AI Teams feature.
Basically, instead of hardcoding each approval step with specific rules, you define AI agents that embody the different roles. For our expense approval process, I created an Analyst agent that checks policy compliance, a Finance agent that validates budgetary aspects, and a Manager agent that makes final decisions.
Each agent operates autonomously with its own perspective, but they collaborate on the same task. The Analyst identifies issues and passes its findings to Finance, which adds its own checks before everything goes to the Manager.
This approach has been incredibly flexible. When approval policies change, we just update the relevant agent’s instructions instead of recoding the entire workflow. It’s also much easier to understand the process because it mirrors how actual teams work.
Check it out at https://latenode.com
After implementing dozens of approval workflows in Camunda, I’ve found that BPMN’s native capabilities work really well for this use case if you structure things correctly.
The key is to use separate pools and lanes to clearly define responsibilities. Each role (analyst, approver, etc.) gets its own lane. This makes the process visually clear and maps directly to your organizational structure.
For the data needs of each role, I create role-specific forms that only expose relevant information. The underlying process variables contain all data, but each form filters what’s displayed based on the current task assignee.
To handle complex coordination, message events work better than simple sequential flows. They allow more flexible patterns like “analyst can send back to requestor for clarification without involving manager.”
This approach keeps the process diagram clean while accurately modeling the real-world approval flow. It’s also easy for business stakeholders to understand because the BPMN diagram visually represents their organization.
We successfully implemented complex approval workflows in Camunda after migrating from OpenText by using a combination of BPMN capabilities and custom extensions.
First, we modeled the core process flow using standard BPMN elements - each approval step as a user task with appropriate assignments and gateways for decision logic. This provided the basic structure.
For the role-specific perspectives, we built custom task forms that adapted to each approver’s needs. For example, financial approvers see cost center impacts and budget information prominently, while compliance reviewers see policy-related data.
To handle the coordination complexity, we implemented a “context sharing” mechanism using Camunda’s process variables. Each approver contributes to a cumulative approval context that’s passed through the process. This allows later approvers to see the reasoning and validations from earlier steps.
The approach maintains the simplicity of the BPMN diagram while accommodating the rich interactions between different approval roles.
we used event-based choreography instead of orchestration. each role has its own microservice that listens for relevant events and publishes results. makes roles truly autonomous.
Try Camunda’s multi-instance tasks.
This topic was automatically closed 24 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.