Temporal Roadmap Summer 2023 Recap

This post summarizes our Roadmap presentation and Q&A.

Previewing the Replay Conference: An Interactive Discussion on Temporal's Roadmap

This webinar previews a small slice of the great content presented at Replay, our annual conference on September 12th-14th in Seattle. (Use WEBINAR20 for 20% off your ticket!)

At Temporal, we view our roadmap as a collaborative process, so we encourage your input. A roadmap isn't a specific timeline but a directional guide. You might hear hints for announcements at Replay 😉.

Temporal's roadmap revolves around Approachability, Adaptability, and Applicability. Our efforts focus on the core functionality of Temporal, including Workflows, Activities, and Temporal Cloud, our cloud service.

Approachability Update: Cloud Automation, .NET Developments, IDE Plugin Work

Approachability refers to enhancing user experience without reducing Temporal's complexity.

We're improving Temporal Cloud's automation capabilities based on your feedback. We're developing APIs to automate namespace and user management and working on releasing an API keys feature and service account feature.

We've introduced a .NET SDK, now in beta, and encourage .NET users to try it. It offers type-safe APIs and is resource-efficient.

We also have a VS Code plugin for TypeScript workflows, enhancing debugging. You can set breakpoints in code or workflow history, providing insights into your execution process.

All our libraries, including the .NET SDK and VS Code plugin, are open source. Log issues or feature requests on GitHub or join our community Slack for direct interaction with our developers.

Your feedback shapes our development process. We'll discuss the developer ecosystem at Replay, providing insights into what's next.

Adaptability: Hierarchy and Workflow Update

Adaptability concerns Temporal's integration with other projects and scalability within your organization. We're working on crucial aspects like workflow versioning.

Our hierarchy project aims to meet diverse working styles, with a focus on user lifecycle management, grouping namespaces, and managing cost center attribution.

We're developing a "workflow update" feature, which combines signal and query functionality, reducing latency and adding a validation hook in your workflow code that can prevent the update from being added to the event history.

Applicability: Making Temporal More Versatile and Adaptable

We aim to ensure Temporal's versatility across diverse use cases, focusing on making Temporal approachable, adaptable, and applicable to your unique needs.

We're launching global namespaces on Temporal Cloud for improved availability and introducing an HTTP API for Temporal Server.

We're also addressing the need for handling larger payloads, aiming to provide a solution for everyday business processes that require payloads larger than the current limit of two megabytes.

Here are all the roadmap features mentioned and more:

Audience Q&A

We're developing two HTTP APIs: Temporal server API (“Coming soon™️”) and an API for cloud operations automation (expected H2 2023).

The forthcoming Terraform operator will automate namespace creation and related tasks. The initial target audience: platform administrators using Temporal Cloud, enabling them to create namespaces and users on demand.

There are no immediate plans to support audit logging features in a self-hosted open-source server.

We're planning improvements to namespaces, including adding metadata and descriptions for better searchability and flagging.

Regarding global namespace failover, Temporal will have a version history concept, enabling the recording of all events, ensuring workflow progress, and aiding conflict resolution.

Global namespace utility varies depending on the reliability requirements of the use case and can aid migrations, such as moving from self-hosted to cloud or vice versa.

We're overhauling versioning to enhance its simplicity and information exposure.

Our design team, responsible for Temporal's user experience, created the Replay conference mascot, embodying our "work hard, play hard" ethos. Replay fosters a creative, relaxed environment that encourages the free exchange of ideas, with a focus on the latest trends and best practices in backend engineering.

Learn more at this year’s Replay conference! 💃