Flowable is a workflow and Business Process Management platform that provides a BPMN process engine, CMMN case engine, and DMN rule engine written in Java.
The platform addresses the need to orchestrate complex business processes and human workflows by offering a lightning-fast execution engine that can be embedded directly in Java applications or deployed as a standalone service. It supports BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation), CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation), and DMN (Decision Model and Notation) standards, allowing organizations to model, execute, and monitor processes at scale. The engine integrates tightly with Spring and exposes both Java and REST APIs for orchestrating human or system activities.
Flowable suits teams building Java applications that require workflow capabilities, from simple approval chains to complex case management scenarios. It can run embedded within an application, as a server, in clusters, or in cloud environments, making it flexible for various deployment patterns. The platform serves developers, system administrators, and business users, with a free cloud-based design tool available for modeling processes. Organizations should note that the current version requires Java 17 or higher, though an earlier branch maintains support for Java 8 and above.
The project maintains an active community forum and issue tracker for support and contributions. Development follows a structured contribution process documented in the repository wiki. The codebase is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and includes most sources as jar files within distributions, with full source code available on GitHub.
