# Flows for APEX  - Statement of Direction (June 2025)

## Flows for APEX v25.1 and Beyond

The Flows for APEX team is currently finalizing version 25.1, which will be available this summer in both **Community** and **Enterprise Editions**.

This release introduces significant enhancements to AI integration, workflow control, and developer experience.

## AI Service Task

With enterprise adoption of AI accelerating, how can AI-powered decision-making and document generation be integrated into your business processes?

The new **AI Service Task** allows calls to generative AI services (e.g., GPT) as part of a BPMN workflow. You can incorporate **RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)** and **vector search** to craft AI prompts based on real-time business context. The AI’s structured output can drive workflow decisions, generate documents, or produce dynamic content for use during execution.

## Process Suspend, Resume, and Rewind (EE only)

Real-world processes are never perfect—errors, data issues, or incorrect decisions may require intervention. The new suspend/resume functionality allows administrators to:

* Temporarily **pause** a running process
    
* **Rewind** to a previous task, gateway, or subprocess
    
* **Edit process variables** or remove execution paths
    
* Fully **resume** execution from the corrected point
    

While suspended, tasks and timers are frozen and inbound messages are queued. All admin interventions are logged for audit and diagnostics.

## APEX Human Task Enhancements

Flows for APEX supports multiple implementations for BPMN UserTasks, including APEX Human Tasks, Simple Forms, and custom APEX pages.

New enhancements to our APEX Human Task integration include:

* Dynamic task assignment of owners and business admins from within the BPMN model
    
* A new **Task Action plugin** to relay task outcomes, expirations, and cancellations directly to the workflow engine
    
* Automated cleanup of **orphaned tasks** from cancelled workflows
    

These improvements provide tighter integration between user interactions and workflow execution.

## Granular Event Logging

Logging is now more configurable. You can:

* Define logging granularity **per process**
    
* Enable **debug-level logging** on specific instances
    
* Capture and store detailed **event-level audit trails** for each process step
    

This helps developers and operations teams with diagnostics, compliance, and continuous improvement.

## Simple Process Starter Enhancements

Introduced in 2024, the **Simple Process Starter** provides end users with a centralized "process hub"—a place to launch new processes, view task status, and manage their workflow responsibilities.

Version 25.1 brings improved task visibility and usability refinements to help users quickly find and launch the right processes.

## Queued BPMN Message Flow (EE only)

BPMN Message Flows enable communication between processes—whether within the same APEX instance or across remote systems via REST.

In version 25.1, the **Enterprise Edition** introduces **queued message handling**. Inbound messages are queued and processed in sequence, improving reliability and scalability of inter-process communication.

## Additional Enhancements

* Admins can now force a “next step” after an error (EE only)
    
* Error Boundary Events now supported on PL/SQL Script Tasks
    
* BPMN diagrams can now define **instance naming rules**
    
* Availability of Process Diagram and instance status data via REST.
    

## Platform Requirements

Flows for APEX v25.1 requires:

* Oracle Database 19c or newer
    
* Oracle APEX 24.1 or newer
    

These requirements align with Oracle’s current support policies, which no longer support older APEX versions.

## Licensing

Features marked **EE only** are exclusive to the **Enterprise Edition**, available from [Flowquest Limited](https://www.flowquest.net). The Enterprise Edition includes product support and is recommended for significant production use.

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## Looking Ahead

Potential areas of future development after v25.1 include:

* **Extensible service task connector interface** for connecting workflows to other services such as, for example, APEX Office Print, Docusign, OCI Object Storage, and AI services.
    
* **AI-assisted BPMN modeling** for validation, generation, and optimization of models
    
* **Administration tools** for managing large-scale Flows for APEX environments
    
* **DMN-style Business Rules** for automating business rules in a process.
    

Note: Inclusion in this roadmap does not guarantee delivery or timeline. Many of these features will be exclusive to the Enterprise Edition. Your support of the Enterprise Edition directly contributes to the continued development and maintenance of both editions.