Frends Roadmap

Frends comes with a dedicated API Portal — a new add-on web app designed to simplify how your APIs are shared, documented, and consumed. Whether your users are internal developers, partners, or external clients, this portal offers a clean, unified experience for exploring and onboarding to your APIs.

Think of it as the storefront for your integrations — customizable, self-service, and always up to date.

What’s new:

🧑‍💻 API Consumer Onboarding
Users can register and access APIs via identity providers of your choice — making onboarding secure and frictionless.

📦 API Products
Group your APIs into logical, reusable products — whether native to Frends or wrapped via passthrough management.

🔍 API Discoverability
Easily publish and browse available API Products through the Portal’s intuitive UI.

📝 Lightweight CMS
Write and manage help content, onboarding guides, and marketing blurbs directly in the Portal using Markdown.

🎨 Whitelabeling
Customize the look and feel of the Portal to match your brand — logos, colors, fonts, and more.

Why it matters:

✅ Faster Developer Onboarding
Developers get what they need — faster. No more back-and-forth emails or lost API specs.

✅ Better API Governance
API Products give structure to how your APIs are offered and consumed.

✅ Looks Like You
Whitelabeling ensures the Portal fits your brand — whether you’re exposing APIs internally or to partners.

We’ve rebuilt the Frends start page and onboarding experience into something much smarter (and friendlier). Whether you’re a Frends veteran or a total newbie, you’ll now land on a page that knows what you need next — and actually helps you get there.

The new start page isn’t just a dashboard — it’s a command center. Think guided tours, smart search, and helpful widgets. Everything is designed to help you explore, build, and feel right at home.

It´s a Welcome That Actually Welcomes. 😍

What’s new:

📚 Smart Starting Page
You now land on a page showing where to begin, what to try next, and how you’re doing. A handy onboarding widget guides your journey right from your first login.

🔍 Global Search, Zero Friction
The new search bar is a power tool. Instantly find Templates, Processes, APIs, Environment Variables, Users, and more — from anywhere. Plus, toggle between list and grid views because, hey, you deserve options.

🧠 Your Onboarding Assistant
Not sure what to do next? There’s now a dedicated onboarding page that lists all available tutorials, tracks your progress, and helps you level up, step-by-step.

💡 Built-in Feedback Loops
Want to suggest a feature? Found a bug? There are now dedicated pages just for that — pre-filled with your info so you can submit in seconds.

🧭 Behind the Scenes: Base Architecture
We created a flexible, containerized front page structure and backend APIs (controllers) that make all of this magic possible. Think of it as scaffolding for even more smart features to come.

Frends already enables powerful Business Process Automation, including support for long-running workflows. Today, these are typically built as multiple interdependent Frends processes, each handling a step in the journey. While effective, the logic often lives across several process definitions — making the big picture harder to follow.

This new feature brings it all together.

Now, you can model the entire business process — even long-running, asynchronous flows — in a single visual BPMN diagram. It’s not just technically streamlined; it’s also easier for business stakeholders to understand, follow, and trust.

Frends processes can pause, wait, and continue across long time. This new feature set allows you to chain multiple Frends processes together using correlation identifiers, making long-running and event-driven workflows a breeze.

Imagine a process that starts today and continues when a file arrives next week. That’s now possible — with full-state persistence.

What’s new:

⛓️ Chained Process Execution
You can link separate Frends processes together using correlation variables (like an OrderID). Each part can run independently — days or weeks apart — but stay logically connected.

⏱️ Timer Shape
A brand new BPMN shape that lets you pause a process for a specified time. Think “sleep until next Tuesday.”

📨 Wait for Signal Shape
Pause your process until an external signal tells it to resume — whether from the same process or another one entirely.

📡 Send Signal Shape
Send a signal to resume a specific paused process instance — great for connecting async flows.

🧠 Stateful and Durable
All data is saved between steps, meaning your paused processes remember everything — securely and reliably. You decide the persistence point - this way we do not sacrifice the performance.

Why it matters:

✅ Flexible Orchestration
Break down big processes into manageable parts that sync on your terms.

✅ Async Made Easy
Handle scenarios with variable delays — like external approvals or delayed data inputs.

✅ Low-Code, High Power
All of this happens right inside the familiar BPMN Editor.

After hundreds of customer votes and requests, Frends is getting a brand-new Visual Data Mapper — bringing a faster, more intuitive way to transform data between formats and schemas. No more fiddling with manual logic or raw JSON — just drag, drop, and let the platform do the heavy lifting.

Whether you're working with APIs, files, or internal data structures, mapping fields is now visual, smart, and low-code friendly.

What’s new:

📄 Automatic Schema Detection
Paste in your JSON, XML, or other structured data — Frends will infer the schema instantly, so you can start mapping right away.

🧠 AI-Assisted Mapping
Use the built-in AI Assistant to auto-generate mappings between source and target structures. Just say “map this to that” — and watch it go.

🧩 Low-Code Support
Need more control? You can still apply C# logic to any field or transformation, just like in existing Frends processes.

Why it matters:

✅ Faster Integrations
Skip the boilerplate — go straight from data source to output with visual clarity.

✅ Business-Friendly
Non-developers can now participate in data mapping without touching a line of code.

✅ AI + Low-Code = 🔥
Let AI handle the boring bits, then tweak the logic exactly how you need.

Current Frends can run prompts in ChatGPT tasks, but next, AI will go native in Frends. With our upcoming Native AI Task feature, you can embed Large Language Models (LLMs) like Azure OpenAI directly into your integration processes — no external services, no custom glue code. Just drag, drop, and orchestrate AI like any other BPMN task. You can also use pre-trained AI models from Hugging Face, which are easily available.

By orchestrating prompts together with Frends Tasks and Connectors, you can take the first step of the Agentic AI Approach.

• BPMN 2.0 with AI Native Tasks enables AI Orchestrations. Practically, you can implement the thought process of an employee as steps and decisions. 
• Frends Triggers already cover every system - so triggering the through process specific to an input is now possible. 
• Pour in Frends APIs in the thought process as actions of the AI employee. 

For example 

A support mail triggers a Frends AI process. Initial categorization is done with an LLM prompt. Is it a billing issue? Is it a tech incident or an access problem? Or a service request? Frends BPMN2.0 exclusive decision then routes the process to a corresponding path. If it is a tech incident, the next LLM step can be done. Itil Categorization with a pre-trained existing model in the next single LLM prompt step. If the AI step is prompted to gather logs, Frends basic Task will do that. The whole process for multiple different ticket cases can be written as a series of prompts, decisions, and actions. Future Frends features will expand the AI steps to do the API calls internally inside the AI step and even enable the Computer Use Access to finalize the Agentic AI path. These two steps will be included later on in our roadmap. With Native AI Task, you can already start your agentic AI journey. 

What’s new:

🧠 Native AI Shapes
Drop AI tasks directly into your BPMN flows. Build chat-like logic, classification steps, or dynamic decisions with zero code.

🔗 Prompt Chaining
Connect multiple AI steps in a single process — each using the output of the last to create intelligent, context-aware flows.

🚀 Pre-Trained Models
Use Azure OpenAI by default, or bring your own models from Hugging Face — no fine-tuning needed.

📈 Usage Tracking & Cost Controls
Track AI usage during dev and production. See inputs, outputs, and reasoning paths — keep control of performance and spend.

📊 Monitoring & Transparency
Frends will show you exactly what the AI saw, said, and decided — audit-friendly, debug-ready, and crystal clear.

Why it matters:

✅ Smarter Automation
Let AI handle tasks like summarization, routing, or intent detection — and make your processes more autonomous.

✅ Low-Code, No Hurdles
All AI logic is visual, editable, and doesn’t require managing session state or custom scripts.

✅ Ready to Scale
Automate more, faster — and stay in control of both outcomes and costs.

We're evolving the Frends Native AI Shape into a full Agentic AI execution model. This means you can now provide the AI Shape with a custom “AI Toolbox” — a list of pre-built Frends processes that the LLM can call as actions when reasoning through a task.

For example, you can expose your existing Frends APIs like getCustomerFromSalesforce or insertOrderToSAP to the LLM AI Shape. These become callable tools in AI’s decision-making logic, all orchestrated with standard BPMN 2.0. AI chooses which actions to execute, using your own APIs and automation logic. It's like giving your process a brain — with hands.

Customer Benefits:

• 🛠️ Composable AI Actions: Expose your APIs or automations as reusable actions for LLM to reason with.

• ⚙️ Agentic Orchestration: AI can plan and decide what steps to take using your own logic and systems.

• 🧩 Low-Code, High-Value: Use familiar BPMN 2.0 and Frends triggers to create AI-driven processes — no AI retraining needed.

• 🚀 Use Case Ready: For example, from a single prompt, AI checks if a customer exists (via Salesforce), inserts an order (into SAP), and handles errors — autonomously.

Why it matters:
This is the bridge from static AI tasks to AI Agents. You’re not just prompting AI — you’re letting it act.

For more information about Autonomous AI Agents see the following Gartner research: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/intelligent-agent-in-ai

Passthrough APIs provide a way of more easily configure API calls to be forwarded to backend system and ways of monitoring these calls

• Passthrough API functionality to enable users to easily configure existing API’s to be governed by Frends API Management without having to have an underlining Frends process attached to the API.

  • The passthrough API will have simplified configuration capabilities to modify:

    • HTTP Headers

    • Authentication methods

    • URL paths and parts

• Improved API Monitoring capabilities

  • Introduce new API Monitoring views to show more API relevant data such as HTTP response codes as well as better ways to view the overall API health and execution statistics

API Policies

We are introducing Unified API Policies, designed to centralize and streamline access management for all API’s while preparing for the upcoming release of the Frends API Portal.

Key Enhancements:

• Unified Policy Configuration: With Unified API Policies, you can easily configure access restrictions and throttling for all your APIs through a single, user-friendly mechanism.

• Throttling and Access Control: Tailor API Policies to meet your specific needs. Define access limits and throttling rules to ensure optimal API usage and prevent abuse.

• Adaptable to Any Authentication Method: API Policies are versatile and can be applied to APIs regardless of the authentication method used, providing consistent control and management.

New Authentication Method: Private Application Registration

Additionally we are introducing a new authentication method to work with the reworked API Policies: Private Application Registrations.

Key Enhancements:

• Secure Authentication: Private Application Registrations supersede API Keys, offering a more secure and modern authentication solution.

• Static JWT Tokens: These tokens are essentially static JSON Web Tokens (JWT) containing user-provided data about the API consumer, alongside digital signatures to ensure data integrity.

We are introducing an advanced feature within Frends that enables users to create Code shapes efficiently through natural language prompts. This enhancement streamlines the process of writing C# code to perform complex integration tasks within your integration processes.

Key Enhancements:

• Contextual Information: System prompts are integrated to provide contextual details for process configuration, including environment variable names, process variables, trigger variables, and access to task results.

• Seamless Integration: When opted in the Process Editor seamlessly connects to our LLM service (Azure Open AI) for effortless use.

• Tenant-Specific Configuration: For security and flexibility, each Frends tenant will utilize it’s own dedicated instance of the LLM model for context and session security.

We are introducing a powerful new capability within Frends that enables users to generate process descriptions and documentation with ease, using the Frends Large Language Model (LLM). This feature simplifies the process of creating detailed descriptions for your Processes.

Key Highlights:

• Description Creation: Users can initiate the process by simply clicking a button to have the Frends LLM generate an initial Process description and documentation based on the BPMN Process designed, variables and Tasks used as well as any user provided documentation.

• Fine-Tuning with Additional Prompts: After receiving the initial response, users have the flexibility to provide additional prompts to further refine and customize the generated description.

Building on the previous feature of LLM Code Generation we are also introducing a feature that allows users to configure Tasks seamlessly through natural language prompts. This simplifies the process of configuring Task parameters, creating low-code mapping configurations and utilizing Task results and other variables when configuring Frends tasks.

Key Highlights:

• Effortless Task Configuration: Users can effortlessly configure Tasks by describing the required functionality for the task using plain language, eliminating the need for manual configuration.

• Contextual Continuity: This feature retains the chat context, enabling users to iteratively enhance Task configurations within the same conversation as well as test out their configuration at any time.

• Tenant-Specific Configuration: For security and flexibility, each Frends tenant will utilize it’s own dedicated instance of the LLM model for context and session security.

We are introducing a valuable enhancement to the Frends Process Editor by incorporating Decision Model and Notation (DMN) functionality. DMN provides an efficient means of mapping data and decision-making, as described in detail here.

Key Enhancements:

• DMN Shape Integration: With this feature, we are introducing a dedicated DMN shape within the Frends Process Editor. This shape will allow users to create input maps following the table structure outlined in the Wikipedia article.

• Mapping to Frends Variables: Users can easily associate DMN inputs with various Frends variables, streamlining the data mapping process.

• Output Generation: The result of the DMN shape will provide corresponding outputs based on the input configurations ready to be used in following integration tasks and steps.