Camunda vs. ServiceNow App Engine

Camunda Platform is well suited for scenarios where there are different stages in a business flow and the flow is driven by user action at each stage. For example placing of an order on an ecommerce platform. Depending on whether user was able to make the payment or not the workflow would go to dispatch or retry stage. Now the retry stage would trigger further actions like sending follow up emails etc. Likewise, dispatch stage would have a different set of actions. Since every order is important and we need to know where it stands, using Camunda Platform is imperative. Camunda Platform might not be a right choice where just a one off thing needs to be done. For example, uploading of product information by user or periodic processing of heavy images by a worker. These are all either one step processes or periodic automated processes where we can track the status without using a business modeler like Camunda Platform.

Incentivized

I suggest that people in ServiceNow start by building apps in App Engine through learning plans on the ServiceNow Developer site. It is a very guided process, and it is fun to do. Newcomers in ServiceNow can learn a lot about configuring tables, fields, behavior of fields, roles, Flows, UX, and many more. App Engine tends to make development work simpler and faster to ship. However, it can be a difficult concept for people new to ServiceNow to understand scoped applications. So there should be a brief on the App Engine homepage that mentions what can be built and includes a link to learn more about scoped apps.

Incentivized

• Asynchronous functionality of Camunda Platform and different types of gateways.

• App Engine can be used by non-developers to create Applications on the go, without coding.
• App Engine has all the important aspects of the application available for adding or editing within a single record. Hence, it is easier to modify.
• App Engine has a delegated development option which can be granted to specific developers or groups to manage a specific area for Scoped App Development without giving admin rights.

Incentivized

• Camunda expects that you will develop your own user interfaces. This is either a benefit or a barrier depending on your perspective on packaged UI.
• As an open source vendor, Camunda is under-covered in analyst reports.

• The scoped app prefix should be shorter to allow appropriate application naming if it exceeds the character limit. Either the scoped app name limit shall be increased, or the limit on scoped app prefixes shall be increased to allow better naming for scoped apps.
• It's challenging to make citizen development work at scale. Businesses want experienced pro code developers rather than citizen developers to work on this feature.

Incentivized

There are limited use cases where we are just using the service now app engine as of now

Incentivized

Overall, very much usable for anything that happens in organisation. Able to track and discover each asset in the underlying infrastructure of the organisation and manage them. It is easy to understand the impact if any asset fails and hence risk mitigation becomes easier. It is a simple tool but with everything an organisation requires to go live with maximum customer impact and satisfaction

Incentivized

Almost 100% available on time

Incentivized

Camunda provides pretty standard product support offerings.

They tried their best to resolve our queries every time we contacted them about any technical support

Incentivized

App engine can be used just to process the minimal amount of the data which is being received from the user. We are service now catalogue items or any other data technology.

Incentivized

Lacks good documentation. Training and documentation is geared towards those who are already technically adept. Does not have as many data integrations as other full fledged products. Paid version of Camunda is not as fully fledged as other products.

Incentivized

There were no options from the other products because ServiceNow App Engine is a large product with many different modules, growing each year, which allows you to recreate your business processes in a very short time, making the migration to ServiceNow very easy.

Incentivized

It is scalable but not reliable

Incentivized

• The positive impact is that we are able to ensure the business process is being followed and that results in orders getting processed successfully leading to customer satisfaction and revenue
• Another positive impact is that we are able to track any anomalies and any errors in the order flow and retry them so that users don't have a negative experience.
• A negative point is that it is an overhead to maintain so there is significant engineering effort getting invested there

Incentivized

• We have managed to close the un applied cash item from 56% to 89% in a given five working days period by using ServiceNow App Engine
• By automating and entire money laundering process, we have managed to provide the background check data as quickly as within a day, which was actually taking weeks Same reports when we were doing the things manually.

Incentivized