Workflow Orchestration Patterns

Master workflow orchestration architecture with Temporal, covering fundamental design decisions, resilience patterns, and best practices for building reliable distributed systems.

When to Use Workflow Orchestration

Ideal Use Cases (Source: docs.temporal.io)

• Multi-step processes spanning machines/services/databases
• Distributed transactions requiring all-or-nothing semantics
• Long-running workflows (hours to years) with automatic state persistence
• Failure recovery that must resume from last successful step
• Business processes: bookings, orders, campaigns, approvals
• Entity lifecycle management: inventory tracking, account management, cart workflows
• Infrastructure automation: CI/CD pipelines, provisioning, deployments
• Human-in-the-loop systems requiring timeouts and escalations

When NOT to Use

• Simple CRUD operations (use direct API calls)
• Pure data processing pipelines (use Airflow, batch processing)
• Stateless request/response (use standard APIs)
• Real-time streaming (use Kafka, event processors)

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Best Practices

Workflow Design

1. Keep workflows focused - Single responsibility per workflow
2. Small workflows - Use child workflows for scalability
3. Clear boundaries - Workflow orchestrates, activities execute
4. Test locally - Use time-skipping test environment

Activity Design

1. Idempotent operations - Safe to retry
2. Short-lived - Seconds to minutes, not hours
3. Timeout configuration - Always set timeouts
4. Heartbeat for long tasks - Report progress
5. Error handling - Distinguish retryable vs non-retryable

Common Pitfalls

Workflow Violations: