The only area for improvement in Temporal is the UI. I know it is a non-UI first product, but comparing Camunda versus Temporal UI, there is a difference. Moreover, n8n, being a no-code platform, is easier for business people when writing workflows. Hence, we maintain two systems today: n8n for no-code solutions where business automations can be managed, and Temporal for mission-critical systems which cannot fail.
The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, provisioning the Temporal namespace via Terraform. Users can’t do that yet. Users still have to do it manually. Another thing I remember is the certificate rotation. Users can’t configure that to be done automatically. Users have to do it manually in each of the Temporal namespaces, which is actually super annoying for us. We’ve been talking with them about whether or not they were going to add a feature that would support that, and they said that it’s in the backlog, and they’re still working on it, but they don’t really have a timeline for it yet. So, the operations on the interface are still in very early stages. Users can’t really do that many things when it comes to administration. The essential things users can do, but the more convenient things, some of them are lacking. So that’s a downside. When you run your activities, it would be nice if you would not only see the latest error you get from an activity. When you do an activity, there are retries. Retries happen for various reasons, which means you can execute the same activity multiple times and get different errors. Now Temporal only shows the latest one. It would be nice if it showed all the errors. I’ve been reading a bit about it, and as far as I understand, it’s a limitation of how the system is built. But from what I understood from my colleagues, they talked to Temporal, and they said that there is possibly going to be a way to do that. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but it would be really nice. So that’s something that came to mind. Another aspect of it that I don’t like is that Temporal Cloud is not friendly for smaller users. I wanted to include Temporal in some of my projects, and Temporal Cloud would have been a nice addition because managing the self-hosted cluster, I did not find easy. There’s a lot of setup in doing that. It would have been nice for me to use Temporal Cloud, but the pricing model doesn’t really allow for that. If I remember correctly, there’s $200 customer support fee you have to pay for Temporal if you register for Temporal Cloud, which is obviously way out of my budget for a self-hosted user that just wants to run a few workloads. It would be nice if they made some changes to their pricing model so that not just companies have an incentive to use Temporal Cloud. Because, at the moment, there’s no way for me to do it without having to pay a lot of money.
Sometimes it scales kind of badly, but it depends on the process of our products. If we have too many signals in a workflow, we might need 50 or 60 pods of the same worker. But this doesn’t happen with every worker; it just happens in some special use cases. The scalability is great, but could be better. We needed to change Temporal's database from Postgres to Cassandra to handle it more cheaply for our infrastructure. We do not use Temporal Cloud; we use Temporal Open Source. Cassandra DB was the best choice because it was cheaper. The problem with Postgres was the only problem we faced. But besides that, it has been great since the start.
One area where I think Temporal could improve is its dashboard, particularly in event tracking. Currently, the dashboard doesn't show a time-based view of events, meaning it doesn't display when an event started or went through the retry process. If this feature could be added in a future release, it would significantly enhance monitoring capabilities. Other than that, Temporal's overall performance is quite impressive, and we're confident we can migrate to the Temporal workflow.
Developers often mention the desire for a more intuitive visualization of workflow states. While Temporal has matured significantly, its current workflow state visualization can be challenging to interpret. The tooling required for visualization, such as integrating with platforms like Grafana, involves extensive instrumentation that developers must handle. Improvements in this area would be beneficial. Additionally, the methods and documentation could be enhanced, as Temporal’s SDK can be costly and has a steep learning curve. Better documentation would be crucial to help developers navigate these challenges.
The network should consider adding a basic authentication system to Temporal, such as JWT token-based authentication. Temporal doesn’t include these features by default, and while Temporal Cloud might offer them, on-premise users have to build their security systems. This is an area where there is room for improvement. Temporal terminology can be confusing for new users. A more user-friendly approach or improved documentation could help ease the learning curve. The current documentation often requires users to piece together information from various sources, including existing implementations from other organizations or direct developer support. The documentation needs a significant update. Not all necessary information is available online, and community support is limited. For instance, our security team implemented certain features a year ago, but it included relevant information in their documentation. Improved documentation and better community support would greatly benefit users working with Temporal.
Temporal lacks many resources, like YouTube videos, which users can use to learn or refer to if they get stuck with the solution. Normally, if someone gets stuck with other products, they can see some videos on YouTube, get an idea, and implement it. Temporal is very new in the market, so it lacks such resources.
Temporal automates and manages workflows efficiently, offering resilience in distributed systems with features like retry and fault tolerance. Its capabilities in handling complex workflows and integrating with programming languages make it a valuable tool for managing diverse business logic.Temporal excels in workflow orchestration, automating tasks across multiple platforms, and ensuring durability in asynchronous operations. It supports long-running workflows and simplifies handling...
The only area for improvement in Temporal is the UI. I know it is a non-UI first product, but comparing Camunda versus Temporal UI, there is a difference. Moreover, n8n, being a no-code platform, is easier for business people when writing workflows. Hence, we maintain two systems today: n8n for no-code solutions where business automations can be managed, and Temporal for mission-critical systems which cannot fail.
The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, provisioning the Temporal namespace via Terraform. Users can’t do that yet. Users still have to do it manually. Another thing I remember is the certificate rotation. Users can’t configure that to be done automatically. Users have to do it manually in each of the Temporal namespaces, which is actually super annoying for us. We’ve been talking with them about whether or not they were going to add a feature that would support that, and they said that it’s in the backlog, and they’re still working on it, but they don’t really have a timeline for it yet. So, the operations on the interface are still in very early stages. Users can’t really do that many things when it comes to administration. The essential things users can do, but the more convenient things, some of them are lacking. So that’s a downside. When you run your activities, it would be nice if you would not only see the latest error you get from an activity. When you do an activity, there are retries. Retries happen for various reasons, which means you can execute the same activity multiple times and get different errors. Now Temporal only shows the latest one. It would be nice if it showed all the errors. I’ve been reading a bit about it, and as far as I understand, it’s a limitation of how the system is built. But from what I understood from my colleagues, they talked to Temporal, and they said that there is possibly going to be a way to do that. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but it would be really nice. So that’s something that came to mind. Another aspect of it that I don’t like is that Temporal Cloud is not friendly for smaller users. I wanted to include Temporal in some of my projects, and Temporal Cloud would have been a nice addition because managing the self-hosted cluster, I did not find easy. There’s a lot of setup in doing that. It would have been nice for me to use Temporal Cloud, but the pricing model doesn’t really allow for that. If I remember correctly, there’s $200 customer support fee you have to pay for Temporal if you register for Temporal Cloud, which is obviously way out of my budget for a self-hosted user that just wants to run a few workloads. It would be nice if they made some changes to their pricing model so that not just companies have an incentive to use Temporal Cloud. Because, at the moment, there’s no way for me to do it without having to pay a lot of money.
Sometimes it scales kind of badly, but it depends on the process of our products. If we have too many signals in a workflow, we might need 50 or 60 pods of the same worker. But this doesn’t happen with every worker; it just happens in some special use cases. The scalability is great, but could be better. We needed to change Temporal's database from Postgres to Cassandra to handle it more cheaply for our infrastructure. We do not use Temporal Cloud; we use Temporal Open Source. Cassandra DB was the best choice because it was cheaper. The problem with Postgres was the only problem we faced. But besides that, it has been great since the start.
One area where I think Temporal could improve is its dashboard, particularly in event tracking. Currently, the dashboard doesn't show a time-based view of events, meaning it doesn't display when an event started or went through the retry process. If this feature could be added in a future release, it would significantly enhance monitoring capabilities. Other than that, Temporal's overall performance is quite impressive, and we're confident we can migrate to the Temporal workflow.
Developers often mention the desire for a more intuitive visualization of workflow states. While Temporal has matured significantly, its current workflow state visualization can be challenging to interpret. The tooling required for visualization, such as integrating with platforms like Grafana, involves extensive instrumentation that developers must handle. Improvements in this area would be beneficial. Additionally, the methods and documentation could be enhanced, as Temporal’s SDK can be costly and has a steep learning curve. Better documentation would be crucial to help developers navigate these challenges.
The network should consider adding a basic authentication system to Temporal, such as JWT token-based authentication. Temporal doesn’t include these features by default, and while Temporal Cloud might offer them, on-premise users have to build their security systems. This is an area where there is room for improvement. Temporal terminology can be confusing for new users. A more user-friendly approach or improved documentation could help ease the learning curve. The current documentation often requires users to piece together information from various sources, including existing implementations from other organizations or direct developer support. The documentation needs a significant update. Not all necessary information is available online, and community support is limited. For instance, our security team implemented certain features a year ago, but it included relevant information in their documentation. Improved documentation and better community support would greatly benefit users working with Temporal.
Temporal lacks many resources, like YouTube videos, which users can use to learn or refer to if they get stuck with the solution. Normally, if someone gets stuck with other products, they can see some videos on YouTube, get an idea, and implement it. Temporal is very new in the market, so it lacks such resources.