Emporix Orchestration Engine

Emporix Orchestration Engine runs value streams inside the Emporix Commerce Orchestration Platform, and its external surface is a CloudEvents receiver. Agents send signed events that start a new value stream instance or wake one paused on a human decision or a slow third party.

2 actions Custom auth available

Emporix Orchestration Engine website Platform Documentation Capability data verified 2026-08-26

Something happens outside Emporix, such as a supplier confirmation or a payment event

Agent assembles the fields the tenant's event type expects into a payload

The payload is serialized once and signed over the exact bytes that will be sent

Start Orchestration posts the signed event and opens a value stream instance

A gateway NOTICE reply is treated as a failure rather than a receipt

The returned request id is posted to the channel the operations team traces from

When the value stream pauses on a decision, a person answers it before Resume Paused Orchestration is called

What This Integration Enables

The Emporix Orchestration Engine runs value streams inside the Emporix Commerce Orchestration Platform, and its externally callable surface is exactly one thing: a signed CloudEvents receiver. You send an event and the engine either opens a new value stream instance or wakes one that has been waiting for it. That is a small surface, and it is the right one, because the interesting question is never how to send the event. It is where the event comes from and who answers when the stream stops.

That is the seam FlowRunner sits in. Emporix OE coordinates work inside Emporix. FlowRunner reaches the systems that are not Emporix and, more importantly, reaches people. A value stream that pauses waiting on a human decision has no way to find that human on its own. FlowRunner's human-in-the-loop step does: it puts the decision in front of the named owner through the channel they actually use, holds the instance id while it waits, and resumes the stream with the answer. This is what Orchestration as a Service means in practice when another engine is already in the picture. FlowRunner does not replace the value stream. It supplies the two things the value stream cannot get for itself: outside events and human judgment.

Without FlowRunner

Value streams stall on a person An instance waits on a human decision and nothing reaches that human where they work

Emporix only starts from Emporix Events that begin in a supplier mailbox or a spreadsheet never open a value stream at all

Success is assumed A 200 from the receiver is read as proof the instance started, which it is not

With FlowRunner

The pause reaches a person The waiting decision arrives in email, chat, or a phone call and the answer resumes the instance

Anything can be an event A payment webhook, a supplier email, or an approval elsewhere opens the right value stream

The ambiguous reply is caught A NOTICE response fails the step and names the source, instead of passing silently as a success

Use Case Scenarios

A supplier confirmation opens a value stream

A supplier confirms a delivery date by email, and the agent extracts the purchase order reference, the confirmed date, and the quantity. It builds the payload the tenant's event type expects, calls Start Orchestration, and reads the response strictly: an unknown event source is answered with a 200 and a NOTICE body, so the agent fails the step and names the source rather than reporting a working connection. The request id is posted to Slack alongside the purchase order, which is what makes the instance traceable later in the OE Event Log.
The decision that was blocking the stream

A value stream reaches a step that needs a person: a substitution on a short-shipped line, a credit release, a price exception. It pauses on that step and holds an instance id. FlowRunner picks the decision up, posts it with the full context to the owner who can make it, and waits for however long that takes. When the answer arrives, the agent calls Resume Paused Orchestration with the instance id carried through the flow, and the value stream continues from where it stopped. The wait was not idle time in a queue. It was a decision reaching the person who owns it.
One upstream event, several tenants

A shared price change lands in a sheet that the buying team maintains through Google Sheets. The agent reads the changed rows and calls Start Orchestration once per row, parameterizing the event type per tenant, so each brand's pricing value stream runs under its own rules. The payload is schemaless, so whatever shape the upstream system produced travels through unchanged. One flow feeds several tenants without a separate integration per brand.

Human-in-Loop Highlight

Resume Paused Orchestration is the one action in this connector that is worth stopping for, and the reason is unusual: the call itself will not tell you whether it worked. The Emporix receiver answers 200 to an unknown event source and answers 200 to a request carrying no signature at all, and nothing here reads an instance back. So the agent cannot verify the resume from the API, and it cannot verify the decision either, because the instance id is bound to exactly one value stream and resuming the wrong one is not something the gateway will refuse. What the agent can do is gather the evidence and hand the decision over. It posts the paused instance with the context that produced it: "Value stream instance vs-40a1 is waiting on a substitution for line 3 of PO 88214. Supplier offers a 12-pack in place of the 10-pack, unit price up by 4 percent. Resume with accept, resume with reject, or hold?" The named buyer answers, the agent sends the event with that answer, and the request id goes into the same thread so the instance can be confirmed in the OE Event Log. The engine paused on purpose. The point of this integration is that the pause reaches somebody.

Agent processes routinely

Detects exception requiring judgment

Clear match Continues automatically

Ambiguous Routes to human via preferred channel

Human decides

Agent resumes with decision

Agent Capabilities

2 actions

Value Streams

Start Orchestration Sends a signed CloudEvent that opens a new value stream instance for the tenant's event type. Used to begin an Emporix process from something that happened outside Emporix, and it never sends an instance id, because a start trigger's event type cannot carry one.
Resume Paused Orchestration Sends a signed CloudEvent carrying an instance id to wake a value stream that is waiting on that event. This is the call that closes a human decision or a slow third party back into the running process, and it is the operation this page's human gate exists for.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can FlowRunner do with Emporix Orchestration Engine?

FlowRunner agents can run Start Orchestration and Resume Paused Orchestration in Emporix Orchestration Engine.

Does connecting Emporix Orchestration Engine to FlowRunner require OAuth?

Emporix Orchestration Engine uses a custom authentication method to connect to FlowRunner.

Can Emporix Orchestration Engine trigger a FlowRunner workflow automatically?

Emporix Orchestration Engine doesn't currently expose triggers in FlowRunner. It connects as an action step inside workflows started by another trigger.

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