Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and industry standards since 2006, object management group business process models and notation (BPMN) workflow automation is making a comeback. Almost 20 years later, BPMN is being used in conjunction with agent AI to enable what the industry considers adaptive process automation.
This was a big topic at the CamundaCon 2026 conference in Amsterdam. In his presentation, Forrester Principal Analyst Bernhard Schaffrik laid out a five-step evolution of workflows from basic scripting to fully autonomous organizations. “Autonomy is only possible if you are directly involved.” [the workflow] You can see what’s happening in real time and the approval process is ideally autonomous,” he said.
Fairlink co-CEO James Fernandez told Computer Weekly of his experience with how workflow automation has evolved: “I remember when I was working in logistics, which lends itself to process mapping.”
But he recalls that the workflow tools at the time were basic mapping tools. “I could run the model, but I couldn’t do much more than that. As a 20-year-old, I was completely shocked that no one was doing this properly,” he said.
Fairlink was founded to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers. We aim to provide transparency throughout the recruitment and hiring process with three integrated platforms that work together to make recruiting safer and more responsible at every step of the process.
The company worked with IT consulting firm Casci to develop these platforms that provide governance and guardrails that connect job seekers and employers, reducing the risk of worker exploitation.
While discussing the workflow engine required for Fairlink, Fernandez said: “This is the first time in my career that I have very few employees, whereas the business has thousands of employees. I have a small organization, but we are focused on the business problem we are solving.”
This frames the conversations Fairlink has had about the software needed for workflow orchestration and the use of AI, and whether and when agent AI should be used. “The combination of the right tools and the right people is very important for us because we are dealing with humans and we are dealing with vulnerable humans who don’t know about the journey they are on,” he added.
In a demo at CamundaCon 2026, Casci and Fairlink showed how migrant workers can use WhatsApp and Instagram to interact directly with the system. “If you’ve ever seen migrant workers use WhatsApp, they won’t send text messages. They’ll all use voice memos,” Fernandez said.
As a result, the backend system will send WhatsApp voice notes to employees communicating with Fairlink via Twilio, he said. The demo showed a voice memo conversation in Hindi used to generate an employee’s resume. All coordination between migrant workers and employers is handled through the Camunda workflow orchestration platform.
Modern workflow automation
Toby Cook, Casci’s founder and chief technology officer, previously worked in Deloitte’s public sector consulting practice, said the Fairlink software works in real-time. “We can translate Hindi in real-time and respond with voice notes, allowing someone to have an effective conversation with Fairlink,” he said.
Behind the scenes, this software allows Fairlink to build the information a person needs.
Regarding workflow orchestration in the modern enterprise, Cook observed that organizations no longer need to be forced to configure unwieldy monolithic systems that are nearly impossible to support. The rise of microservices-based architectures enables much more lightweight and horizontally scalable enterprise systems that were not possible before.
“We’re in a world where systems are much more malleable. You can externalize orchestration and introduce workflows, which improves the experience from a user perspective,” he said. This workflow orchestration allows you to connect to and update multiple systems of record.
Fernandez believes that the capabilities available in modern enterprise workflow engines are profound. “After 30-odd years of trying to enable enterprise workflows, we have now converged and are able to speak the language of business and bring all aspects of an organization together,” he said.
