AWS Step Functions

Visual workflows for modern applications

AWS Step Functions is a low-code, visual workflow service that developers use to build distributed applications, automate IT and business processes, and build data and machine learning pipelines using AWS services. Workflows manage failures, retries, parallelization, service integrations, and observability so developers can focus on higher-value business logic.

Build workflows with 200+ AWS services and 9,000 API actions

Benefits

Build and deploy rapidly

Get started quickly with Workflow Studio, a simple drag-and-drop interface. With Step Functions, you can express complex business logic as low-code, event-driven workflows that connect services, systems or people within minutes.

Write less integration code

Compose AWS resources from over 200 services including Lambda, ECS, Fargate, Batch, DynamoDB, SNS, SQS, SageMaker, EventBridge, or EMR into resilient business workflows, data pipelines, or applications.

Build fault-tolerant and stateful workflows

Step Functions manages state, checkpoints, and restarts for you to make sure that your workflows run in order and as expected. Built-in try/catch, retry, and rollback capabilities deal with errors and exceptions automatically based on your defined business logic.

Designed for reliability and scale

Step Functions offers two workflow types - Standard or Express - that can be used depending on your specific use case.  Standard Workflows are used to manage long-running workloads.  Express Workflows support high-volume event processing workloads.

How it works

  • Step Functions Workflow Studio

  • Branching & Human Interaction Patterns

  • Step Functions Workflow Studio

  • Step Functions Workflow Studio USI Mock

  • Overview

  • AWS Step Functions - How it works - Overview

  • Error-Handing Pattern

  • AWS Step Functions - How it works - Error-Handing Pattern

  • Branching & Human Interaction Patterns

  • AWS Step Functions - How it works - Branching and Human Interaction Patterns

  • Saga Pattern

  • AWS Step Functions - How it works - Saga Pattern

Use cases

Automate Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process

Ensure that long-running, multiple ETL jobs run in order and complete successfully, instead of manually orchestrating those jobs or maintaining a separate application.

Prepare Data for Machine Learning (ML)

To enable machine learning, source data must be collected, processed, and normalized so that ML modelling systems like Amazon SageMaker can train on that data. Step Functions makes it easier to sequence the steps it takes to automate your ML pipeline.

Orchestrate microservices

Use Step Functions to combine multiple AWS Lambda functions into responsive serverless applications and microservices. You can also orchestrate data and services that run on Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or on-premises servers

Liberty Mutual

Liberty Mutual created an event-driven workflow with Step Functions in which the data feeds from each line of business are transformed into a series of events, or financial transactions. Learn how they are processed one million transactions monthly for just $60.00.

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Freebird

Use Step Functions to combine multiple AWS Lambda functions into responsive serverless applications and microservices, without having to write code for workflow logic, parallel processes, error handling, timeouts, or retries. You can also orchestrate data and services that run on Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or on-premises servers.

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The Guardian

The Guardian orchestrated data flow between multiple systems saving technical teams 4 hours a week in manual account deletion.  Learn how the team was able to maintain accurate and automated records with Step Functions resulting in on-time newspaper delivery for thousands of subscribers.

View customer story

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Customers

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What's new

December 3, 2019

Introducing AWS Step Functions Express Workflows


Express Workflows are a new type of AWS Step Functions workflow type that cost-effectively orchestrate AWS compute, database, and messaging services at event rates greater than 100,000 events per second.

September 18, 2019

AWS Step Functions Adds Support for Dynamic Parallelism in Workflows


AWS Step Functions now supports dynamic parallelism, so you can optimize the performance and efficiency of application workflows.

August 12, 2019

AWS Step Functions Adds Support for Nested Workflows


AWS Step Functions now allows you to orchestrate more complex processes by composing modular, reusable workflows.

See all announcements »

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