---
title: "June 2026 — SpiffWorks Newsletter"
description: "Our European partner visit, a consolidated website, event sub-processes, human task notifications, UI improvements, and Visual Design Studio updates."
source_url: https://spiff.works/newsletters/june-26/
---

Newsletter

# June 2026

June 01, 2026

## Europe Visit

This month we visited partners across Europe—in Warsaw, Brno, Frankfurt, and Regensburg. Our latest article, [Europe 2026](https://spiff.works/blog/europe-2026/), covers the trip and our conversations with customers. Special thanks to Krzysztof (Kris) Nipochorski of PGE, Ladislav (Lada) Radoň of Kiwi, Vivien Weber of Regensburg, Jan Alsters, and Daniel Lübke, who went out of their way to make the trip productive and fun.

## What's New

### Event Sub-Processes

Event subprocesses let a workflow react to things that happen while it runs—an order being cancelled, say—without handling them at every step of the main process. This month we added the ability to spawn subworkflows outside the normal task flow, so an event subprocess can trigger without a parent task in the regular sequence. A new `bpmn_start_event` attribute on workflow specs identifies what kicks off a process, and we refactored the task-waiting mechanism.

### Human Task Notifications

You often need to notify people when a human task is assigned to them. You can now configure that trigger on the task through a new BPMN extension, found in the properties panel under "Task Hooks." Read more in our [documentation](https://spiff.works/docs/spiff-arena/how_to_guides/building_diagrams/start_process_when_task_available).

### Improved UI

We've improved the usability of the SpiffArena interface. Process models now appear in a list view that makes browsing and organizing thousands of models practical, and the Process Instances page has sortable columns. Try it at spiffdemo.org.

#### Improvements to SpiffArena (our Execution Service and Dashboard)

- **Process Instance Reaper.** Adds automated cleanup for process instances. Removes stale or completed instances.
- **Async Service Task Retries.** Implements retry logic for async service tasks. Improves reliability of background operations.
- **Service Task Error Boundary Support.** Adds error boundary event support for service tasks in the editor. Improves error handling.
- **Message Model Location Management.** Adds a message model page with location editing, including migration and diagram update notifications.
- **Python 3.13.** Adds Python 3.13 to supported versions.

### Visual Design Studio (ED BPMN Editor) Updates

We improve our BPMN editor daily—more than 100 updates this month to the usability of our real-time editing and debugging system. We have significantly improved AI guidance with customized tool calls, skill definitions, and reference documentation.

Our AI assistant can now draft Jira tickets, proposing changes as local files without ever touching your real board. A human approves each change before the system files it in your chosen Jira instance, with proper formatting and a full audit trail. Once a change lands, the AI can reopen with a follow-up prompt to keep work moving.

A new headless CLI runs tests from the command line with `run`, `validate`, `ai`, and `mcp` commands. We also fixed engine bugs in paused-task resumption and final result handling.

### Analytics Engine

- **Time Bucket Navigation.** Adds day, week, and month views to analytics charts and improves the left navigation.
- **UI Improvements.** Fixes element deselection, removes aggressive localStorage caching, adds green data indicators, and improves search and navigation.
- **Coachmarks and User Analytics.** Adds coachmarks to guide first-time users and observability for analyzing user behavior.

## Community Contributions

Thanks to Nicholas Becksted, an industrious CS student at James Madison University, for helping us triage security vulnerability reports. (LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/n-becksted/, GitHub: https://github.com/fdjfnd222dd)

[← All Issues](/learn/)