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Orkes Conductor Glossary

Here are some common technical terms used in the Orkes Conductor documentation.

AI Agent​

In Orkes Conductor, an AI agent is implemented as a workflow that uses a large language model (LLM) to make decisions at runtime. The agent reasons over workflow state and inputs, selects actions, and invokes tools or services through the workflow execution.

Instruction-driven reasoning techniques such as Reason and Act (ReAct), Chain-of-Thought (CoT), or Tree-of-Thoughts (ToT) can be used to guide the agent’s decision-making within the workflow.

AI Prompts​

An AI Prompt is a set of instructions and context used in Orkes Conductor workflows to guide the behavior and output of a large language model.

Agentic Workflow​

A multi-step, dynamic process that orchestrates multiple services, tasks, AI agents, and even humans-in-the-loop within a dynamic control graph. Unlike a typical workflow, an agentic workflow in Conductor involves an LLM that dynamically chooses execution paths at runtime.

An agentic workflow is flexible and can be used for many scenarios:

  • Introduce agentic elements (LLM-driven decision-making) in workflows for dynamism
  • Implement an AI agent as a workflow for improved governance
  • Orchestrate multi-agent collaboration

Application​

(In the context of Conductor) An access layer for external systems to interact with a Conductor server via APIs or SDKs. It is similar to a service account, in which permissions govern a system’s access to Conductor resources.

An application access layer can be used in a variety of ways:

  • A worker application that polls the Conductor server for tasks to complete.
  • A client application that runs a Conductor workflow.
  • An application that manages other Conductor applications.

Asynchronous Execution​

Starts a Conductor workflow and returns the workflow (execution) ID to the system immediately. This ID can be used to check on the workflow progress and result.

Change Data Capture (CDC)​

In Orkes Conductor, Change Data Capture (CDC) is a pattern that streams workflow state changes to external eventing systems such as Kafka or other message brokers. When CDC is enabled on a workflow, Conductor emits events whenever the workflow state changes, so downstream systems can react in real time, enabling responsive, decoupled architectures. 

Conductor Cluster​

A deployment of the Orkes Conductor platform that hosts definitions, configurations, and executions. A Conductor cluster provides the runtime environment where workflows are executed and managed.

Correlation ID​

In Orkes Conductor, a correlation ID is a unique identifier used to associate related workflow executions. It enables tracing a single transaction or business process across multiple workflows. For example, a correlation ID can link an order processed in a purchase workflow with a corresponding refund handled by a separate refund workflow.

Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)​

A type of graph where its vertices are connected in one direction and without any repeating cycles. All Conductor workflows are directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), providing a clear map of the workflow and its progress through different states.

Environment Variables​

In Orkes Conductor, an environment variable is a configuration value stored at the cluster level and made available to workflows at runtime. Environment variables are commonly used to externalize configuration, such as service endpoints or default settings, without hardcoding values in workflow definitions.

Event-Driven​

An architectural design where the system communicates via event messages to drive the flow of subsequent tasks. For example, in event-driven microservices, each microservice takes action in response to specific events, and sends events to other microservices based on its own state change. This could look like a payment service that triggers credit card authorization upon receiving an order confirmation event and thereafter sends out a payment authorization event for other services to be notified of.

Event-driven architecture facilitates loose coupling between services and responsiveness.

Event Handler​

A module that either listens for specific events in an event-driven system. This can be a piece of code, as simple as a callback function, or in Conductor, a JSON configuration. As its name implies, the event handler reacts to specific events and triggers subsequent actions, such as starting a workflow or updating a workflow variable.

Gateway​

Gateway enables exposing any Conductor workflow as APIs or MCP tools. Workflows can be exposed as HTTP APIs via the API Gateway or as MCP tools via the MCP Gateway for AI agent integration.

Idempotency​

A property where an operation executed multiple times will not affect the result beyond the initial execution. Idempotency prevents any unwanted side effects or duplicate results. For example, if the same event message is sent multiple times, subsequent messages will not trigger the service again.

In Conductor, workflows can be made idempotent to prevent duplicate workflow executions. Upon duplicate requests, the Conductor server can return the initial workflow execution ID or fail the request.

JSON Web Token (JWT)​

An open standard for securely transmitting information between two systems, often used for web-based authentication. The JSON web token (JWT) is stateless and self-contained, carrying all the necessary information for authentication, like the user’s claims and permissions, in a JSON format. In Orkes Conductor, a JSON Web Token (JWT) is used for authentication and authorization when accessing Conductor APIs and services.

Each JWT is also signed using cryptography to ensure that a third party cannot alter its contents. A signed JWT can be used for client-to-server or server-to-server communication.

JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)​

An API that enables connectivity between any database management system (DBMS) like PostgreSQL and Conductor workflows. JDBC enables applications to easily query, update, add, or delete data.

LLM (Large Language Model)​

An AI model trained on large volumes of data that can understand and generate natural language using deep learning architectures. In Orkes Conductor, LLMs are used within workflows to perform tasks such as text generation, translation, question answering, and reasoning. Orkes Conductor supports integrations with multiple LLM providers.

Operator​

Operators are a built-in task type in Conductor that provides control flow logic, like parallel tasks, iterative loops, and if-else switches.

Orchestration​

The process of coordinating distributed software components, systems, agents, and humans so that they execute seamlessly as an automated, repeatable process. For example, an order management process may involve coordinating across an inventory system, a payment service, multiple notification channels, and even the logistics and shipping partner.

Orchestration facilitates state tracking and reliable execution of interdependent tasks.

RBAC (Role Based Access Control)​

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is the authorization model used to control access to platform resources. RBAC assigns permissions to roles, and roles to users or applications, determining which actions can be performed on workflows, metadata, and other Conductor resources.

Remote Services​

A centrally managed HTTP or gRPC service endpoint in Orkes Conductor. Remote services allow workflows to reuse external service configurations across system tasks like HTTP, HTTP Poll, and gRPC without redefining endpoint details each time.

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)​

An AI technique that supplements an LLM with external knowledge, enhancing its final output (grounded generation). With RAG, relevant information is retrieved from a database based on the user query and supplemented to the LLM. RAG can be implemented within Conductor workflows by retrieving relevant data from external data sources and providing it as context to the LLM during execution.

Rate Limits​

Rate limit is a method to control the number of network requests made to a server at any given time.

By rate limiting workflows or their tasks, you can prevent task workers from being overloaded by requests and also gracefully handle external limits set by a service provider.

Secrets​

In Orkes Conductor, a secret is a securely stored value used to manage sensitive information such as API keys, passwords, or tokens. Secrets can be referenced by workflows at runtime without exposing their values in workflow definitions or configuration files.

Schema Definitions​

In Orkes Conductor, a schema definition specifies the expected structure and validation rules for data used in Conductor tasks and workflows. Schema definitions are used to validate inputs or outputs at runtime, helping ensure that data passed through workflows conforms to the required format.

Sub-Workflow​

A workflow that executes within another workflow (usually referred to as the parent workflow).

Sub-workflows promote modularity and reusability of common processes across different workflows. For example, a notification workflow can be used as a sub-workflow across CI/CD pipelines or system monitoring workflows.

Synchronous Execution​

Starts a workflow and returns its output either once the workflow has reached a terminal state or when a certain duration has elapsed.

System Task​

System tasks are built-in task types in Conductor that provide common logic without any coding requirement, like calling an HTTP endpoint, publishing an event message, or calling an LLM.

Task​

A task is a unit in a Conductor workflow that carries out some kind of business logic or control flow logic. Each task has a well-defined input and output, and contains a status (like IN PROGRESS, COMPLETED, FAILED) for state tracking.

Task Configuration​

A workflow-specific configuration, specifying the task type, reference name, input parameters, and other details about the task to be executed. The task configuration is part of the workflow definition and it is an ordered array that describes the order and control flow of tasks, the data flow between tasks, and task behaviour like optionality, caching, and schema enforcement.

Task Definition​

A task definition is a configuration that is general to a specific task type or name, and applies to all instances of the task across workflows. It contains general implementation details, like rate limits, expected input and output keys, and failure-handling behavior, like retries and timeouts.

Task Queue​

A system design where task executions are grouped into queues according to their task type or name (HTTP, Event, some_custom_task) and domain (if applicable), and get completed by task workers in a first-in-first-out manner.

Task-to-Domain​

An approach that routes task executions specified under a domain name to its corresponding worker pool with the same domain name. To do so, you must map each worker pool to a specific domain beforehand, then specify the task’s domain mapping when triggering the workflow.

Task-to-domain can route traffic from different origins (web, desktop, mobile) to different worker pools or customize the same task with domain-specific business logic.

User Form​

A reusable, JSON-based form schema used by Human tasks to collect input from users. User forms define the structure, fields, and validation rules for human interaction and can be rendered and completed in the Orkes Conductor UI or integrated into a custom UI.

Vector Database​

Stores data in the form of vectors, which are arrays of numbers that represent text, images, or audio. These vectors are stored in a multi-dimensional vector space and are clustered together based on similarity. With this form of storage, vector databases are suited for low-latency storage and retrieval of unstructured data. Orkes Conductor supports integrations with multiple Vector Database providers.

Webhook​

An event-driven integration technique where a source system sends an HTTP request to a destination system through a registered endpoint every time a specified event in the source system occurs. This HTTP request is also known as a webhook payload, which often contains data about the event. The webhook endpoint is configured in the destination system and registered to the source system.

Webhooks enable real-time updates from source systems without the need for constant polling by the destination system.

Worker​

A process or program that accomplishes some task logic. Workers poll the Conductor server for work to be done in its corresponding task queue.

System workers are responsible for executing system tasks and are managed by Conductor. External workers can be created to handle custom logic beyond the scope of system tasks and can run on any environment.

Worker Task​

(Also known as a Simple Task) A Conductor task type for custom logic handled by external workers.

Workflow​

A workflow is a sequence of tasks with a defined order and execution flow, aimed at carrying out a specific process in an automated fashion, such as claims processing or cloud upgrades.

Workflow Definition​

A workflow definition is a JSON structure that specifies how the workflow should be executed at runtime, such as the workflow inputs, caching behavior, the series of tasks involved, and so on.

Workflow Execution​

The execution instance of a given workflow definition. The execution JSON contains the runtime conditions like duration, workflow state, the initial trigger, the data that passes through the workflow, and so on.

Workflow ID​

The execution ID of a Conductor workflow instance. The workflow ID can be used to track the execution progress and workflow state.

Workflow Scheduler​

Allows workflows to be scheduled and executed on a regular basis. The workflow scheduler is configured using cron expressions.