- Introduction
- Getting started
- Prerequisites
- Supported security standards
- Choosing between Maestro Orchestrate and Maestro Automate
- Choosing a Maestro canvas
- Ways to build with Maestro
- Try Maestro in Playground (preview)
- Testing Maestro processes
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Building with Maestro BPMN
- Understanding Maestro BPMN modeling
- Opening the modeling canvas
- Modeling your process
- Aligning and connecting BPMN elements
- Autopilot for Maestro (Preview)
- Process Repository
- Implementing a simple BPMN process
- Implementing a complex BPMN process
- Debugging
- Simulating
- Evaluations (Preview)
- Common implementation scenarios
- Building with Maestro Case
- Introduction to Maestro Case
- Maestro BPMN vs. Maestro Case: when to use case management
- The Maestro Case lifecycle: from event trigger to app experience
- Build your first case with Maestro Case
- Build a Maestro Case with a coding agent (preview)
- Defining case keys (system vs. external)
- Establishing task I/O and write-back contracts
- Exit rules and early stage termination
- Modeling primary and secondary stages
- Triggering a case from Data Fabric
- Implementing stage-level personas and permissions
- Setting SLAs and automated escalation rules
- Configuring a rework loop (re-entry)
- Configuring and testing the Case Manager Agent (preview)
- Case Manager input and output contract
- Maestro Case component dictionary
- Building with Maestro Flow
- Maestro Automate
- Integrations
- Operating
- Monitoring
- Optimizing
- Reference information
Comparison of Maestro Orchestrate and Maestro Automate, covering the canvases each supports, their runtime limits, instance control, and when each one fits.
Maestro Orchestrate and Maestro Automate are two separate products. You choose between them when you create a project, so this page helps you decide which one a given workflow belongs in before you start building.
Maestro Orchestrate is the full orchestration product. It includes three canvases: Maestro Case, Maestro Flow, and Maestro Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), and runs every instance on the full Maestro Orchestrate runtime: durable execution with no cap on duration or concurrency, full control over live instances, process history, monitoring, optimization, and governance.
Maestro Automate is a lightweight runtime for short-running workflows of AI agents and APIs. It uses the Flow canvas and the same Maestro engine, with a runtime envelope and a run price sized for work that finishes within minutes or hours.
At a glance
| Aspect | Maestro Orchestrate | Maestro Automate |
|---|---|---|
| Canvas options | Case, Flow, and BPMN | Flow |
| Typical run duration | Unbounded; a workflow can wait days and resume where it stopped | Minutes or hours |
| Maximum duration of a single run | No cap | 24 hours |
| Concurrent executions | No cap | 50 executions |
| Live instance control | Retry, cancel, pause, resume, migrate, and go-to | Retry and cancel |
| Monitoring dashboards, incidents, and alerts | Available | Not available |
| Traces and execution logs | Retained for a configurable period | Retained for 30 days |
Use Maestro Automate when
- An event comes in, agents reason, APIs act, and the instance is done the same day.
- Humans in the loop, if any, respond within the run window.
- Retry, cancel and a 30-day trace are all the operational control you need.
- Nobody outside the team needs process history, Service Level Agreement (SLA) reporting or audit beyond 30 days.
- Run volume is high and each run is small.
Examples: order intake and enrichment, first-notice-of-loss triage, service desk request fulfillment, invoice intake, transaction reconciliation, screening checks.
Use Maestro Orchestrate when
- The process waits on a human or an external event for more than a day.
- Operations must act on a live instance: pause it, resume it, migrate it to a new version, or move it to a different step.
- Audit, compliance or SLA management needs the full record of every instance for as long as the process matters.
- More than 50 instances run at the same time, routinely.
- Runtime governance beyond platform policy is required: output provenance, tamper-evident audit.
- The process needs the BPMN or Case canvas.
Examples: order-to-cash, claims processing, employee and customer onboarding, procure-to-pay, product recall, Know Your Customer (KYC) and compliance case handling.
Capabilities comparison
Maestro Automate provides instance visibility with retry and cancel. The advanced instance operations, monitoring, optimization, and governance capabilities described in the rest of this guide belong to Maestro Orchestrate.
| Capability | Maestro Orchestrate | Maestro Automate |
|---|---|---|
| Instance list and status | ✅ | ✅ |
| Retry an instance | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cancel an instance | ✅ | ✅ |
| Pause and resume an instance | ✅ | ❌ |
| Migrate an instance to a new version | ✅ | ❌ |
| Go to a specific element in a live instance | ✅ | ❌ |
| Bulk operations on live instances | ✅ | ❌ |
| Monitoring dashboards, incidents, and alerts | ✅ | ❌ |
| Process optimization dashboards | ✅ | ❌ |
| Instance data through the Maestro API | ✅ | ❌ |
Converting between Maestro Flow and Maestro Automate
You can convert workflows between Maestro Flow and Maestro Automate, as both use the same canvas and support the same build components. The file is the same, and no rebuild is required. You can do this directly wherever you're building your process.
Current limitations
- Maestro Orchestrate: The Maestro Flow canvas does not have process optimization dashboards available as part of the general availability release. These dashboards are available for processes built on the BPMN and Case canvases.
- Maestro Automate: Automate instances appear as Maestro Flow processes in Orchestrator and Maestro instance management. They cannot yet be filtered from Orchestrate instances and have no dedicated section.