FlowFuse - Changelog

Hosted Instances know their own URL

2026-04-07T17:00:00Z

Your hosted instance now knows its own URL. The FF_INSTANCE_URL environment variable is automatically available to your flows, so you can reference the instance's address without hardcoding it.

FF_INSTANCE_URL in list of Instance Environment Variables

For Hosted Instances with a Custom Hostname that will be returned rather than the default Instance hostname.

Existing instances will need to be restarted to pick up the new Environment Variable.

This will be available to Self Hosted users from v2.29.0

Richer snapshot comparison view

2026-04-07T12:00:00Z

Previously, comparing snapshots only showed the two flow canvases overlaid at different opacities. You could see that something had changed, but not what or where.

Now when you compare two snapshots, a sidebar lists every changed, added, and deleted node. You can step through them one at a time — the canvas highlights and scrolls to the relevant node automatically. For each change you can see:

Property diffs: each changed property is shown inline with the old and new value side by side.
Code diffs: for function and template nodes, code changes appear as a line-level diff with red for removed lines and green for added — the same format you'd expect from a git diff.

Use the Prev / Next buttons or the ← → arrow keys to navigate through changes.

For the first time, teams can review a snapshot diff before deployment and actually trust what they're seeing — not just look at it.

This feature is available to all FlowFuse Cloud and Self Hosted users from v2.29.

View Snapshot Details in the Immersive Editor

2026-04-07T12:00:00Z

You can now open snapshot details from inside the immersive editor. Previously, clicking a snapshot from the Version History timeline or Snapshots list had no effect in the editor — the detail view was only available from the instance page in FlowFuse.

Access snapshots from the Version History timeline or Snapshots list inside the editor.

Snapshot details now open in a modal inside the immersive editor, so you can review and manage snapshots without leaving your editing session. The modal contains the same information as the snapshot detail view on the instance page.

Snapshot details open in a modal inside the immersive editor.

This feature is available to all FlowFuse Cloud users and all Self Hosted users from v2.29.

Developer Mode Now Accessible from the Immersive Editor

2026-04-07T00:00:00Z

The Developer Mode tab is now available directly in the immersive editor drawer when working with remote instances. You can toggle auto snapshot and create snapshots without leaving the editor.

The Developer Mode tab now appears directly in the immersive editor drawer, with options to create a snapshot and manage device flows.

Previously, accessing Developer Mode meant opening a second browser window and navigating to the standalone device view — breaking your flow inside the editor and adding unnecessary friction, especially when working through a staged dev, test, and promote rollout.

This feature is available to Enterprise tier users of FlowFuse Cloud and Enterprise Licensed Self Hosted users from v2.29.

Azure DevOps Pipeline support

2026-03-24T17:00:00Z

DevOps Pipeline Git Stages now support Azure DevOps repositories alongside GitHub.

If your team already uses Azure DevOps for CI and code review, you can now push and pull Snapshots directly as part of that workflow — no need to manage your Node-RED flows outside your existing tooling.

Add Personal Access Tokens under Team Settings → Integrations

The Azure DevOps token dialog under Team Settings → Integrations

Pro and Enterprise customers on FlowFuse Cloud and Enterprise licensed Self Hosted users can use Azure DevOps repositories in their Pipelines from v2.29.

Updated: Upcoming Scheduled Server Maintenance on March 28th, 2026

2026-03-12T12:00:00Z

As part of our ongoing efforts to maintain our infrastructure, we need to update some of our servers that host Node-RED instances.

This will require restarting any hosted Node-RED instances running on those servers, leading to a short downtime whilst they restart. Remote instances on the edge are unaffected.

We will complete this migration during a 2 hour maintenance window starting at 8am UTC on Saturday 28th March 2026.

Note: the original version of this post had the incorrect date. The mainteance is scheduled for Saturday 28th March.

Will my instances be affected?

If your instance was created after 11th March 2026, or has been updated to the 2.28 release, it will already be running on the new servers.

Otherwise, you can take action to migrate your instance before the scheduled maintenance window at your own convenience.

If you manually suspend and restart your instance, or upgrade to 2.28 at any time before the maintenance window, your instance will not need to be restarted and no further action will be needed.

You can find the "Suspend" option from the "Actions" drop down menu on the Instance Overview page. Once the Instance reports being in the Suspended state, you can select "Start" from the same drop down menu.

We will be emailing notifications to all team owners who have instances that require a restart.

Enabling Scheduled Maintenance Mode

Keeping instances up to date is an important task to ensure they are running with the latest features and security fixes. FlowFuse provides the ability to select a time for updates to be automatically applied to your instances. You pick which day of the week and time the platform can schedule updates in. This removes the burden for keeping things up to date.

On FlowFuse Cloud, Starter teams already have this feature enabled for their instances to apply updates at the weekend.

Pro and Enterprise teams can opt-in on the Instance Settings - Maintenance page.

More information is available in the scheduled maintenance changelog entry.

FlowFuse Expert: Helping you make sense of your debug log

2026-03-05T13:00:00Z

As a flow developer, you know how frustrating it can be to have a bug or issue in your flows. You add a ton of debug nodes and add warning alerts to your functions to try and help you track it down. The logs can be a great source of information but you still need to figure out why it is happening! Why am I getting this error? Where did this log come from?

Now, you can ask the Expert!

We have added the ability to include individual log entries and a quick-add selection on the Resource Selector. Adding these logs alongside the related flows can further focus the AI on the issue and help you solve it.

Key Highlights:

Laser Focus: Select individual log entries to provide specific context.
Quick Add: Use the Resource Selector button to instantly pull in logs.

FlowFuse Expert Debug Log Context in Action

FlowFuse Expert Focused Debug Log Context

We are sure you will love this feature - and there is more to come too!

For more details, see Debug Context.

FlowFuse Expert: Never Miss an Update

2026-02-27T13:00:00Z

The Expert now shows a banner in the chat area when a newer version is available. One click and you are up to date.

FlowFuse Expert is updated regularly with new capabilities. This makes sure you always know when there is something new to try, without having to check manually.

FlowFuse Expert lets you know when an update is available

For more details, see Keeping Expert up to date.

Set Node.js Options for Remote Instances

2026-02-13T12:00:00Z

FlowFuse Device Agent v3.8.1 adds support for setting Node.js command line arguments for Remote Instances.

This allows things like:

Setting the Node.js heap size for memory-intensive flows
Enabling --use-openssl-ca (Linux) or --use-system-ca (Windows and macOS) to use private CA certificates

Node.js options can be configured in two ways:

1. Via the device agent command line

Use the --node-options argument. This argument may be specified multiple times:

flowfuse-device-agent -c /opt/flowfuse-device-agent/device.yml \
    --node-options='--max-old-space-size=256' \
    --node-options='--use-openssl-ca'

2. Via the `device.yml` file

Add a nodeOptions section:

deviceId: xxxxxxx
forgeURL: https://app.flowfuse.com
token: xxxxxxxx
credentialSecret: xxxxx
nodeOptions:
- '--max-old-space-size=256'
- '--use-openssl-ca'

For more details, see Configuring Node.js Options.

Restoring snapshots to developer-mode Remote Instances

2026-02-12T12:00:00Z

Device Agent version 3.8.0 has been released which brings a significant workflow improvement when editing your flows.

When the ability to remotely edit flows was introduced - known as 'developer mode' - we blocked the ability to push snapshots to a remote instance whilst in this mode. This protection makes sense when you're working on a remote instance, but still need to push updates out to the rest of your fleet through a pipeline deployment - you don't want the deployment from overwriting the work you're in the middle of.

However, there are cases where you want to rollback changes you've been making to a remote instance. Previously that would involve taking the instance out of developer mode, restoring the snapshot, then putting it back into developer mode to continue working. This is a lot of unnecessary steps and not an obvious workflow.

With the new v3.8.0 release of the Device Agent, it is now possible to manually restore snapshots without leaving developer mode:

Open the Version History tab for the Remote Instance and switch the Snapshots view
Click on the snapshot you want to use
Click on the restore button in the snapshot sidebar

The existing protection that blocks pipeline-driven deploys of snapshots is still in place.

Restoring a snapshot to a Developer-Mode Remote Instance

HA Hosted Instance Rolling Restart

2026-02-12T12:00:00Z

As part of FlowFuse v2.27.0 release the behavior of Hosted Node-RED instances with HA enabled has been updated to reduce the down time experienced.

Any action that triggers a restart of the Node-RED instance (manually triggered or as part of a Pipeline deploy) will now restart them in sequence rather than in parallel. This means that there should be no down time for this instance.

This feature is available to Enterprise Licensed Self Hosted users and Enterprise tier users of FlowFuse Cloud.

Immersive Mode for Remote Instances

2026-02-11T12:00:00Z

You can now access Immersive Mode when working with Remote Instances.

Immersive Mode gives you at-a-glance instance stats alongside the editor, while also enabling the FlowFuse Expert to help speed up development and debugging, especially when you’re working on the edge with remote devices.

Prefer the classic experience? The existing plain connection flow is still available: clicking the Open Editor dropdown selector includes an alternative option to be able to open the editor in the non-immersive mode.

Immersive Mode accessed from a remote instance

FlowFuse Expert: Palette Queries

2026-02-10T13:00:00Z

We are continuing to evolve the FlowFuse Expert by giving it deeper integration into your Node-RED environment. Starting today, the Expert has Palette Awareness.

You can now ask the Expert about your installed nodes, versions, and available updates without leaving the chat interface or needing to manually input said context. For example:

Do I have any nodes installed that can send Emails?
Are my palette nodes up to date?
Are any nodes on my palette disabled?
Can you suggest a node package that would replace this complex function code?
or any question related to your palette.

This is one of several steps we are taking to bring additional context directly into your FlowFuse Expert to augment its capabilities and improve your workflow.

FlowFuse Expert integration with the Palette

FlowFuse Expert: Ask about your flows

2026-01-30T13:00:00Z

Need help with a specific flow?

The FlowFuse Expert now has the ability to include your flow selection as context, allowing you to ask specific questions about your logic and configuration.

FlowFuse Expert with flows in context

We are continuously adding new features to improve your development workflow, with more updates for the FlowFuse Expert on the horizon. We hope this makes your building experience even smoother.

Device Agent Docker Containers updated

2026-01-27T12:00:00Z

We have started to see some Node-RED nodes dropping support for NodeJS v18. This is causing problems for users of our Device Agent docker container as that is still based on NodeJS v18.

To help move things forward, with the v3.7.2 release of the Device Agent, we are now publishing separate container images for both v18 and v20 under different tags.

The latest tag will continue to point to the NodeJS v18 version for now for backwards compatibility. The next major release of the device agent will update the latest tag to a newer NodeJS version - and may require a migration step if you are using the module cache feature. We'll share more details when that release arrives.

With this update, the following tags are now available:

NodeJS 18

flowfuse/device-agent:latest
flowfuse/device-agent:latest-18
flowfuse/device-agent:v3.7.2
flowfuse/device-agent:v3.7.2-18

NodeJS 20

flowfuse/device-agent:latest-20
flowfuse/device-agent:v3.7.2-20

FlowFuse Expert: Enhanced Palette Integration

2026-01-26T13:00:00Z

The FlowFuse Expert recently gained the ability to suggest and install node packages directly within your workflow (see our previous post on FlowFuse Expert: Integration with Node-RED).

Today, we've streamlined this experience. The Expert now detects if a suggested node is already present in your instance. Instead of a showing the "Install" button, you’ll now see a "Manage" button that takes you directly to the Palette Manager.

FlowFuse Expert integration with the Palette Manager

This improvement reduces friction when updating or configuring your existing nodes. These workflow integrations are just the beginning of our plans for the FlowFuse Expert. We're excited to see how much time they save you!

FlowFuse Expert: MCP-Powered Insights

2026-01-21T13:00:00Z

FlowFuse Expert Insights just got a little bit better.

What is FlowFuse Expert Insights?

In case you are new to this feature, checkout out some of our previous blog posts:

What's new?

With this update, the MCP servers you protected behind FlowFuse User Authentication can now be accessed and queried in the FlowFuse Expert too.

Note: The FlowFuse Expert Insights feature is currently in Beta. We are actively expanding its capabilities. We would love to hear how you are using MCP to extend your systems.

FlowFuse Expert: MCP-Powered Insights with RBACs

2026-01-14T13:00:00Z

Following on the the introduction of FlowFuse Expert MCP-Powered Insights we have added annotations to the FlowFuse MCP nodes and linked them up with the FlowFuse roles. This permits a level of control over who can access what. This is just a first step, we will be working in the area over the next few iterations.

MCP Tools Node

To facilitate a level of role based access control in the Expert, we have leveraged the new Granular RBACs and MCP annotations to introduce 2 means of filtering and control:

By application - as introduced in FlowFuse 1.5
By pre-defined role level mapping to the annotation hints. For instance, users with a 'Viewer' role will only be exposed to tools marked with the Read Only hint, while Destructive tools are reserved for 'Owners'. The screenshot below indicates more clearly what this mapping is.

To facilitate this, we have the next version of our (MCP Server Nodes)[https://flowfuse.com/node-red/flowfuse/mcp/] will introduce the 4 MCP standard annotations:

Read Only Hint: Lets the MCP Client know that the tool is read-only and does not modify any data or state. This hint can be used by LLMs to understand that invoking this tool will not have side effects, making it safe for exploratory queries or information retrieval.
Destructive Hint: Lets the MCP Client know that the tool performs destructive actions that may modify or delete data. This hint can be used by LLMs to exercise caution when invoking this tool, as it may have irreversible effects.
Idempotent Hint: Lets the MCP Client know that the tool is idempotent, meaning that multiple invocations with the same parameters will have the same effect as a single invocation. This hint can be used by LLMs to understand that it is safe to retry or repeat calls to this tool without causing unintended side effects.
Open World Hint: Lets the MCP Client know that the tool operates in an open-world context, meaning it may interact with external systems or data sources beyond the immediate environment. This hint can be used by LLMs to understand that invoking this tool may involve uncertainties or dependencies on external factors.

These annotations are not exclusive to FlowFuse or FlowFuse Roles, they also are useful for your own Agents and LLMs.

Note: Hints do not enforce behavior. The actual behavior of the tool depends on how it is used in your flows

MCP Server Tool Node with new annotations

Note: This feature is currently in Beta. We are actively expanding these capabilities and would love to hear how you are using MCP to extend your systems.

FlowFuse Expert: Integration with Node-RED

2026-01-14T13:00:00Z

The FlowFuse Expert just got a lot more hands-on with your Node-RED editor:

Streamlined Node Installation: When the Expert suggests a node module, it can now automatically open the Palette Manager and filter for the correct package, leaving you just one click away from installation.
Direct Flow Imports: When the Expert provides demo flows, you no longer need to copy-paste JSON. The Expert can now inject those flows directly into your editor, ready for deployment.

FlowFuse Expert integration with the Palette Manager

These workflow integrations are just the start of our plans for the FlowFuse Expert. We’re excited to see how much time these save you!

Scheduled Maintenance Mode

2025-12-19T12:00:00Z

Included in the FlowFuse 2.25.0 release is the ability to schedule times and days of the week for Hosted Node-RED instances to upgrade to the latest available version.

This ensures that fixes and security updates are applied promptly.

Maintenance Section of Instance Settings

You can select multiple days of the week and an hour of the day the update will take place. The restart will be targeted in the first 30 minutes of the selected hour.

As well as scheduling upgrades, you can also enable scheduled restarts even if not update is available which may be useful to help with ensuring things run smoothly.

Self Hosted users can configure default restart/upgrade times at a TeamType level, FlowFuse Cloud Starter Tier users will have this enabled by default and it will run, at weekends.

TeamType Scheduled Maintenance Settings

FlowFuse Expert: Now with MCP-Powered Insights

2025-11-19T13:00:00Z

Recently, we introduced MCP Server nodes which gave you the ability to infuse your Node-RED flows and data with AI. Today, we have given the FlowFuse Expert new powers by adding support for Model Context Protocol (MCP). This allows you to interact directly with your instances, tools, and data.

Bridging the Gap Between AI and Your Data

By switching to the new Insights mode, the Expert gains the ability to use the MCP tools and resources you’ve built using FlowFuse MCP Server Nodes. This means you can now ask the Expert to analyze real-time data from your flows, query external databases, or trigger specific actions across your infrastructure.

How to get started:

Deploy MCP Nodes: Add MCP Tools or Resources to your Node-RED flows using our MCP Server nodes.
Switch to Insights: Open the FlowFuse Expert interface and use the Mode Selector to switch from "Chat" to "Insights."
Select your Server: Choose the MCP Server you want to include in your session.
Gain Insights: Ask questions about your live process data, system status, or connected databases.

Give it a try and see what your data has to tell you!

Demonstrating FlowFuse Expert Insights

Note: This feature is currently in Beta. We are actively expanding these capabilities and would love to hear how you are using MCP to extend your systems.

Node.js v20 Minimum Version Requirement

2025-11-11T12:00:00Z

FlowFuse v2.24.0 requires Node.js v20 or higher. If you are running an older version, you will need to upgrade Node.js before updating FlowFuse.

Node.js v18 reached end of life in April 2025 and no longer receives security updates. This change ensures FlowFuse continues to run on a supported and secure runtime.

To check your current version, run node --version.

FlowFuse Expert Update

2025-11-07T14:52:00Z

The FlowFuse Expert just got a major improvement: you can now start a conversation on the flowfuse.com homepage and continue it inside of FlowFuse and the Node-RED editor!

Now, when you use the Expert, you can bring your application-building instructions with you as you navigate.

This work involved major and important changes to the Expert UI, and brings us even closer to being able to build Node-RED flows using natural language inputs.

Give it a try!

Demo of option to continue chat in FlowFuse

Here is the in-app UI of the FlowFuse Expert

SSO control over Session life

2025-11-06T12:00:00Z

Customers on FlowFuse Cloud can now request custom Session Life times and Idle times. This allows the default times to be adjusted to match any in house policies that may be in place.

SSO Session Expiry and Idle settings

For existing FlowFuse Cloud customers please contact support if you would like to make changes to you existing configuration.

This will be available to Self Hosted customers in v2.24.0

Duplicate Instances Across Different Applications

2025-10-28T12:00:00Z

As of today, you can now duplicate a hosted instance into a different application within your team.

It is a small (but important) improvement that just just makes things that little bit easier.

Easier Access to Bulk Device Group Management

2025-10-28T12:00:00Z

Managing device groups for multiple Remote Instances is now easier to handle. Bulk management already existed but was difficult to use efficiently at larger scale.

This update refines that process. You can select multiple Remote Instances from the team or application remote instances pages and bulk assign them to device groups with fewer steps.

The improved workflow reduces friction when organizing devices by location, environment, or function.

Bulk Device Group Management showing multi-select capabilities and group assignment options

Device Group Management from Settings Page

2025-10-21T12:00:00Z

Managing which device group your Remote Instance belong to just got a easier. Previously, if you wanted to move a device to a different group, you had to identify the group the Remote Instance belongs to, remove it, then find the group to assign it to, edit that group and add it. This was not optimal.

With this update, you can now see which group a Remote Instance belongs to directly from the overview page, and easily reassign it to a different group from the settings page without the hassle of searching through your entire group structure.

Device Group Management Interface showing current group and reassignment options

Import flows during instance creation

2025-10-21T12:00:00Z

Getting started with FlowFuse just became easier! When creating a new Node-RED instance, you can now import your existing flows directly during the setup process.

This new capability allows you to jumpstart your FlowFuse journey by bringing in flows you've already developed, whether they're from a local Node-RED installation, exported from another system, or shared by a colleague.

The import process is flexible and user-friendly:

File upload: Simply select and upload a JSON file containing your flows
Direct paste: Copy and paste flow JSON directly into a text area
Live preview: See your flows rendered in real-time as you import them

The flows import step seamlessly integrates with the existing multi-step instance creation workflow. You can choose to start with a blueprint from our library or import your own flows - giving you multiple pathways to get productive quickly.

This enhancement is particularly valuable for teams looking to migrate existing Node-RED projects to FlowFuse or developers who want to quickly prototype with flows they've developed elsewhere.

Important considerations

When importing flows, keep these key points in mind:

Flow validation: Imported flows aren't checked for validity, so invalid nodes may prevent your instance from starting
Third-party nodes: External nodes aren't installed automatically but can be added once the instance is running
Credentials and secrets: These aren't imported with flows but can be reconfigured after deployment
Environment variables: Any required variables must be manually added to your environment after setup

Always verify the reliability of imported flows and avoid copying flows from untrusted sources.

To try it out, simply create a new instance and look for the new "Flows" step in the creation wizard!

Demo importing flows when creating a Hosted Instance

FlowFuse AI Nodes

2025-10-15T12:00:00Z

We’re excited to introduce FlowFuse AI Nodes — a new contrib package that brings the ONNX Runtime to Node-RED.

What is ONNX?

ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange) is an open format built to represent machine learning models. It provides an interoperable framework for AI developers to use models across different frameworks and tools.

Sounds great, right? So what does this mean for you?

You can now run pre-trained machine learning models directly within your Node-RED flows using the new FlowFuse AI Nodes. There are hundreds of pre-trained models available in the ONNX Model Zoo or from Hugging Face, covering a wide range of applications including image classification, object detection, natural language processing, Text to Speech, and more.

What can you do with FlowFuse AI Nodes?

In this first release, the FlowFuse AI Nodes package includes the following nodes:

ONNX Inference Node: A bare node to run any model (including your own trained ONNX models). Just upload the model file and feed in the input data to get predictions.
Image Classification Node: Classify images using pre-trained models like MobileNet, ResNet, or even use your own.
Object Detection Node: Detect objects in images using models like YOLOv5, SSD, or your own.
Image Depth Estimation Node: Estimate depth information from images.

With FlowFuse AI Nodes, you can easily integrate ONNX models into your Node-RED flows, enabling powerful AI capabilities without the need for extensive coding or machine learning expertise.

How to Get Started

FlowFuse customers can install the new AI nodes today via the Node-RED Palette Manager from the FlowFuse Nodes catalog

We have included example flows directly inside the package to help you get started quickly. Just hit CTRL-I in the Node-RED editor to import the example flows from the FlowFuse AI Nodes package.

Additionally, we have created a blog post detailing how you can train a simple image classification model to accompany the advanced example flow included in the package. You can read all about it here: Deploy Custom-Trained AI Models: Using ONNX with Node-RED and FlowFuse

Screenshots

Here are a selection of screenshots of the built-in demo flows in action

Running your own custom trained ONNX Model

Using a Text-to-Speech-model

Performing Image Depth Estimation

FlowFuse MCP Server Nodes

2025-10-14T12:00:00Z

We’re excited to introduce FlowFuse MCP Server Nodes — a new contrib package that brings MCP Tools, Resources, and Prompts straight into Node-RED. With just a few nodes, you can design custom MCP-powered automations, connect dynamic resources, and return responses seamlessly in your flows. Whether you’re prototyping or extending integrations, these nodes make it faster than ever to put MCP to work in your applications.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll share use cases and demos to inspire you, but in the meantime, we’ve included some sample flows you can access directly in Node-RED via the import menu (CTRL+I) and some additional links below.

What is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an emerging open standard for connecting AI models with tools and data sources in a structured way. It defines how prompts, resources, and responses should be exchanged, making it easier to build reliable and reusable AI-powered workflows.

Why is MCP important?

As AI adoption grows, developers need consistent ways to integrate models into real-world systems. MCP helps standardize this process, reducing boilerplate and ensuring interoperability across tools and platforms. With Node-RED support, FlowFuse makes it easier than ever for developers to experiment with MCP, build production-ready flows, and unlock the potential of AI-driven automation.

Screenshots

New MCP Nodes

FlowFuse customers can install the MCP Server nodes today via the Node-RED Palette Manager from the FlowFuse Nodes catalog

Additional links

Application-level access control for Enterprise teams

2025-10-08T12:00:00Z

One of the super-powers FlowFuse brings is its role-based access control that gets applied across the team. This allows teams to have users with different levels of access to the Node-RED instances - from full editor access, to read-only access, to only being able to access the dashboards the instances create.

We've pushed this one step further today for Enterprise teams, allowing them to set a user's role on a per-Application basis. This finer-grained control gives teams more flexibility in how they can secure their resources.

For example, a team could create an Application dedicated to their production systems, with a limited set of users able to make changes - whilst having a Development application that is accessible to a broader group of user.

The roles for an application can be modified under the 'User Access' section of its settings. It shows what roles each user has for the application and where any application-specific overrides have been set. Here you can see I've reduced Ben to a Dashboard role for this application - sorry Ben!

As with managing the top level roles in a team, only Team Owners are able to modify the roles within an application.

Application RBAC Settings

Allow SSO groups to be shared with the Node-RED Dashboard

2025-09-25T12:00:00Z

A new flag has been added to the SAML SSO configuration to allow a user's group membership to be included in the profile information included when FlowFuse Authentication is used with the Node-RED Dashboard v2.

Shown here is the content of the _client object attached to messages generated by the Dashboard nodes.

{
    "user": {
        "username": "ben-example_com",
        "email": "ben@example.com",
        "image": "https://forge.example.com/avatar/YmVu",
        "name": "Ben",
        "userId": "r3VG59G85J",
        "role": "owner",
        "SSOGroups": [
            "FlowFuse",
            "ff-development-owner",
            "test_ff-development-owner_test"
        ]
    },
    "socketId": "NA7eDLuWbR6wmCpSAAAF",
    "socketIp": "192.168.1.56"
}

The new key SSOGroups includes the list of Groups passed to the SSO configuration by the SAML backend and can be used by the Dashboard to control what information is shown to the user.

More details about how to create mutli-user Node-RED Dashboards can be found here

SSO is available to Enterprise teams on FlowFuse Cloud. Contact support if you would like this feature to be enable for your team.

Capture Async API data from FlowFuse Team Broker

2025-09-22T12:00:00Z

The FlowFuse Team Broker now includes automatically curated smart suggestions for the published payloads in each topic.

You can run this by simply toggling on the toggle found in the Topic Hierarchy view. This will run for 24 hours.

Team Broker Schema Capture

Our agent will monitor for any payloads published on your broker in that time, and offer smart suggestions on data structure found. You can review these suggestions with the FlowFuse user interface, and confirm them where appropriate.

Once confirmed, the Async API documentation can be viewed by clicking on the "Open Schema" button. This means that your whole team can be aligned when building with your UNS.

This functionality was previously only available to 3rd party MQTT brokers using the MQTT Schema Agent, it is enabled on FlowFuse Cloud and will be available to Enterprise Licensed Self Hosted customers from v2.22.0.

No more @flowforge/flowforge-device-agent releases

2025-09-22T12:00:00Z

When we changed company name from FlowForge to FlowFuse we continued to publish the Device Agent under the old package name @flowforge/flowforge-device-agent as well as the new package name @flowfuse/device-agent.

The current version 3.6.1 will be last release under the old package name.

The latest version can be found on npmjs.org here.

To upgrade please uninstall @flowforge/flowforge-device-agent using

npm uninstall -g @flowforge/flowforge-device-agent

(You may need to prefix this command with sudo on Unix platforms)

and install @flowfuse/device-agent.

npm install -g @flowfuse/device-agent

(again you may need to prefix this with sudo on Unix platforms)

The replacement package includes a migration binary called flowforge-device-agent which can still be used to start the new package.

Streamlined Snapshot Management

2025-09-19T12:00:00Z

We’ve redesigned how you interact with Hosted Instance snapshots by bringing all related actions into one place.
Instead of jumping between different menus, you can now manage everything directly from a single consolidated view.

This update keeps all existing functionality, but makes it easier and faster to find and use.

Streamlined snapshot management

AI Snapshot Descriptions Now Work with Remote Instances

2025-09-11T12:00:00Z

We've extended AI-generated snapshot descriptions to remote instances.

Whether your remote instance is linked to an application or a hosted instance, you can now generate a smart, clear description of the snapshot with a single click.

Two Flows, Same Outcome

Depending on how your remote instance is owned, the flow is slightly different:

AI for application-owned remote instances

AI for hosted-instance-owned remote instances

This rounds out our support for AI-generated snapshot descriptions.

FlowFuse Expert can help you write code

2025-09-05T12:00:00Z

More goodness has been added to the FlowFuse Expert by way of inline suggestions as you type. Initially, we have added support for the Function Node, Tables Query Node and the Dashboard Template Node. It is contextually aware so will offer suggestions applicable to what it sees and what is already written.

Let's see it in action

_Demo of function node with inline completions

_Demo of tables query node with inline completions

_Demo of dashboard template node with inline completions

This will be made availabe to our Pro and Enterprise users in remote and hosted instances in the next update however if you want to give it a go right away, you can update the FlowFuse Expert in the Node-RED Palette Manager today.

FlowFuse Remote Instance Performance Data

2025-08-28T16:00:00Z

FlowFuse Device Agent version v3.6.0 combined with FlowFuse v2.21.0 allows you to monitor the CPU and Memory usage of Remote Instances

Screenshot of Device Performance data

The view is available from the "Performance" tab on the Remote Instance page.

This feature is available to Enterprise customers on FlowFuse Cloud and to Enterprise licensed self hosting customers.

Export SubFlow as Node-RED module

2025-08-28T12:00:05Z

Instances running the latest Node-RED version on FlowFuse v2.21.0 will now be able to export Node-RED SubFlows as Node-RED nodes.

This is done from the Node-RED editor using a custom sidebar.

Screenshot of Node-RED with the SubFlow export sidebar

The nodes are added to the Team's Library of Custom Nodes and can be installed into any of the Team's Node-RED instances from the Catalogue generated by the Team Library.

Screenshot of Node-RED Manage Palette showing new SubFlow modules

This feature is available to FlowFuse Cloud Pro and Enterprise teams and to Enterprise Self hosting users.

FlowFuse Tables with a little help from the Assistant

2025-08-28T12:00:00Z

The new Tables we introduced in FlowFuse 2.20.0 feature may be still in Beta but to help you make the most of it we have added a codelens to the query editor to help you get your queries written faster.

Behind the scenes, when you ask for assistance, we gather schema info and include this in the process of making a prediction as to the best tables and fields to use for in the query.

Let's see it in action

Demo of table node with assistance

Configure HTTP CORS

2025-08-28T12:00:00Z

Included in FlowFuse v2.21.0 is the ability to configure the HTTP CORS response for HTTP routes served by the Node-RED instances.

This includes routes from HTTP-in/HTTP-response nodes and the Node-RED Dashboard.

Screenshot of Hosted Instance Security Settings

This feature will require the latest Stack version and uses will be prompted to upgrade if required.

Direct SSO Login

2025-08-28T12:00:00Z

As part of FlowFuse release v2.21.0, self hosted Enterprise users will be able to enable direct SSO login from the FlowFuse login page.

Screenshot of FlowFuse Login Page with SSO Direct Button

This can be enabled from the Admin Settings page. When enabled it will add a button for all SAML SSO configurations to the login page. These buttons bypass the email domain matching that would normally be used to select which SSO provider to use. This can be used when users use the same email domain but need to authenticate with different SSO providers.

Screenshot of FlowFuse Admin Settings for Direct SSO

Generate snapshot descriptions with AI

2025-08-28T12:00:00Z

We’ve introduced a new feature: AI-generated Snapshot Descriptions.
When creating a snapshot, you can now generate a concise description of what it contains and why it was created.

This makes it easier to understand the purpose of a snapshot at a glance, especially when working in a team or looking back weeks later.

How it works

When creating a snapshot, you’ll see a new “Generate with AI” option.
With one click, a suggested description is created for you, which you can accept as-is or edit before saving.

Demo of generating snapshot descriptions

This feature is currently available for hosted instances only. Support for remote instances will follow shortly.

FlowFuse MQTT

2025-08-18T12:00:00Z

FlowFuse has offered a built in MQTT Team Broker since FlowFuse v2.10.0, but connecting to it still required manual configuration in your Node-RED instances through the core MQTT nodes.

Today, we are adding dedicated MQTT nodes that require no setup to use. Just add a FlowFuse MQTT Node to your Node-RED instance, deploy it & go.

Pretty much all of the capabilities of the Node-RED MQTT Nodes are present making it very straightforward and to get up and running in no time.

Screenshot of Node-RED with FlowFuse MQTT Nodes

Screenshot of Node-RED with FlowFuse MQTT-in node edit panel

To get the new FlowFuse MQTT Nodes in your Node-RED instance, you will need to be running the latest version of the FlowFuse Device Agent (V3.6.0 or greater) or a stack running with the FlowFuse launcher (V2.20.1 or greater) which will be released in the coming days.

FlowFuse Expert documents your flows

2025-08-06T12:00:00Z

Recently, we introduced "Flows Explainer" to the FlowFuse Expert. It provides a concise description of the selected flows. This turned out so well we thought "wouldn't it be good if the generated explanation could be persisted as built in documentation" so we added a single click option to add the documentation as a comment node to your flows. We also provided a Copy to Clipboard button so you can grab it and add it to the Documentation section of a flow tab, node group or external documentation.

Let's see it in action

Demo of documenting flows with the Flows Explainer

While this feature is just a simple quality of life addition, we are hopeful it is small touches like these that improve your daily workflow.

Team Plan Renamed to Pro Plan

2025-08-04T12:00:00Z

We've renamed our Team tier to Pro tier to better reflect what it's truly designed for: using Node-RED professionally to build applications, replace and augment software in your organization, and scale professional Node-RED deployments.

The Pro plan empowers developers and engineers to move beyond collaboration and into production-ready industrial applications that optimize operations and drive real business value.

All existing Team plan subscribers will automatically transition to Pro. Your applications, instances, and team configurations remain exactly the same.

What's new:

A name that better represents professional Node-RED application development
Clearer positioning for organizations ready to scale their Node-RED implementations

Ready to build professional Node-RED applications? Get started with Pro or contact us to learn more.

Smart Suggestions

2025-07-31T13:00:00Z

In conjunction with the release of Node-RED 4.1.0 and FlowFuse 2.20.0, we have added smart suggestions to the Editor.

When you drop a node onto the editor workspace, the upstream connected nodes in your flow are analysed and a next node suggestion is presented for quick insertion via the keyboard TAB key or the click of your mouse. It presents up to 5 of the most common following nodes which can be cycled through using your keyboards UP and DOWN arrows, so even if the first suggestion isn't correct, it's very likely that the correct choice is only a key press away.

To achieve this, we processed thousands of real working flows and built a decision tree model for the greatest accuracy possible.

Let's see it in action

Demo of smart suggestions

We hope this new feature makes the process of writing flows for Node-RED flows in FlowFuse even easier.

FlowFuse Tables

2025-07-31T12:00:00Z

As part of the FlowFuse v2.20.0 release we are adding an option for a Team level hosted relational database.

Screenshot of the FlowFuse Tables onboarding wizard

Tools to create tables and to show sample data are included, but we will be iterating on these moving forward.

Screenshot of Table Explorer

Paired with the Database is a new FlowFuse Tables node which will automatically pick up the credentials when deployed in FlowFuse Hosted Instance running on a v2.20.0+ Stack, or when running with the latest version of the FlowFuse Device Agent.

Screenshot of Node-RED with FlowFuse Tables Node

The database is a Postgres instance and you will be able to connect 3rd party clients using the credentials provided.

This feature will be available to FlowFuse Cloud Enterprise Tier customers and to Enterprise Licensed Self Hosted customers on Kubernetes to start with, we hope to make it available to Docker Compose users in a future release.

It is currently marked as a Beta Feature while we continue to iterate on adding new features and observe how it is used.

Simplified Applications Page with Summary Tiles

2025-07-29T12:00:00Z

We’ve rolled out a redesigned Applications Page interface to give you sharper insight into instance status across hosted and remote deployments.

Key Updates

Application Shortcuts Maintained The existing shortcuts to instances, devices, device groups, snapshots, and pipelines have been retained in the new layout for easy access.
Summary Tiles for Each App Instead of listing every instance individually, you now get compact summary tiles with counts of Running, Error, and Not Running instances for both hosted and remote groups. Visual layout is clean and instant to scan.
Grouped Instances by Status Each application shows two separate tiles: one for hosted instances and one for remote. That way you see app health at a glance, without needing to drill into details.
Aggregate Status Tiles Each status tile represents an aggregate count of instances in a given state (e.g. Running, Error). Clicking on a tile takes you to a filtered view of the underlying instances.

Why This Matters

Page load times have been significantly improved by reducing the number of rendered elements and simplifying data fetching.
Cuts out clutter—no more scrolling through long lists.
Quick status view helps you spot issues fast.
Cleaner separation between hosted vs remote gives context instantly.

Screenshot of the Simplified Applications page

Import blueprints directly into your existing instances

2025-07-03T12:00:00Z

FlowFuse provides a growing library of blueprints that provide a great way to get started quickly with a pre-built solution across a range of scenarios.

With the 2.19 release of FlowFuse, instances that have been updated to the latest version can now import blueprints directly into their editor.

The Node-RED import dialog (Ctrl-i or the import menu option) now has a blueprints section. Under that you can browse the available blueprints by category and select one to import.

Screenshot of the Node-RED import dialog

When you import a blueprint, you may get an error about 'unknown' nodes. This will be because the blueprint depends on Node-RED nodes you haven't currently got installed. You can check the blueprint library for details on what the blueprints require and then install them via the Palette Manager within Node-RED.

We recognise that isn't as smooth an experience as we'd like - but the good news is it's about to get much better. With the imminent Node-RED 4.1 release, the editor will be able to automatically install any missing modules for you. Keep an eye out for the 4.1 release announcement and update your instances to take full advantage.

Browse for Node-RED Flows During Remote Instance Setup

2025-07-03T12:00:00Z

Last month we introduced a way for the FlowFuse Device Agent to import Node-RED flows during the setup process. Today, we have built on that and added some new features:

Automatically scan common file locations and offer any flows found for immediate selection
Scan common directories and present any that contain multiple flows as a quick browse selection
Offer a "Browse filesystem" option to let you navigate and select any flows on your device

Lets see it in action

Import automatically located ~/.node-red/flows.json flows file

Screenshot of the Importing an Automatically located flows file during Device Agent Setup

Using the "Browse filesystem" option to navigate the filesystem to chose a different flows file

Screenshot of Browsing the filesystem for flows file during Device Agent Setup

We hope these new enhancements make the process of migrating existing Node-RED flows to FlowFuse even easier.

FlowFuse Expert just got smarter

2025-06-30T12:00:00Z

Following on from the recent improvements we made earlier this month, we have added even more goodness to the FlowFuse Expert:

We have:

Added a menu for quick access to the new features
Improved the look and feel of the Flow Explainer
Added a codelens to assist you creating HTML, VUE, Vuetify & CSS in FlowFuse Node-RED Dashboard templates

And there more to come in the next week - stay tuned!

Screenshot of the new Assistant Menu

Flow Explainer updated look & feel

Animated GIF showing the Flow Explainer Updated Layout

New Codelens for building ui-templates

Animated GIF showing the Assistant building HTML & VUE template code

Animated GIF showing the Assistant building CSS styles

Updating the Assistant

If you are running Node-RED v4.x, head over to the Palette Manager, update the plugin and restart your instance.

Screenshot of Updating the Assistant for a Node-RED 4 instance

If you are still running Node-RED v3.x we strogly recommend you update your stack to use Node-RED v4.x but you can still manually update the plugin by adding @flowfuse/nr-assistant to the instance settings then restart it.

Screenshot of Updating Assistant for a Node-RED 3 instance

Introducing the New Home Page Experience

2025-06-24T12:00:00Z

We’re excited to announce the release of the all-new Home Page, designed to simplify navigation and provide relevant information at a glance.

Key Features

A more intuitive and dedicated landing page, replacing the dual-purpose "Applications" view.
Recently Modified Instances: The Home page highlights recently modified hosted and remote instances, providing key statistics at a glance:
- Number of running, error, and not running instances.
- Each tile is clickable for direct access.
Recent Activity Section: A comprehensive view of the latest 50 changes made within the current team is now integrated, enabling better tracking of team activities and updates.

These enhancements are intended to make managing your instances and reviewing activity smoother and more effective.

Screenshot of the new home/landing page in FlowFuse

This improvement aligns with the feedback we received from the community, aimed at delivering a more user-friendly and focused experience.

Memory Metrics in Instance Performance View

2025-06-20T12:00:00Z

We're excited to announce an enhancement to the existing Performance view for Hosted Instances in FlowFuse. We've expanded the view to include a new Memory Utilization chart.

Screenshot of the Performance view with Memory Utilization

This update provides additional insight, allowing you to monitor not only CPU usage but also memory consumption over time. The inclusion of memory metrics makes it easier than ever to detect performance issues and optimize your Node-RED Flows.

FlowFuse Expert just got smarter

2025-06-12T12:00:00Z

Last year, we introduced the FlowFuse Expert, a Node-RED plugin designed to assist FlowFuse users with tools for developing their Node-RED instances. Today, we are excited to announce that the Assistant has been updated with a new feature powered by AI: the Flows Explainer. This feature uses AI to analyze your Node-RED flows and provide a detailed explanation of what they do, making it easier for you to understand and manage your flows.

Stay tuned; this is just a taste of what is to come.

Flows Explainer

Screenshot of the FlowFuse Expert Flow Explainer

Updating the Assistant

If you are running Node-RED v4.x, head over to the Palette Manager, update the plugin and restart your instance.

Screenshot of Updating assistant on Node-RED 4

Screenshot of Updating assistant on Node-RED 3

Navigation UI Refresh

2025-06-11T12:00:00Z

We’ve given the top navigation in FlowFuse a visual refresh as part of our effort to constantly improve and modernise the user experience of FlowFuse.

Menus now use a clean white background, with updated colors, spacing, and transitions across the user menu, team switcher, and notification buttons. Mobile menus have also been cleaned up for better usability.

This is the first step in a broader UI modernization effort based on community feedback.

Screenshot of the re-designed top navigation

Team Performance Feature

2025-06-05T11:43:32Z

We've expanded the Performance feature with an exciting new addition: Team Performance metrics.

Team-Wide CPU Monitoring: Get a complete overview of CPU usage across all hosted instances in your team, helping you track and analyze resource allocation efficiently.

These enhancements are designed to improve operational visibility and resource management based on user feedback from our community.

Overview of CPU Usage in the Team Performance Feature

Instance Performance View

2025-06-02T12:00:00Z

We've added a new view for every Hosted Instance in FlowFuse, Performance.

Screenshot of the Performance view for a Hosted Instance

This view provides a comprehensive insight into the performance of your hosted Node-RED instances, focussing on CPU usage over time, better enabling you to detect performance issues within your Node-RED Flows.

This feature is available today for Enterprise tier teams on FlowFuse Cloud and will be available for self-hosted Enterprise customers as part of the 2.18 release later this week.

Pulling snapshots from Git with Pipelines

2025-06-02T12:00:00Z

We released support for pushing snapshots to a Git repository as part of the DevOps Pipelines feature last month. As promised, we've now added the ability to pull snapshots back from the repository.

This unlocks a number of powerful workflows with the Pipelines.

Review-based Pipelines

The Git Pipeline stage can be configured to push and pull from different branches of the Git Repostory. By making use of a GitHub Pull Request, you can create a workflow where the snapshot is reviewed and merged before the pipeline can deploy the snapshot to the later stages.

Deploying snapshots across Teams

By using an external Git Repository, it is simple to create a workflow that enables moving snapshots between two different Teams on the platform whilst maintaining the security and auditability of the individual Teams.

This feature is available today for Enterprise tier teams on FlowFuse Cloud and will be available for self-hosted Enterprise customers as part of the 2.18 release later this week.

We still only support GitHub.com hosted repositories, but we're looking at support for Azure hosted repos in the near future.

Screenshot of a Git Pipeline Stage

Import Node-RED Flows During Remote Instance Setup

2025-05-08T12:00:00Z

FlowFuse Device Agent now supports importing Node-RED flows during the setup process. This feature streamlines the configuration of your Remote Instance by allowing you to:

Select an existing Node-RED flows directory from your device.
Choose a specific flows file to import.
Automatically import associated credentials and package files.

How it works

Setup Command: Run the setup command provided in the FlowFuse interface.
Flow Selection: During setup, you will be prompted to import existing Node-RED flows. Options include:
- Skipping the import.
- Selecting a default Node-RED directory (e.g., .node-red).
- Specifying a custom path.
File Selection: If a directory is selected, you can choose a specific flows file to import.
Automatic Import: The Device Agent will handle importing credentials, package files, and generate a snapshot to the FlowFuse Platform, setting it as the "Target Snapshot" for the device.

Notes

When your Remote Instance is started, it will install all the necessary pieces and run your new Snapshot.
The Remote Instance must be assigned to an application before running the Setup Command
Requires Device Agent v3.3.1
Available on FlowFuse Cloud today. For self-hosted customers, you'll need FlowFuse version 2.17

Screenshots

Screenshot of the FlowFuse interface for configuring a Remote Instance

Screenshot of the new import options in the Device Agent during setup

We hope this enhancement simplifies the process of migrating existing Node-RED flows to FlowFuse.

Better Node-RED log handling

2025-04-09T12:00:00Z

We've improved the log handling within our Hosted Node-RED instances. Previously we were using a fix sized buffer in memory; meaning the noiser your Node-RED instance was, the less history you'd have. The UI for browsing the logs was also awkward when you wanted to jump back to an earlier section of the logs.

With this release, once you update your instances to the latest version, we will now store the last 7 days worth of logs for each hosted Node-RED instance.

To go along side this, we've added the ability to jump to a specific time/date in the logs without having to endlessly scroll.

To start benefiting from the extended logs, make sure you update the latest version via your Instance Settings page.

Screenshot of browsing Node-RED logs by timestamp

Git Integration with Pipelines

2025-04-09T12:00:00Z

From today, Enterprise tier teams on FlowFuse Cloud are able to add a Git Repository stage to their deployment pipelines. When the pipeline is triggered, the latest snapshot will get pushed to the configured repository.

This has been one of those features that has come up a number of times with our users; we knew we wanted to have Git integration in the platform, but we also wanted it to fit in a natural way with the developer workflows we provide.

This is very much a "first-iteration" of the feature that will allow us to get feedback early and continue to iterate.

With this release, the following restrictions apply:

Only GitHub.com hosted repostories are supported
Users must create a GitHub Personal Access Token and add to their Team Settings
We currently only support pushing snapshots to a Git repository

This last point is important; this release lets you backup your flows to git, but we haven't yet enabled the return journey of pulling a snapshot from a Git repository back to your Node-RED instance. That'll come in the near future and will unlock a full git-based review workflow within the pipelines.

We'll also look at enabling other Git hosting providers - let us know which you'd like to see on the list.

Screenshot of a Git Pipeline Stage

Changes to tags for flowfuse/node-red

2025-04-09T12:00:00Z

As part of the upcoming FlowFuse 2.16.0 release we will be updating which version the latest tag points to for the flowfuse/node-red containers.

This change will impact self-hosted Docker and Kubernetes installs that have not changed the default stack.

The latest tag currently points to the latest version of the FlowFuse Stack container but contains Node-RED version 3.0.2 and NodeJS 16. After the update it will contain Node-RED version 4.0.9 and NodeJS 20.

It will then continue to track the latest stable Node-RED version as they are released.

You can update the tag by creating a new version of the Stack under the Admin Settings -> Stacks page as a FlowFuse Admin user.

We make the following tags available which track the latest version of FlowFuse:

flowfuse/node-red:latest as described above
flowfuse/node-red:latest-2.2.x which contains Node-RED 2.2.2 NodeJS 16
flowfuse/node-red:latest-3.0.x which contains Node-RED 3.0.2 NodeJS 16
flowfuse/node-red:latest-3.1.x which contains Node-RED 3.1.15 NodeJS 18
flowfuse/node-red:latest-4.0.x which contains Node-RED 4.0.9 NodeJS 20 (same as flowfuse/node-red:latest)

We also publish tags explicitly pinned to a FlowFuse version with the following format <version>-<node-red-version> e.g. flowfuse/node-red:2.15.0-4.0.x which would be FlowFuse 2.15.0 and Node-RED 4.0.x.

Remote Instance Provisioning

2025-04-04T12:00:00Z

FlowFuse has had the ability to provision remote instances at scale for some time now, but assigning remote instances to an application has, until now, been a manual process.

In this update, we have added the ability to have your bulk provisioned remote instances automatically assign themselves to an application upon creation.

This will save you a lot of time if you have a large number of remote instances to provision.

Screenshot of creating a provisioning token

Checkout the Bulk Registration section in the Device Agent Registration documentation for more information on how to use this feature.

Local Login for Remote Instances

2025-03-27T12:00:00Z

With the new 3.2.0 release of the FlowFuse Device Agent, we have introduced a new Local Login option for Remote Instances.

This feature allows you to enable a local login for your Remote Instance, which is particularly useful in air-gapped environments or times when the instance cannot reach the FlowFuse platform.

When local login is enabled, users can log in to Node-RED directly using the specified credentials.

For day-to-day activity, we still recommending accessing the editor through the FlowFuse Platform for the best user experience. However, for those times when that isn't possible, this option provides a fall-back to allow continued access to the device.

You can configure this option in your Remote Instance Settings tab under the Security section. Screenshot of local login options

Additionally, you can enable or disable local login for in the Device Agents YAML configuration file. For more information, refer to the Node-RED Settings in our documentation.

Resource Alerts

2025-03-25T12:00:00Z

To help you manage resource utilization more effectively, we’ve introduced notifications to alert you when you’re nearing critical thresholds.

The new CPU and Memory notifications will notify you when usage exceeds 75% of capacity. This proactive alerting gives you the opportunity to take action before experiencing downtime or performance issues.

We hope this feature helps you avoid unexpected resource-related challenges with your applications.

Screenshot of the new resource notifications

How to Enable or Disable Notifications

You can manage these notifications in your Hosted Instance Settings tab under the Alerts section.

Screenshot of the new resource notifications settings

NPM Package Hosting

2025-03-13T12:00:00Z

For Team and Enterprise tier Teams on FlowFuse Cloud we are introducing a NPM package repository giving you a place to host custom Node-RED nodes.

These Node-RED nodes can be used in both Hosted and Remote Instances and will show up in a custom catalogue with the name "FlowFuse Team [team name] Catalogue" in the Node-RED editor.

Custom Catalogue

A list of NPM Packages published to the Team's repository can be seen under the Team's Library section in the "Custom Nodes" tab

Custom Nodes list

This feature is also available to self hosting Enterprise customers on Kubernetes with Docker following shortly.

MQTT Topic Management

2025-03-12T12:00:00Z

We are always looking for ways to improve FlowFuse and today, we have made a small but notable addition: the ability to delete old topics from your hierarchy.

This helps you keep things tidy and not clutter your hierarchy with old topics. Note that if the topic is published to again and detected by the platform, it will get added back.

Screenshot of the new Topic Delete feature

Filtering Snapshots

2025-03-11T12:00:00Z

To simplify management of Snapshots, they can now be filtered to "All Snapshots", "User Snapshots" or "Auto Snapshots"

Screenshot of the new Snapshot filter

Multiple Device Groups in a pipeline

2025-03-10T12:00:00Z

Last year, we announced the introduction of Device Groups. For those that are not familiar with Device Groups, this feature enables users to logically group their Remote Instances so that they can be targeted in a DevOps Pipeline facilitating streamlined and efficient deployments across your fleet of devices.

Previously, you could only use a Group as the last stage in a pipeline. With this update, you can now have Groups at other stages in a pipeline. For example, you may have a group of test devices that you want to push updates to before pushing them out to your larger group of production devices.

This improvement not only saves time but also enhances the consistency and reliability of remote instance management across your fleet.

Free Tier now more accessible to all

2025-03-06T12:00:00Z

We introduced the Free tier on FlowFuse Cloud back in December. This allows you to manage two remote instances using the FlowFuse Device Agent completely free of charge.

Since its launch we had many users sign-up and start connecting their remote instances to the platform. We've also had feedback on the fact it required you to enter credit card details to get fully set up.

We're please to announce that, as of today, you no longer need a credit card to sign-up to our Free tier - you can jump straight into getting your remote instances connected.

Check out the original announcement blog post on how to get started with the Free tier.

MQTT Smart Schema Suggestions

2025-03-04T13:00:00Z

FlowFuse's new "Smart Suggestions" feature will help you get your full UNS and MQTT Broker documented with ease.

Our agent will monitor traffic through the Broker, and make calculate the schema of any payloads passed through. This assessment is turned into a "Suggestion" within the FlowFuse Platform, and can quickly be added to the formal schema for your Broker.

Improved Broker Connection Feedback

2025-02-28T12:00:00Z

Improved feedback displayed to a user when a third-party broker does nto connect as expected

We've improved the feedback displayed to a user when a third-party broker does not connect as expected. This will help users to diagnose and resolve issues with their broker connections more easily, extending on the "error" status pill that was initially implemented alongside the broker's name.

New Remote Instances Version History Events

2025-02-25T12:00:00Z

Users can now get better visibility of the state of their Remote Instances with additional events in the Version History timeline. This enhancement improves traceability and provides deeper insights into remote instance state changes over time.

New Trackable Events

Deploying Snapshots to Remote Instance via a Pipeline
Deploying Snapshots through a Hosted Instance
Snapshot Rollback
Snapshot Create

These events will be automatically recorded in the version history, allowing users to review and audit changes more effectively.

Re-send Team Invitations

2025-02-21T12:00:00Z

We have added the ability to re-send team invitations, which also extends the expiration date of the invitation. This improvement ensures that invitations remain valid for a longer period and allows team administrators to easily re-invite users who may have missed their initial invitation.

This update enhances user management and simplifies the process of maintaining team memberships within FlowFuse.

Screenshot of the member invitation page

Search & Filter for Topic Hierarchy List

2025-02-18T12:00:00Z

Search and filter functionality in the topic hierarchy list

We've introduced search and filter capabilities to the topic hierarchy list. This allows users to quickly find specific topics, making navigation more efficient and improving usability when working with large topic trees.

FlowFuse User Authentication on Remote Instances

2025-02-13T12:00:00Z

With the 3.1.1 release of the FlowFuse Device Agent, we've added two important pieces of new functionality.

FlowFuse User Authentication

It is now possible to enable end-point security on the instance. In the same way you can for Hosted Instances, you can now configure Basic Username/Password authentication or the more powerful FlowFuse User Authentication.

This means you can serve up your dashboards on remote Instances confident that only users in your FlowFuse team can access them.

Modifying settings in Developer Mode

Whilst a remote instance is in developer mode, you can access the Node-RED editor through the FlowFuse platform. This is a great way to develop your flows on real hardware through the platform.

A common developer task is to want to modify environment variables, or change device settings (such as enabling the new FlowFuse User authentication option).

Previously this would require taking the device out of developer mode in order to apply the changes. From a workflow, this required lots of additional steps for not a lot of benefit.

With the new release of the Device Agent, the agent will pick up any settings changes when it is restarted via the action menu in the FlowFuse UI. A small change, but a big improvement to the developer workflow.

Personalized Schema Documentation

2025-02-12T13:00:00Z

Screenshot of the new MQTT Broker schema documentation view available in FlowFuse

This new view for your MQTT Broker focusses on clarity, and collaboration. It provides a single, easy to read window that provides the relevant information any member of your team or organization would need in order to understand what your MQTT broker is used for.

The underlying schema is generated automatically by FlowFuse, using the industry-standard, open-sourced, AsyncAPI, saving your months of resource in manually documenting payload and topic structures yourself.

The documentation provides a comprehensive view of the topics published to on your Broker, as well as crafted descriptions to help users understand each topic's purpose. This feature is available for both the in-built FlowFuse Broker, and any third-party broker that you choose to connect to.

Version History Timeline

2025-02-12T13:00:00Z

Remote instances can now make use of the new Timeline feature, providing a concise, chronological view of key activities within your Node-RED remote setup.

The Timeline and Snapshots are now grouped together under the Version History tab, simplifying the navigation of your remote instance's history.

This feature is only available to Enterprise license and Cloud Team users. Note that the Timeline can only be accessed at the remote instance level.

Screenshot showing the new version history timeline

Screenshot showing the relocated snapshot page under the version history tab

External MQTT Brokers

2025-02-12T12:00:00Z

In a previous release, we introduced the FlowFuse Team Broker; an MQTT broker available to all instances running in your team. Whilst the Team Broker is a great addition, we are aware that many of our customers already have their own existing MQTT brokers and infrastructure.

We have now made it possible to connect the FlowFuse platform to your existing external MQTT broker. With that you'll get access to the same great features to help you gain a clear understanding of the activity on your broker, and the structure of the data and topics that are being used.

Screenhot from creating new external broker

As well as building a topic schema, the message payloads will also be inspected to infer their format to help you understand your data.

Screenshot of topic and inferred payload schema

Whilst connected, the FlowFuse platform will monitor the messages being published on the broker and update the information every few minutes. This means there will be a short delay between a message being published to a topic and that topic being shown in the hierarchy.

This is available on FlowFuse Cloud and for Self Hosting users with an Enterprise License on Kubernetes and LocalFS. Docker support will follow shortly.

Hidden Environment Variables

2025-01-21T14:00:00Z

We’ve expanded the functionality of managing Node-RED environment variables by introducing the ability to hide their values in the UI.

What’s new?

This feature is supported by both hosted and remote Node-RED instances.

Users can now designate values as 'hidden' when creating or editing them.
Hidden values are concealed in the UI for enhanced privacy and security.
Once marked as hidden and saved:
- the name cannot be changed.
- the value can only be updated - its existing value cannot be seen.
To make a value visible again, users must delete the entry and recreate it as a visible one.

This feature enhances security and allows for more control over sensitive configuration data, ensuring better management in your Node-RED workflows.

Screenshot of the new hidden environment variables feature - Hosted Instances

Screenshot of the new hidden environment variables feature - Remote Instances

Team level view of Groups

2025-01-16T14:00:00Z

Screenshot from the new team level groups

Managing remote instances is easier with the new Team-level view of Groups.

Groups let you organize your Remote Instances by application. They can then be used as a Target in DevOps pipelines for seamless updates across multiple instances in one operation.

This simplifies deployments, enhances collaboration, and streamlines infrastructure management for faster, more efficient workflows.

Improved Diagnostics

2025-01-14T13:00:00Z

It happens! Sometimes things go wrong, but don't worry, we have you covered.

For Team and Enterprise customers on FlowFuse Cloud, we've improved the emails we send notifying you that something has gone wrong with one of your instances.

The emails now include more information about what has happened, including the most recent logs from Node-RED. We also include some tips as to what to do next, whether it was a code bug or a memory issue that triggered the problem.

We hope you never need to see these emails, but if you do, we hope they help you get back on track quickly.

New Onboarding Tour for Free Tier Users

2025-01-07T14:00:00Z

Screenshot from the new onboarding tour for "Free" tier FlowFuse Cloud users

Following from our new "Free" tier on FlowFuse Cloud, we've also published a new onboarding tour to help users get started with their new team.

This tour will guide you through the process of setting up your first Remote Instance, and show you how to access your Node-RED instance through FlowFuse Cloud, using the remote access tools.

Device Editor Access Speed Up

2024-12-19T14:00:00Z

With the 2.12 release we have included some improvements to the Device Editor experience.

For Devices running with Node-RED 4.0.x and newer, there should be significant performance improvements when loading the editor, especially when the device is on a slow network link.

Allow Dashboards to be embedded in iFrames

2024-12-19T13:00:00Z

With the 2.12.0 release the correct HTTP Headers can now be set to allow Dashboards hosted in Node-RED Instances on FlowFuse to be embedded into other pages as iFrames.

This option is under the Instance Settings on the Editor section.

Enabled iFrame Support

This feature will require the latest Stack version, you will be prompted to upgrade if required.

Upgrade Stack to Enable

Team BOM and Pipeline Views

2024-12-16T13:00:00Z

Team-level views of all Pipelines and Bill of Materials have been added to provide a complete overview.

The Bill of Materials view shows which components and their versions across all Node-RED Devices & Instances in the whole Team rather than at an Application level.

Team BOM view

Similarly the Team Pipeline view shows all CI delivery pipelines in all the Applications in the Team, giving team members a quicker way to jump to a specific Pipeline.

Team Pipelines

Team-wide search

2024-11-21T13:00:00Z

A new search bar has been added that makes it quick and easy to find resources within your team.

This expands on the search available on the Applications summary view - but by moving to the top header, it's now available on all pages.

For this release, it searches your Applications, Instances and Devices. We'll be expanding its coverage in future iterations to include other resources in the team.

Screenshot of the team-wide search

MQTT Topic Hierarchy view

2024-11-21T10:00:00Z

Having recently added our very own MQTT Service to the platform, we're continuing to expand on the features and tools we provide to help teams build their solutions.

We have added a view that shows you what MQTT topics are being used on the Team Broker. This helps give you clarity on the structure of your topic-space, whether you're using the MQTT Broker for a unified namespace (UNS) or any other use case.

This is a small iteration of the feature but we'll have lots more to come.

Screenshot of the UI to explore your MQTT topic hierarchy

Audit logs show hierarchical events

2024-11-20T13:00:00Z

In FlowFuse V2.11, we have updated the Audit Log views to let you see more of the events happening within your team. Previously, the Audit Log view would only show you top-level events happening to the application or team. With this release, it now provides an aggregated view of all of your resources. Additionally, each row contains an icon and name of the item raised the event that you can click to navigate straight to it making your workflow more streamlined.

Screenshot showing Audit Log with hierarchical events

We hope this feature will help you better understand and navigate your FlowFuse applications.

Device Agent 3.0 released

2024-11-08T13:00:00Z

The FlowFuse Device Agent is the piece of software we provide to manage Node-RED instances running anywhere outside of the FlowFuse platform.

Today we have released the latest version of the agent that now requires at least Node.js 18 to run. To reflect this change, we are releasing this as a new major version - 3.0.

We recognize that software update lifecycles can be a challenge in some environments. This is why we've held off dropping support for older Node.js versions for as long as we could. However, we have to balance that against ensuring we continue to keep the Device Agent up to date with the latest security fixes.

If your devices cannot be updated to the latest Node.js versions, then please ensure you stay on the 2.x release of the Device Agent until a time that you are able to update Node.js.

Details for upgrading to this release are available in the documentation.

Version History Timeline

2024-10-24T13:00:00Z

Instances can now make use of the new Timeline feature, providing a concise, chronological view of key activities within your Node-RED instance.

The Timeline tracks important events such as pipeline stage deployments, snapshot restorations, flow deployments, snapshot creations, and updates to instance settings, offering clear insight into when and what changes have been made.

The Timeline and Snapshots are now grouped together under the Version History tab, simplifying the navigation of your instance's history.

This feature is only available to Enterprise license and Cloud Team users. Note that the Timeline can only be accessed at the instance level.

Screenshot showing the new version history timeline

Screenshot showing the relocated snapshot page under the version history tab

MQTT Broker Service

2024-10-24T13:00:00Z

To celebrate 25 years since the first release of the MQTT Specification we are happy announce a new MQTT Broker Service as part of FlowFuse Cloud.

The initial deployment is available to Enterprise Teams and allows up to 20 clients to connect to the broker. Each team has their own independent topic space and can set their own topic ACLs to control what clients can access.

From today, this feature is available to FlowFuse Cloud Enterprise Teams. We'll be bringing it to Self-Hosted customers in the near future, as well as adding the ability to purchase additional packs of clients.

See the broker documentation for more details.

Environment Variables for your Device Groups

2024-10-21T13:00:00Z

We have added the ability to set Environment Variables on a Device Group. This allows you to set common values that all member devices can make use of.

Screenshot showing Device Group Environment Variables

We hope this feature will make it easier to manage your devices and keep your configuration in one place.

See the Device Group documentation for more information on how to set environment variables for your device groups.

Snapshot Upload and Download Improvements

2024-10-14T13:00:00Z

We have added the ability to select which components of a snapshot you want to keep when downloading or uploading a snapshot.

The options available are:

Flows: Include the flows of the snapshot
Credentials: Include the credentials of the snapshots flows
Environment Variables
- Keys and Values: Include the keys and values of the environment variables
- Keys Only: Include only the keys of the environment variables

Screenshot showing snapshot download component options

Screenshot showing snapshot upload component options

This feature can help you be specific about what you want to include in a downloaded snapshot. This is especially useful when you want to share a snapshot with others, but don't want to include sensitive information like credentials. Also, when you receive a snapshot that needs importing into a different FlowFuse platform or team, you can can now be selective about what to keep and what to exclude.

See the Snapshots documentation for more information.

Managing Notifications

2024-10-04T10:00:00Z

We have now added the ability to manage notifications in bulk. This allows users to select more than one notification so that they can be marked as read, or marked as unread, all in one go.

We hope this small improvement saves you bundle of clicks and streamlines your operations.

Bill of Materials

2024-09-25T10:00:00Z

Starting with the v2.9.0 release FlowFuse a new Application Dependencies tab will be available for Enterprise self-hosted and Enterprise Tier FlowFuse Cloud users where a complete list of dependencies belonging to every Instance associated to the application can be found.

The intent is to give users a birds eye view of an application's dependencies and track dependency changes.

Users can search by package name, version, instance or device name.

Static File Service Navigation and Visibility

2024-09-19T13:00:00Z

Users of FlowFuse Cloud can now make use of an enhanced navigation tool and visibility selector when using the static file service feature.

By settings the visibility of a folder to 'public', their Node-RED instance will automatically make any files in that folder publicly available - on a path of the user's choosing.

This makes it very simple to serve up additional assets such as images or libraries that can be used in your Node-RED Dashboards.

The visibility settings apply to the folder; you cannot make individual files public. Any changes to the visibility settings will require the instance to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

LDAP Single Sign On Updates

2024-08-28T13:00:00Z

In the v2.8.0 release we have updated the LDAP SSO feature to allow group membership to be managed by LDAP groups.

Configuring

Building on the SAML based SSO configuration there is now a Manage roles using group assertions check box on the LDAP SSO configuration page. This allows a base LDAP DN for groups to be set. This will used to look up which groups a user is a member of when they login to the platform.

Groups can be groupOfNames or groupOfUniqueNames and membership will be checked against memberOf or uniqueMemberOf fields respectively.

Group Naming

Group names must follow the this pattern ff-<team slug>-role

The valid roles for a user in a team are:

owner
member
viewer
dashboard

Note: this uses the team slug property to identify the team. This has been chosen to simplify managing the groups in the LDAP Provider - rather than using the team's id. However, a team's slug can be changed by a team owner. Doing so will break the link between the group and the team membership - so should only be done with care.

More details can be found in the SSO LDAP documentation.

Managing FlowFuse Admins

In the previous release we added support for managing FlowFuse Admin users by group membership to SAML SSO, this is now available to LDAP as well.

Note: It is advised to maintain a backup admin user that does not authenticate via SSO so ensure access can be maintained if the SSO provider is unavailable. Also the system will not remove the admin flag from a user if that would leave the platform with no admins even if they removed from the group.

This feature is only available to FlowFuse self-hosted customers.

Notifications Inbox

2024-08-27T13:00:00Z

To keep you focused, we have added a "Hide Read" checkbox that is checked by default so that you only see active notifications.

Not only that, we've added some new notifications so that members and owners get fast feedback for important events in your system.

Screenshot showing unread Notifications Inbox in FlowFuse

Screenshot showing read Notifications Inbox in FlowFuse

Managing devices

2024-08-12T13:00:00Z

Having recently added the ability to delete multiple devices at once, we have now added the ability to move multiple devices at once.

To use this feature, navigate to the devices page, application devices or instance devices and place a check in the box next to the devices you wish to move. Once you have selected the devices you wish to move, click the new menu button above the table & select the new location for the devices.

We are are sure this will make managing your devices a good deal easier.

You can read up on the new feature in our documentation.

Edit Snapshots

2024-08-01T10:00:00Z

Snapshots can now be renamed and their descriptions updated, even after they're created.

Screenshot showing the new Edit Snapshots feature in FlowFuse

This is particularly useful for the snapshots that are automatically generated each time your deploy your flows, making it easier to track back your changes and revert to a previous state if needed.

Device Groups Snapshots

2024-07-30T13:00:00Z

An update to let you know you can now clear the target snapshot of a device group. This is small but useful feature that can help you manage your device groups more effectively.

For those unfamiliar with FlowFuse device groups, essentially, they permit you to deploy a snapshot to one or many devices via a pipeline in a single action. This is great for managing changes across a fleet of devices.

See the device groups documentation for more information on how to make use of device groups.

Enforcing Enterprise Restrictions

2024-07-24T13:00:00Z

Starting with the v2.8.0 release FlowFuse will be taking a slightly stricter approach to License enforcement outside of FlowFuse Cloud. Previously when a license expired the platform would continue to run with the same capabilities as when the license was valid.

If you are currently running with older version with an expired license please contact the Sales team to discuss renewing your license before upgrading. You can check your current license on the Admin Settings -> Overview page.

Notifications

Starting 30 days before the license expires:

Admin users will see a banner showing the number of days left.
A email will be sent to all Admin users.

The email will be sent again every Sunday evening in the 30 days.

After Expiry

All running instances will be suspended.
Instances will not be started.
No new Instances or Devices can be created.
A email will be sent to all Admin users saying the license has expired.
A banner showing the license as expired will be shown to all users.
All connections to the MQTT broker will be refused (This will impact Project Nodes and Device control).

Applying a New License

A new license can be applied in the Admin Settings -> Settings section.

Once applied you will be able to restart all existing Instances and create new Instances and Devices. The MQTT will accept new connections.

Single Sign On Updates

2024-07-24T13:00:00Z

In the v2.7.0 release we have included some new SSO features

User creation on first log in

Before v2.7.0 users needed to be created before they could use SSO to log in to FlowFuse. Now if enabled in the SSO configuration users will be created when they first sign in. If team membership is controlled by SSO Groups (SAML only) then they will be added to the relevant teams, otherwise if the system is configured to create a Team for a new user it will do so.

FlowFuse Cloud customers should contact support to discuss enabling this feature for their teams.

Managing FlowFuse Admins with SSO Groups

It is now possible to configure a group to manage which users are granted administration privileges. The name of the group can be added to the SSO configuration (SAML only).

NOTE: It is advised to maintain a backup admin user that does not authenticate via SSO so ensure access can be maintained if the SSO provider is unavailable. Also the system will not remove the admin flag from a user if that would leave the platform with no admins even if they removed from the group.

This feature is not available to FlowFuse Cloud customers.

Notifications Inbox

2024-07-21T13:00:00Z

We've made some changes to the way notifications are displayed and handled in FlowFuse to make it easier to see what's going on in your system, with a new, dedicated, "Notifications Inbox".

Screenshot showing the new Notifications Inbox in FlowFuse

Whilst the only notifications we're supporting right now are team invites, this groundwork will allow us to expand the types of notifications we can send in the future to give better visibility of what's happening in your FlowFuse environment.

Managing devices

2024-07-19T13:00:00Z

We have added bulk operations for managing devices.

In this first iteration we have added the ability to delete multiple devices at once.

To use this feature, navigate to the devices page, application devices or instance devices and place a check in the box next to the devices you wish to delete. Once you have selected the devices you wish to delete, click the trash can button above the table & confirm the deletion.

We will be adding more bulk operations in the future, so keep an eye out for more updates.

FlowFuse Expert Writes JSON

2024-07-16T13:00:00Z

The FlowFuse Expert can now assist you by generating JSON.

Wherever you edit JSON in the Rich Monaco Editor you will see the "Ask the FlowFuse Expert 🪄" code lens. That includes the Inject Node, the Template Node and any contrib node that uses the built-in editor for writing JSON.

We think you will find this to be a great time saver and a good helper when you are unsure of the syntax.

Just ask for what you want and it does a decent job of figuring it out.

Here are some examples:

Asking the Assistant to generate JSON from within the `template` node

Asking the Assistant to generate JSON from within the `inject` node for the `payload` value

This is just the beginning of the FlowFuse Expert's capabilities. Stay tuned!

Updating the Assistant to get these new features

If you are running Node-RED v4.x, head over to the Palette Manager, update the plugin and restart your instance.

If you are still running Node-RED v3.x, you can update the plugin by adding @flowfuse/nr-assistant to the instance settings then restart it.

Applications Search

2024-07-16T13:00:00Z

With hundreds of devices and instances running in FlowFuse, it can be very difficult to find the resource you're looking for. That's why we've introduced a new search feature that allows you to search across all of your FlowFuse instances, devices and applications from a single place.

Screenshot showing the new Notifications Inbox in FlowFuse

The view will automatically filter as you type making it easy to find the resource you're looking for, it will keep reference to any applications and or child instances/devices where appropriate.

Persistent Storage on FlowFuse Cloud

2024-07-04T13:00:00Z

Users of FlowFuse Cloud and self-hosted users on Kubernetes can now make use of a new persistent storage solution.

Starting with the v2.6.0 release the Pods running the Node-RED Instances will have a Persistent Volume mounted on /data/storage in which files can be written. These files will persist for the lifetime of the Instance including across Susspend/Resume and Stack upgrades.

This update means nodes like node-red-node-sqlite can be used to store data safely.

This capability replaces the current FlowFuse FileServer which made use of custom versions of the Node-RED code File nodes to store and read files from a remote network store. However this didn't allow 3rd party nodes to also benefit from the storage provided.

New instances created will default to use the new Persistent Storage volumes. If you want to upgrade an existing instance that uses the FileServer storage, get in touch with Support and we can help migrate your data over.

Similar support for Docker will be available in later releases.

The FlowFuse Expert

2024-07-04T13:00:00Z

We are excited to announce the first release of The FlowFuse Expert, a new plugin for your Node-RED instances designed to enhance your development experience.

In this initial release, The FlowFuse Expert can help you create function nodes for those times when a no-code solution is either not feasible or not possible. Additionally, it works directly inside the Function Node editor right where you need it.

This is just the beginning. The FlowFuse Expert will continue to evolve, with future updates bringing even more powerful features and enhancements.

Starting from today, FlowFuse Expert is available on FlowFuse Cloud. Users will need to update their instances to the latest stack to enable it.

Immersive Editor Experience

2024-07-02T13:00:00Z

We found out that many users have to frequently switch between the Node-RED Editor and FlowFuse UI. This back-and-forth movement was often necessary to view logs, save snapshots, restart the Editor after updates, and perform other tasks.

We're always seeking to reduce friction in the FlowFuse user experience, and as such, we've introduced a large overhaul of the developer experience for Node-RED when running in FlowFuse, in what we're calling the "Immersive Editor".

Now, the instances tabs are all available in the same view as the Editor, and you can manage your instance, watch logs, capture snapshots and event restart it, all without leaving the Node-RED Editor.

The new Immersive Editor is available for instances running Node-RED 4.0.2 or later - older versions of Node-RED will still use the separate views.

Multi-line Environment Variables

2024-06-26T13:00:00Z

FlowFuse now supports the input of multi-line environment variables for your Node-RED instances running on FlowFuse.

This unlocks the ability to store certs or multi-line values like JSON as environment variables.

We've also improved the .env file import to support the use of multi-line values too.

Running the Device Agent behind an HTTP proxy

2024-06-18T13:00:00Z

The FlowFuse Device Agent allows you to manage your Node-RED instances wherever you want them to run. It connects back to the platform over a secure https connection.

For some enterprise customers, that has posed a challenge as they protect their network with an HTTP proxy that all traffic has to be directed to.

With the 2.5.0 release of the Device Agent, we now support running the Device Agent behind a proxy - letting it run in even more locations.

Support comes using the industry standard set of http_proxy environment variables - familiar to anyone running services behind a proxy.

Full details are available in our http proxy documentation.

Compare Snapshots flows

2024-06-05T13:00:00Z

We have now added the ability to select a snapshot and compare it to other snapshots making it easier to understand what is in the current snapshot and what has changed in relation to the 2nd snapshot.

Both snapshots are overlayed and you can step through the differences or use the new slider to visualise the differences.

Custom hostnames for your instances

2024-06-05T13:00:00Z

Enterprise teams on FlowFuse Cloud can now configure their own subdomain to point at their Node-RED application.

Within FlowFuse Cloud, Node-RED instances are reached by their provided url: <name>.flowfuse.cloud.

With this new option, it is possible to add a custom hostname for the instance that works alongside the provided url.

For example, if you have built a dashboard you can now configure your instance to make that available via dashboard.example.com or any other subdomain you own.

We only support subdomains at this time, but adding support for top-level domains is on the roadmap.

Read more on how to setup custom hostnames.

Snapshot Upload

2024-05-21T13:03:00Z

Snapshots are a point-in-time backup of Node-RED that can be used to easily revert back to previous version, or to push out to other instances and devices as part of our Pipelines feature.

Following on from the recent work around snapshots to permit Instance Snapshot Downloads and Snapshot Uploads, we have now added the ability to download application device snapshots.

This means you can download a snapshot from any device or instance and upload it to any device or instance on any FlowFuse instance.

Also, to improve access to these actions, we have also updated the application and device snapshot table items menu to present all relevant snapshot actions.

Application Snapshots

Instance Snapshots

Device Snapshots

Snapshot Upload

2024-05-16T13:03:00Z

Snapshots are a point-in-time backup of Node-RED that can be used to easily revert back to previous version, or to push out to other instances and devices as part of our Pipelines feature.

As promised we have now provided a way for you to upload your locally downloaded snapshots.

This means you can now easily take a snapshot and move it between FlowFuse platforms or, if you prefer, automate it via the APIs it is built on.

We hope you like this nifty little feature.

Stay tuned as we expect the final peices in the overall Snapshot Improvements to be delivered in the coming days.

Snapshot Improvements

2024-05-09T13:03:00Z

Snapshots are a point-in-time backup of Node-RED that can be used to easily revert back to previous version, or to push out to other instances and devices as part of our Pipelines feature.

We have lots planned to improve the overall workflow with snapshots, and have a couple updates to share that are available today.

Viewing snapshot contents

Following the work done to enable viewing flows in the Team Library, we've added the same capability to snapshots.

Each snapshot now has a 'View Snapshot' option that will display the flows without having to open up the full Node-RED editor.

Downloading snapshots

We've also added the ability to download snapshots locally - allowing you to take your own offline backups of your flows.

The 'Download Snapshot' option is currently available on Instance Snapshots, but we'll be rolling it out to all snapshot types in the near future. We are also working on an Import feature that will let you upload a snapshot back into the platform.

Managing Node-RED versions on Devices

2024-05-09T13:01:00Z

We have added the ability to manage the Node-RED version running on application-assigned Devices within FlowFuse.

Ordinarily, a device will get its Node-RED version from the snapshot deployed to it. However, for an Application-assigned device, you may not yet have a snapshot to deploy.

The new option, available under Device/Settings/Editor lets you pick what version of Node-RED the device should use - overriding what is in the active snapshot.

For devices running v2.4.1 or later of the Device Agent, Node-RED will get updated when the setting is saved. For older versions of the Device Agent, it will require a new snapshot to be deployed to trigger the update.

Customizing instance health-check settings

2024-05-09T13:00:00Z

When running Node-RED within FlowFuse, the platform actively monitors the instances to make sure they are running smoothly and automatically restarts them if it detects a problem. It does this by regularly polling Node-RED to make sure it is still responsive.

This provides protection for the case where a user's flows accidentally creates a tight loop in its code and locks up the runtime.

We have to do this with care; it is entirely possible that a user's flows are intentionally doing some hard work that causes our health check to temporarily fail. For that reason, we only restart Node-RED if it fails a number of health-check polls in a row.

But even with that in place, there are still edge cases where a user's flows need to do some really hard work that can exceed what the default health-check polling is configured to handle.

We have now added the ability to customize how often we check the instance health. By default this is done every 7.5 seconds, but can now be extended via the instance settings.

This will require the instance to be updated to the latest stack to enable the option.

Team Library - Flow Viewer

2024-05-01T13:00:00Z

The Library feature allows you to save and share common functionality and flows across your team on FlowFuse. We've just added the ability to preview any flows saved here, making it easier to understand what they do and explore your collections of flows before importing them into your workspace.

This new feature will better help you maintain and manage your team's shared flows, and give better visibility on flows that your fellow Team members are building.

Blueprints added to Library

2024-05-01T13:00:00Z

Back in October 2023, we introduced Blueprints to help you get started with your new Node-RED applications. We've now made them accessible directly from the Library sidebar, where you can explore the available Blueprints and use them to kick-start your new flows.

Dashboard 2.0: Milestones, PWA and New Components

2024-04-26T00:00:00Z

With a new release of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 we have plenty of new fixes and improvements being added to the project. In this post, we'll deep dive into community contributions, PWA support, new Vuetify components, and the rest of the great work published in this latest release.

Community Contributions

We firstly wanted to take this opportunity to point out a big milestone that we're very proud to see in Node-RED Dashboard 2.0.

This release marks the first time we've had more contributions in a single release from the community, than from FlowFuse employees. I think this is a testament to the community, and a big milestone in validating the success, and popularity, of Dashboard 2.0 in the wider Node-RED community.

So thank you very much @BartButenaers, @Ek1nox, @fullmetal-fred and @cgjgh for for great efforts and initiative in improving Node-RED Dashboard 2.0.

For anyone else that's interested in contributing to the project, please do reach out, and we'll be happy to help you get started. We also have a Contributing Guide if you want to dive straight in.

Progressive Web App (PWA) Support

The biggest community contribution we saw in this release was the addition of Progressive Web App (PWA) support. This feature was added by @cgjgh, and allows you to install your Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 applications directly onto your platform, including Windows, iOS and Android.

This work will give your Dashboard's a much more native/natural feel when running on your own machines, and mean you no longer need to go via your browser to access your applications.

New Vuetify (Preview) Components Available

Vuetify is the component library on which most of our Dashboard 2.0 components are built. Our core widgets implement the more fundamental UI elements, but that doesn't stop you from building out fully customized interfaces yourself using our ui-template node with the vast collection of Vuetify components.

Within the ui-template node, we natively support any of the core Vuetify components, but Vuetify itself is always evolving and often they release components into their Vuetify Labs.

In their latest releases, a few of the new components have caught our eye as we've seen them regularly requested in Dashboard 2.0. As such, we've now made available the following Vuetify components inside a ui-template node:

Number Input (docs)

An example v-number-input from Vuetify's component library

We do have plans for this to become a core widget, and will likely introduce this sooner, rather than later, however, in the mean time, you can now use the v-number-input component in a ui-template node to create your own number inputs instead.

<template>
    <v-number-input v-model="value"></v-number-input>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    data() {
      return {
        value: 0
      }
    },
    watch: {
      value: function () {
        this.send({payload: this.value})
      }
    }
  }
</script>

<style>
    .v-number-input__control .v-btn {
        color: var(--v-theme-on-surface);
    }
</style>

Sparkline (docs)

An example v-sparkline rendering the output from a ui-slider

Sparklines are a great way to visualize data trends in a small space, and we've seen them requested a few times in the past. Now you can use the v-sparkline component in a ui-template node to create your own sparklines.

This will also likely become a standalone node at some point too, possibly as a third-party widget, but for now implementing into a ui-template is very straight forward.

In the following example ui-template, we append any incoming msg.payload to a value array and render the sparkline accordingly.

<template>
  <v-sparkline class="nrdb-ui-sparkline" :auto-line-width="false" :fill="false" :gradient="gradient"
    :gradient-direction="'top'" :line-width="2" :model-value="value" :padding="8"
    :smooth="10" :stroke-linecap="'round'" :type="'trend'" auto-draw></v-sparkline>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    data: function () {
      return {
        gradient: ['#f72047', '#ffd200', '#1feaea'],
        value: [0, 2, 5, 9, 5, 10, 3, 5, 0, 0, 1, 8, 2, 9, 0]
      }
    },
    watch: {
      msg: function () {
        this.value.push(this.msg.payload)
      }
    }
  }
</script>

<style>
.nrdb-ui-sparkline path {
  stroke-dasharray: 0 !important;
}
</style>

There is no limitation on where you can use the sparkline either, we could, for example, add it to a v-data-table to show a sparkline of a particular feature for each row in the table:

An example v-data-table that renders a v-sparkline on each row

Here we see the corresponding template for the above v-data-table example:

<template>
    <!-- Provide an input text box to search the content -->
    <v-text-field v-model="search" label="Search" prepend-inner-icon="mdi-magnify" single-line variant="outlined"
        hide-details></v-text-field>
    <v-data-table v-model:search="search" :items="msg?.payload" :headers="headers">
        <template v-slot:header.pingvalues="{ item }">
            Ping History
        </template>
        <template v-slot:item.ping="{ item }">
            ms
        </template>
        <template v-slot:item.pingvalues="{ item }">
            <v-sparkline v-model="item.pingValues" :gradient="['#42b3f4', '#42b3f400']"
                :line-width="2" gradientDirection="top" :smooth="true" :fill="true">
        </template>

    </v-data-table>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  data () {
    return {
      search: '',
      headers: [
        { key: 'id', title: 'ID' },
        { key: 'ping', title: 'Ping' },
        { key: 'pingvalues', title: 'Ping History' }
      ]
    }
  }
}
</script>

Treeview (docs)

An example v-treeview from Vuetify Lab's component library

The v-treeview component is a great way to visualize hierarchical data in a tree-like structure. We've seen this requested a few times in the past, and now you can use the v-treeview component in a ui-template node to create your own treeviews.

There is still scope for this to, one day, become a core or third party widget, but in the mean time, it's very easy to get this up and running in a ui-template node.

The Treeview example, and other examples above are available in this sample flow:

Other Highlights

Whilst the above are the main highlights of this release, we've also had a number of other smaller improvements and fixes that have been added to the project. These include:

UI Radio Group - Dynamic radio options in #765
UI Notification - Notification output & output msg when button clicked in #766
UI Dropdown - Clear dropdown selection in #775
UI Button - Add "Emulate Click" option in #783

You can see the full list of changes in the 1.8.0 Release Notes.

Follow our Progress

New features and improvements are coming to Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 every week, if you're interested in what we have lined up, or want to contribute yourself, then you can track the work we have lined up on our GitHub Projects:

If you have any feature requests, bugs/complaints or general feedback, please do reach out, and raise issues on our relevant GitHub repository.

Tougher Rate Limiting on Public Routes

2024-04-11T12:01:01Z

Running any service on the internet requires constant vigilence on security issues. One feature we've had in place for some time on FlowFuse Cloud is rate-limiting on our API. This limits how often someone can repeatedly call the API within a certain time frame.

We want to make sure we deter any misbehaviour, without getting in the way of genuine access.

For example, it would be entirely legitimate for a customer to use our API and automate some tasks via script. These API calls would arrive faster than if they were manually clicking around the FlowFuse UI, but that doesn't mean they should be restricted.

We also look to areas of the API that could be misused - for example, anything that can trigger an email to be sent, such as the "I forgot my password" API.

Tuning the rate-limiting is a continual process, and in that spirit we've recently made the rate limiting on certain routes to be much tougher and improved the feedback in the UI just in case a legitimate user accidentally hits it.

The tougher limits act as a better deterent, which in turn makes the platform more secure.

Improving Device Groups

2024-04-11T12:01:01Z

Device Groups make it really simple to deploy a snapshot across multiple devices using our Pipelines feature. When the pipeline stage is triggered, you can watch as the snapshot is rolled out across all of target devices.

We've updated the Device Group view to include more information about what snapshot is currently deployed to the group, and the deployment status of individual devices in the group.

Summary details of all Device Groups in an application

Details of all devices within a Device Group

Custom Nodes Support on Devices

2024-04-11T12:01:01Z

We have supported the ability to configure your Node-RED instances with custom node catalogues for some time now. This feature allows you to access alternative NPM registries to use nodes that have not been made publicly available.

We have now extended this to work with your Node-RED devices, giving them the same ability to access private node catalogues, and deploy them across your fleet of devices.

Custom Node Catalog Support for Devices

Pricing change Enterprise & Teams Tier

2024-04-03T13:00:00Z

We're updating our pricing model for the Enterprise and Teams tiers on FlowFuse Cloud, with changes taking effect immediately. All information is available on our pricing page.

The new pricing scheme is as follows:

Starter Tier: Remains unchanged
Teams Tier: Availability limited to Small $25 and Medium $50 Instances
Enterprise Tier: Availability limited to Medium $50 and Large $250 Instances

We are also pleased to offer volume discounts. For more details, please contact us.

Important Note for Existing Teams

Teams that are currently subscribed to any tier and are using Instances will continue to be billed according to the previous pricing structure. Customers who have separate contracts with us will not be affected by these changes.

Getting Started with Node-RED Dashboard 2.0

2024-03-27T00:00:00Z

With our latest release of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0, we've made some big improvements to the onboarding experience.

We're seeing over 2,000 people download Dashboard 2.0 per week, and are seeing a great buzz in the community of brand new Node-RED users, experienced Node-RED users that haven't explored a UI solution previously and existing users migrating from Dashboard 1.0.

So, with that in mind, we wanted to offer a new "Getting Started" guide that will help you get up and running with building custom user interfaces and data visualizations in Node-RED.

How to Install Node-RED Dashboard 2.0

Step 1: "Manage Palette"

Screenshot to show where to find the "Manage Palette" option in Node-RED

Click the Node-RED Settings (top-right)
Click "Manage Palette"

Step 2: Search & "Install"

Screenshot to show where to find the "Install" tab, and how to find @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard

Switch to the "Install" tab
Search for "@flowfuse/node-red-dashboard"
Click "Install"

Adding your first widgets

With the nodes installed, getting started is as easy as choosing a node from the Palette (the left-hand side list of nodes) in Node-RED, and dropping it onto your canvas.

Screen recording to show how easy it is to deploy your first Dashboard 2.0 application.

In this case, we drop in a ui-button, click "Deploy" and then can see the button running live in our user interface.

Notice too that Dashboard will automatically setup some underlying configurations for you (visible in the right-side menu):

ui-base: Each instance of Node-RED that uses Dashboard 2.0 must have a single ui-base element (we're hoping to add support for multiple in the future). This element contains all of the global settings for your Dashboard instance.
ui-page: A single Dashboard (ui-base) can consist of multiple pages, and can be navigated to using the left-side sidebar. Each page is then responsible for displaying a collection of ui-group elements.
ui-group: Each group contains a collection of widgets, and can be used to organize your Dashboard into logical sections.
ui-theme: Each ui-page can be assigned a given theme. Your "Themes" provide control over the aesthetic of your Dashboard like color, padding and margins.

Configuring your layout

Dashboard 2.0 adds a dedicated sidebar to Node-RED to provide a centralized view of your pages, groups and widgets. From here you can add new pages and groups, modify existing settings, and re-order content to your liking.

Screenshot showing the Dashboard 2.0 sidebar in the Node-RED Editor.

When defining your layout options, we break the choice into two sections:

Page Layout: Controls how the ui-groups's are presented on a given page in your application.
Navigation Sidebar: Defines the left-side navigation style, defined at the ui-base level.

Example of the "Grid" page layout, with "Collapsing" sidebar navigation.

Page Layout

Currently, we have three different options for page layout:

Grid: (docs) This is the default layout for a page, and uses a 12-column grid system to layout your ui-groups. Widths of groups and widgets define the number of columns they will render in. So, a "width" of 6" would render to 50% of the screen. Grid layouts are entirely responsive, and will adjust to the size of the screen.
Fixed: (docs) Each component will render at a fixed width, no matter what the screen size is. The "width" property is converted a fixed pixel value (multiples of 48px by default).
Notebook: (docs) This layout will stretch to 100% width, up to a maximum width of 1024px, and will centrally align. It's particularly useful for storytelling (e.g. articles/blogs) or analysis type user interfaces (e.g. Jupyter Notebooks), where you want the user to digest content in a particular order through scrolling.

Dashboard 2.0 offers various options on the appearance of the navigation sidebar:

Collapsing: When the sidebar is opened the page content will adjust with the width of the sidebar.
Fixed: The full sidebar will always be visible, and the page content will adjust to the width of the sidebar.
Collapse to Icons: When minimized, users can still navigate between pages by clicking on the icons representing each page in the sidebar.
Appear over Content: When the sidebar is opened, the page is given an overlay, and the sidebar sits on top.
Always Hide: The sidebar will never show, and navigation between pages can instead be driven by ui-control.

Define Your Layout

In our example, we're going to switch to a "Notebook" layout, with a "Collapse to Icons" sidebar:

Example of the "Notebook" layout, with "Collapse to Icons" sidebar navigation.

Adding More Widgets

Now, we're going to build a quick example to demonstrate how we can wire nodes together, and visualize the output from a ui-slider onto a ui-chart.

Adding a Group

In the Node-RED Editor's Dashboard 2.0 sidebar, we're going to then do the following things:

Edit "My Group" and rename it to "Controls"
Create a new "Group" in your existing page called "Data Visualization"

You'll now see the two groups listed under "Page 1". "Controls" with a single ui-button and "Data Visualization" with no widgets.

Screenshot of the modified and newly added groups

Connecting New Nodes

Then, we're going to add two new widgets:

UI Chart
UI Slider

Which we can do by dropping them from the left-side Palette and onto our canvas.

We'll need to double-click each new node and confirm which "Group" we want to add this node to. In this case, we'll add the ui-slider to the "Controls" group, and the ui-chart to the "Data Visualization" group.

We're also going to connect the output from both the ui-slider and ui-button to the input of the ui-chart:

Screenshot of the Node-RED Editor, showing the ui-slider and ui-button connected to our ui-chart

Now, when we view our Dashboard, we can see the ui-slider output is def straight into our ui-chart:

Screenshot of the Dashboard with all three widgets rendered

The final step we're going to make is to modify our ui-button. We're going to rename it to "Clear", and configure it's "Payload" option to send a JSON payload of [], which, when sent to the ui-chart will clear the chart of all data.

The ui-button configuration after setting it's payload and label

With all of this together, we have the following functional Dashboard:

Short animation showing the final functional dashboard.

Next Steps

Whilst this is just a simple introduction of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0, we do have many other articles and documentation that can help you get started with more advanced features.

FlowFuse Dashboard Articles - Collection of examples and guides written by FlowFuse.
Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 Documentation - Detailed information for each of the nodes available in Dashboard 2.0, as well as useful guides on building custom nodes and widgets of your own.
Node-RED Forums - Dashboard 2.0 - The Node-RED forums is a great place to ask questions, share your projects and get help from the community.
Beginner Guide to a Professional Node-RED - A free guide to an enterprise-ready Node-RED. Learn all about Node-RED history, securing your flows and dashboard data visualization.
FlowFuse - Book a Demo - FlowFuse provides a complete platform to scale your production Node-RED applications, increase developer velocity, and enhance security in order to accelerate innovation.

Follow our Progress

If you have any feature requests, bugs/complaints or general feedback, please do reach out, and raise issues on our relevant GitHub repository.

Configure HTTP Payload and Debug Message size

2024-03-22T09:00:00Z

We've introduced new configuration options to enhance the control of your HTTP requests and debugging process. These updates allow you to configure limits on the sizes of incoming HTTP messages and how many characters of a message are included in debug messages in the editor sidebar.

This feature is available to all our Teams and Enterprise Tier customers. You can access these new configuration options in the Instance Settings under the "Editor" menu.

Instance Protection Mode

2024-03-14T13:00:00Z

We're excited to announce the introduction of the Instance Protection Mode, an enhancement in our efforts to provide a secure and controlled environment for managing production instances on FlowFuse. This feature empowers Team Owners with the exclusive ability to restrict modifications to production instances, ensuring that any changes are made with careful oversight and authorization.

A key aspect of Instance Protection Mode is the exclusive control it grants Owners over the execution of DevOps pipelines targeting protected instances. This means: Only Owners can initiate and execute pipelines.

The Instance Protection option can be found under the Instance settings view for all our Teams and Enterprise Tier customers.

Bearer Token Authentication for Node-RED Instances

2024-03-14T10:00:00Z

Bearer Token Authentication for Node-RED Instances, allows FlowFuse users to securely access their Node-RED HTTP endpoints, ensuring enhanced security and ease of implementation. Now, you can confidently manage your HTTP endpoints with the assurance that your connections are protected using FlowFuse's robust authentication mechanism.

$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ffhttp_FKc_S4qlTBV1H411hmhneHcSJ6F_FGNQLPYbnoD3-B0" https://healthy-rook-4329.flowforge.cloud/test
HelloWorld
$

This feature is available for our Teams and Enterprise Tier customers. You can find the configuration under the Security tab in your instance settings.

Remote Device Restart

2024-03-14T09:00:00Z

The latest version of the FlowFuse device agent now supports remotely restarting your Node-RED flows from the FlowFuse platform. This brings it more inline with what the platform lets you do with your hosted Node-RED instances.

This removes the need to manually connect to your device to restart Node-RED, streamlining your workflow and offering a more seamless and efficient user experience.

Direct Dashboard Access

2024-03-06T13:00:00Z

We have added quick access buttons to help you navigate to your Dashboard 2.0 UI in a single click.

Dashboard button is displayed alongside the Open Editor button when an instance has @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard installed.

Click the link to learn more about Flowfuse Dashboard 2.0

Instance Auto Snapshots

2024-02-28T13:00:00Z

Two weeks ago, we introduced auto snapshots for devices to help ensure you can always rollback to a previous version of your Node-RED flows. We're extended that ability to the hosted Node-RED instances as well.

Whenever you deploy a change to the flows, a snapshot will be taken automatically. We'll keep the last 10 auto-generated snapshots on a first-in, first-out basis. Older auto-generated snapshots will be automatically cleaned up for you - unless they are marked as a target snapshot for your devices.

Click the following links to learn more about instances and snapshots.

PostgreSQL Version update

2024-02-15T13:00:00Z

Included in the v2.1.0 release the Helm Chart now uses 14.10.0-debian-11-r30 tag of the Bitnami PostgreSQL container.

This container tag includes images for both AMD64 and ARM64 allowing FlowFuse to be deployed to now fully ARM64 based Kubernetes clusters when using local PostgreSQL database.

Device Auto Snapshots

2024-02-15T13:00:00Z

FlowFuse V2.1 introduces Auto Snapshots for your Application Assigned Devices.

When you deploy a change to the device flows, a snapshot will be taken automatically.

The last 10 Auto Snapshots will be kept on a first in first out basis. Older Auto Snapshots will be automatically cleaned up for you.

Click the following links to learn more about devices and snapshots.

Pricing change for Devices

2024-02-09T13:00:00Z

Starting today, we have introduced a simplification of the pricing structure for devices on FlowFuse Cloud, effective immediately. All information is available on our pricing page. The new pricing scheme is as follows:

Starter Tier: No change
Teams Tier: Devices are now priced at $25 each.
Enterprise Tier: Devices are priced at $50 each.

We are also pleased to offer volume discounts. For more details, please contact us.

Important Note for Existing Teams

If a team currently in either tier already has devices (or has had devices in the past), any additions or removals of devices will be billed according to the previous pricing structure. For teams without any prior device history, the addition of devices will be billed at the new rates.

Device Instance Audit Logging

2024-02-08T13:00:00Z

With the recent introduction of the Device audit log, we've now updated the Device Agent to start logging events from the Node-RED instance running on your device.

This brings closer parity with the logging you get from a hosted instance.

The audit log events include details of the flows being updated, nodes being added or removed from the palette and other changes to the configuration.

Update to Device Agent v2.2 to start receiving the events.

Device Onboarding Improvements

2024-02-05T13:00:00Z

Hot on the heals of our recent onboarding improvements and streamlining, we have now introduced a new, simpler and faster way of getting your devices configured and connected to the FlowFuse platform.

Now, when you create a device on the platform, you will be offered a simple "Setup command". Run this command in a terminal and the let the Device Agent do all the hard work for you.

To learn more about this, head to the FlowFuse Device Agent documentation.

Personalised Multi-user Dashboards with Node-RED Dashboard 2.0!

2024-01-24T00:00:00Z

This week has seen the release of the first major version of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0, with it, we've made available a new FlowFuse-exclusive feature, personalised multi-user dashboards.

This new feature will allow you to build applications that provide unique data to each user, build admin-only views, and track user activity, to name but a few. We're really excited to see what the Node-RED Community and our FlowFuse customers can do with such a powerful and flexible framework.

Personalised Multi User Dashboards

The original Node-RED Dashboard was built with a "single source of truth", no matter how many users interacted with the dashboard, each user would always see the same data. This is great for prototyping, or hobby projects, but as you scale up your Node-RED usage, you'll want to be able to have unique dashboard experiences for each user.

Getting Started

To enable personalised multi-user dashboards, you'll need to be using FlowFuse, and complete two steps:

Step 1: Enable "FlowFuse User Authentication"

All instances on FlowFuse can be configured with "FlowFuse User Authentication" in the "Security" Settings. This option requires any user that wants access to your Editor or dashboard to be authorized by FlowFuse first.

"Screenshot of the 'Security' settings available for any Instances running in FlowFuse"

Step 2: Install FlowFuse's User Addon

FlowFuse Cloud

Note: Every instance created from today onwards automatically comes with the necessary configuration. Already created instances need to be manually restarted.

The Personalised Multi-User Dashboard plugin, @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard-2-user-addon, is available in our Certified Nodes catalogue, accessible to our Teams and Enterprise customers.

Once the "FlowFuse User Authentication" option has been enabled on your instance, you can then install our plugin, @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard-2-user-addon, through the "Manage Palette" option in the Node-RED Editor.

For your devices, we provide the necessary configuration and access token upon request, so that your Node-RED devices can also benefit from a Personalised Multi-user Dashboard.

FlowFuse Self-Hosted

For all our Teams and Enterprise Self-Hosted customers who also want to use the Certified Nodes and the Multi-User Dashboard, we provide all necessary configurations upon request to get started.

Alternatively, if you're looking to elevate your Node-RED infrastructure, book in a chat with us to talk about how FlowFuse can help.

Using the Plugin

Once enabled, any messages emitted by a Dashboard 2.0 node will contain a new msg._client.user object, e.g:

{
    "userId": "",   // unique identifier for the user
    "username": "", // FlowFuse Username
    "email": "",    // E-Mail Address connected to their FlowFuse account
    "name": "",     // Full Name
    "image": ""     // User Avatar from FlowFuse
}

Then, when running Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 on FlowFuse, you'll have a new sidebar option in the Node-RED Editor, which allows you to control which node types allow for "client constraints".

A screenshot of the new 'FF Auth' options available in Node-RED to allow for client constraints on different node types.

In the original Node-RED Dashboard, this was always enabled for the ui-notification and ui-control nodes, whereby you could include msg.socket data and it would only then send that message to the specified client. For Dashboard 2.0 we've extended this concept so that as a Node-RED Developer, you can now include msg._client.user data in any message sent to a Dashboard 2.0 node. Under the covers, our FlowFuse-exclusive plugin will then automatically filter messages to only send to the relevant user's connection.

Utilising this feature, below you can see an example where we send data to a ui-template to render a custom table for each user. Under the covers this is a ui-event node (triggered on a page view), which then uses the msg._client.user object to make a REST API call to retrieve a list of todo items for that specific user. We then wire the response into the ui-template, which has been configured to "Accept Client Constraints", and so only sends this data to User 2's dashboard.

Example of a dashboard that displays user-specific content.

Note too that we're also utilising the new Teleport option available in a ui-template which allows us to define content to show in the top-right of the dashboard, in this case, a little "Hi {username}" message.

Examples

Rendering Logged In User Data

In the previous example, you may have noticed that we're also displaying a welcome to the authenticated user on our dashboard, this means that we have access to the full User object within any ui-template that we render too.

The "Admin" view that is only made available to users registered as an "admin".

Under the covers, we're appending our user object to the msg object, via the SocketIO auth option. We make the socketio object available via a computed setup variable, this means that we can access this data in any ui-template node, and render like so:

<template>
    <div>
        <h1>Hi, {{ setup?.socketio?.auth?.user?.name }}!</h1>
    </div>
</template>

To enable custom user-by-user content in a ui-template though, we must allow it to "Accept Client Constraints". This means that if a .msg._client.user value is included in any messages sent to a ui-template node, then the underlying SocketIO message will be filtered to only send to the relevant user's connection, and no others.

Admin Only Views

With this new functionality we can also now show/hide content based on the authenticated user.

We recently introduced the option to set default visiblity & interaction states. This was partly introduced because it's a good practice to set the default "Visibility" option for any admin-only pages to "Hidden", and then use a ui-control node to show the content only to the relevant admins.

Let's breakdown the above flow:

We wire a ui-event node (which emits each time a user views a page) into a switch node
Our switch node checks the user.username against a known list of admin users and branches "admin:" and "non-admin" users
For admin users, the change node defines a message for our ui-control node to dynamically show content, in this case an "Admin" page, when appropriate.

{
    "pages":{
        "show": ["Admin View"]
    }
}

All events going into ui-control are automatically filtered based on the msg._client.user object, so only the Admin users will receive the message to show the "Admin View" page, resulting in:

The "Admin" view that is only made available to users registered as an "admin".

Further extensions of this could also check ui-event in case a non-admin user tries to access the /admin page directly, in which case we can utilise ui-control to navigate the user away from the page immediately. See the ui-control documentation for more details on this.

Upcoming Webinar

If you're interested in learning more about Dashboard 2.0 and in particular multi-user Dashboards, we're hosting a webinar on Thursday, 29th February. You can find out more information here

Follow our Progress

We aren't stopping here, we'll continue to push Dashboard 2.0 forward with future development, and you can track that progress on our GitHub Projects:

If you have any feature requests, bugs/complaints or general feedback, please do reach out, and raise issues on our relevant GitHub repository.

Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 is Generally Available!

2024-01-24T00:00:00Z

Back in June 2023 we announced that FlowFuse would be investing into building out the next generation of Node-RED Dashboard, the most popular UI framework for Node-RED. We followed this up with the first release (0.0.1) in July, just one month later, and today, we are pleased to announce that we have reached a major milestone in this journey, with the release of our first major version (1.0.0) of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0.

With our 1.0.0 release, you can now build your dashboards on a reliable and stable package, and we invite you to to start contributing your own third-party widgets and plugins. We're excited to see what the community can contribute and build on top of this new Dashboard 2.0 framework, and we'll be continuing development to the core collection of widgets too.

With Node-RED Dashboard 2.0, we have re-built the original Node-RED Dashboard from the ground up. It is now extensible due to it being VueJS-based, completely responsive down to mobile, and we've made many quality of life improvements across the board to the existing widget collection, as well as adding a few new ones too.

What's new in Dashboard 2.0?

We've shared plenty of updates since we started, detailing the feature parity with the original Node-RED Dashboard, as well as some of the new widgets and features we've added to the new Dashboard, such as Markdown, Mermaid Charts and new Layout Options, you can read more about those here:

Furthermore, the most requested feature for the legacy dashboard has been implemented in Dashboard 2.0, the ability to hide charts and forms based on the user that's viewing the dashboard.

Upcoming Webinar

If you're interested in learning more about Dashboard 2.0 and in particular, personalised multi-user dashboards, we're hosting a webinar on Thursday, 29th February. You can find out more information here

Follow our Progress

We aren't stopping here, we'll continnue to push Dashboard 2.0 forward with future development, with a new UI Gauge next on the list. You can track that progress of that particular issue, and the rest of the work we have lined up on our GitHub Projects:

If you have any feature requests, bugs/complaints or general feedback, please do reach out, and raise issues on our relevant GitHub repository.

Streamlined Device assignment

2024-01-23T13:00:00Z

To start editing flows on a device, it needs to be assigned to an application in your team. Up until now this has been a two step process; creating the device and then assigning it. This wasn't as intuitive as it needed to be.

To help streamline the user experience, you can now assign a device to an application when you create it. It's a small update, but it helps users get to where they want to be much quicker.

New Blueprints added

2024-01-22T13:00:00Z

We have added some new blueprints to FlowFuse Cloud to help users get started with a range of common manufacturing scenarios.

They are available to all users on FlowFuse Cloud. Additionally, upon request, all our Teams and Enterprise Self-Hosted customers gain access to this collection.

List of new Blueprints:

Curious about what Blueprints are? Read our recent blog post that introduced Blueprints to FlowFuse.

For an overview of all available Blueprints check out our Blueprint Library.

Helm Chart v2.0

2024-01-18T13:00:00Z

The v2.0 release of the FlowFuse Helm Chart includes a breaking change for deployments making use of the forge.localPostgresql setting when upgrading. This is where the helm chart installs a dedicated PostgreSQL database instance.

With v2.0 we have updated the version of the Bitnami PostgreSQL Helm sub-chart we bundle and the upgrade process will require some manual intervention to ensure things work correctly. A fresh install should not require any extra steps.

The steps are documented on the Upgrade instructions page, please read them carefully before upgrading

Also included in this release is the ability to set resource constraints and Pod Security Context on the FlowFuse application, File-Server Application and MQTT broker containers if required. Details of how to set those can be found in the Helm Chart README.md

Device Groups - Automatic snapshot assignment

2024-01-18T13:00:00Z

Four weeks ago, we launched the Device Groups feature, for our Enterprise customers. This innovation marked a significant step in simplifying device management within DevOps Pipelines. Now we enhacent the Device Groups functionality.

With this update, the behavior of Device Groups has been refined to further streamline your workflow. Now, whenever a Snapshot is assigned to a Device Group, any newly added devices to that group will automatically receive the update. This ensures that all devices within the group are consistently synchronized with the latest changes, eliminating the need for manual updates. This improvement not only saves time but also enhances the consistency and reliability of device management across your fleet.

Introducing the Device Auditlog Feature

2024-01-18T12:00:00Z

The introduction of the Device Auditlog brings an enhanced level of monitoring and tracking for device-related activities, available to all FlowFuse users.

Events Recorded in the Device Auditlog:

Fleet mode / Developer mode enabled/disabled
Remote access enabled/disabled
Credentials re-generated
Device assigned

Managing Team Membership via SSO

2024-01-17T13:00:00Z

For organizations using Single Sign-On with FlowFuse, we have now added the ability to manage their user's team memberships and roles via their Identity Provider.

This makes it easier to control access to the FlowFuse Platform from providers such as Okta and Microsoft Entra. For example, you can create a group of Team Owners and a separate group of Team Viewers.

Whenever a user logs in via SSO, the platform will update their roles to match the groups they are in.

More information on configuring groups can be found in our Single Sign-on documentation.

This feature is available to Enterprise Tier teams on FlowFuse Cloud, as well as self-hosted Enterprise instances.

Security Updates

2024-01-17T13:00:00Z

As part of our dedication to providing a secure platform for our customers, we operate a Bug Bounty programme to encourage responsible disclosure of potential issues.

With all disclosures we evaluate their severity in terms of their direct impact, the nature of the issue and overall risk.

We have received a number of reports recently that we have been evaluating. Whilst none of the recent disclosures has been deemed high severity, we have applied a number of updates to the platform.

These include:

Tougher rate limiting on routes that manage user information including email addresses
Better handling of the password-reset flow to prevent stale links being reused
Avoiding disclosure of a user's email address to other members of a team

This last item is one I wanted to say a bit more about. As you would expect, a user's email address is sensitive information that we do not disclose to unauthorised users. However, we also consider a Team as having a higher level of trust between its members. On review, we have decided there is not a technical reason for this higher level of trust to include a member's email address, so we have removed it from the relevant API responses.

We value the effort people put into making responsible disclosures to us and look to reward the work where it meets our criteria.

Find out more about our Bug Bounty programme.

Renaming "Default Device Mode" to "Fleet Mode"

2024-01-11T13:00:00Z

In our continuous effort to enhance user experience and clarity, we are pleased to announce an update to our device mode terminology. Previously known as "Default Device" mode, we have now rebranded it as "Fleet Mode." This change aims to establish a clearer distinction from "Developer Mode," thereby streamlining the understanding of operational modes for our devices.

Fleet Mode: Runs any target Snapshots defined. Blocks remote editing of device.
Developer Mode: Blocks any new Target Snapshots running, but allows for remote editing on the Device.

Device Groups

2023-12-21T13:00:00Z

We are pleased to announce the introduction of Device Groups for Enterprise Tier customers. This new feature enables users to logically group their devices assigned to an application. Additionally, Device Groups can be integrated into the DevOps Pipeline. This integration facilitates more streamlined and efficient deployments across your fleet of devices.

Email Alerts for Audit Log Events

2023-12-21T12:00:00Z

The newly introduced feature offers email notifications tied to particular Audit log events, available to all users with Pro Tier access or higher. This feature is designed to facilitate immediate notification and action in response to Node-RED Instance crashes. For detailed information and guidance on this functionality, please refer to our documentation.

Blueprint Selection Update

2023-12-21T10:00:00Z

We have updated the blueprint selection interface to enhance the user experience by offering a clearer and more comprehensive overview. This improvement aims to facilitate easier navigation and selection of blueprints. Additionally, we are excited to announce that our blueprint library will be expanding in the coming days, with the addition of new blueprints to FlowFuse.

For more detailed information about our blueprints and how to utilize them effectively, please refer to our dedicated article.

Node-RED 3.1.3 now available

2023-12-07T13:00:00Z

With Node-RED 3.1.3 being released this week, we've updated our stacks to ensure it's available to everyone in FlowFuse Cloud. We have also made it the default version you'll get when creating new instances.

If you want to update your existing instances to this new stack you can follow the guide here.

For more information about the changes in Node-RED 3.1.3, check the release's changelog.

Building a Custom Video Player in Dashboard 2.0

2023-12-07T00:00:00Z

Dashboard 2.0 just got a lot more powerful with our new updates to the ui-template node. New features added to the node include:

Support for a full Vue component to be defined using the VueJS Options API.
Running of raw JavaScript within <script /> tags
Loading of external dependencies through <script /> tags

In this article we're going to deepdive into an example of how you can use this new functionality to build a custom video player.

We're going to aim for 3 key features:

Emit events into Node-RED when a user plays/pauses the video
Allow for the video to be played/paused from within Node-RED
Allow the user to seek to a specific point in the video from within Node-RED

Reminder: all new releases of Dashboard are now under the @flowfuse namespace, so you'll need to update to use @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard, and not @flowforge.

Building a Vue Component

With Dashboard 2.0, we switched over our underlying front-end framework to VueJS. We're aware that not everyone coming into Dashboard 2.0 will be familiar with VueJS.

We have a more detailed guide here, but we'll also give a quick overview of the elements from Vue "component" that we'll use here:

<template>
    <!-- Our HTML content will go here -->
</template>

<script>
export default {
  name: 'MyComponent',
  methods: {
    // JS methods we want to use across our component will go here
  },
  mounted () {
    // Code we want to run when our component is loaded will go here
  },
  unmounted () {
    // Code we want to run when our component is unloaded will go here
  }
}
</script>

<style>
    /* We can define custom CSS here too */
</style>

Some quick gotchas to note:

<div>{{ msg }}</div> - is an example of how you render variables into the HTML.
<div v-if="myVar"></div> - lets you conditionally show/hide content based on a variable.
<div v-for="item in items"></div> - lets you loop over an array of items and render them into the HTML.
<div @click="myMethod"></div> - lets you bind a method to an event, in this case, when the user clicks on the div.
<div :class="{ 'my-class': isActive }"></div> - : is a way to define a "bound" property. In this case, the class my-class will be applied when isActive is true.
console.log(this.myVar) - when you're writing code inside the <script /> tags, you can access Component variables and methods using this.

Built-in Extras

In addition to building a component from scratch, we'll also utilize some built-in features of ui-template too. These will be:

Variables:
- id - The unique ID for this node in Node-RED
- msg - The message that was most recently received into the node
- $socket - The underlying SocketIO connection to Node-RED. Use this to listen to any incoming events, and send new ones back.
Functions:
- send(payload) - Send a message back to Node-RED

As above, we have more detailed documentation on these features here.

Building the Video Player

Defining the Content (HTML)

We're going to start by adding a basic HTML video player:

<template>
    <video ref="my-video" style="width: 100%" controls @play="onPlay" @pause="onPause">
        <source src="http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4" type="video/mp4">
        Your browser does not support the video tag.
    </video>
</template>

A few things of importance to note here:

ref is Vue's replacement for document.getElementById(). This is copied to each instance of the component, meaning we can call this.$refs['my-video'] to access the video element, and this doesn't break when duplicating the widget multiple times in Dashboard.
style="" is required here to ensure the video fills the group/wrapper that it is contained within.
@play= is Vue's way of binding onto the standard onplay event listener available on HTML video players. We'll define the onPlay method in the next section.
@pause= is our event listener for when the video is paused by the user. As with onPlay, we'll define this shortly.

With just the above defined, we end up with a standard video player rendered:

Defining the Behaviors (VueJS)

Now we begin to build our Vue component. Referring back to our earlier set of features, we'll tackle these one at a time.

1. Emitting Events to Node-RED on Play/Pause

We can use methods to define our onPlay and onPause functions that are called @play/@pause respectively.

<script>
export default {
  name: 'MyVideoPlayer',
  methods: {
    capture (eventType) {
        // let's define our own function that can be called onPlay/onPause
        // this prevents duplicated code across the two methods

        // get the Video's DOM element
        const video = this.$refs['my-video']

        // send a msg to Node-RED using built-in "send" fcn
        this.send({
            // specify which action is taking place
            event: eventType,
            // use Vue's $refs to get the video's currentTime
            time: video.currentTime
        })
    },
    onPlay () {
        this.capture('play')
    },
    onPause () {
        this.capture('pause')
    }
  }
}
</script>

With this functionality in place, we can wire the ui-template node to a debug node, and see the following when we play/pause the video:

2. Remote control of play/pause from Node-RED

We can use the built-in $socket variable to listen for incoming events from Node-RED. When Dashboard 2.0's nodes receive a msg inside Node-RED, they send a msg-input:<node-id> event to the Dashboard client. We can listen for this event and then call the play() and pause() methods on the video element, depending on any properties of that message, in this case, the msg.payload.event value.

<script>
export default {
  name: 'MyVideoPlayer',
  methods: {
    // ...
  },
  mounted () {
    // listen for incoming msg's from Node-RED
    // note our topic is "msg-input" + the node's unique ID
    this.$socket.on('msg-input:' + this.id, (msg) => {
        // get the Video's DOM element
        const video = this.$refs['my-video']

        // if the event is "play", call the video's play() method
        if (msg.payload?.event === 'play') {
            video.play()
        }

        // if the event is "pause", call the video's pause() method
        if (msg.payload?.event === 'pause') {
            video.pause()
        }
    })
  },
  unmounted () {
    // make sure we remove our listeners when the widget is destroyed
    this.$socket.off(`msg-input:${this.id}`)
  }
}
</script>

3. Seeking to a specific point in the video from within Node-RED

With the on('msg-input') listener in place, we can now extend our handler to handle seeking to a specific point in the video.

<script>
export default {
  name: 'MyVideoPlayer',
  methods: {
    // ...
  },
  mounted () {
    // ...
    this.$socket.on('msg-input:' + this.id, (msg) => {
        // ... other handlers

        // if the event is "seek", call the video's currentTime() method
        if (msg.payload?.event === 'seek') {
            video.currentTime = msg.payload.currentTime
        }
    })
  },
  unmounted () {
    // ...
  }
}
</script>

and with that, we now have a Dashboard 2.0 widget to display a video, that can be controlled from Node-RED, and logs details of user activity back into Node-RED.

Other features available with the UI Template are detailed in the online documentation, and include:

Follow our Progress

You can also read the more comprehensive release notes for v0.10.0 release here:

0.10.0 Release Notes

As always, thanks for reading and your interest in Dashboard 2.0. If you have any feature requests, bugs/complaints or general feedback, please do reach out, and raise issues on our relevant GitHub repository.

No Credit Card required for billing

2023-12-06T13:00:00Z

We now have more flexible billing options in FlowFuse Cloud for customers that wish to purchase an annual subscription or where entering credit card details is not appropriate. We're committed to accommodating your specific billing preferences and can set up a process that aligns with your organizational needs.

If you are interested in this new option or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. We're here to help you with your billing and subscription needs.

Two-Factor Authentication

2023-11-23T13:00:00Z

In our ongoing commitment to strengthen security, we're excited to announce the addition of two-factor authentication (2FA) for FlowFuse. This enhancement ensures an extra layer of security for your account. Setting up 2FA is straightforward, and the system supports all commonly used TOTP (Time-Based One-Time Password) tools, such as Google Authenticator. To enable 2FA, simply navigate to your User Settings and follow the easy setup process.

For more Details see our Documentation 2FA is available for all FlowFuse Cloud users and for Enterprise Self-Hosted customers.

Devices in DevOps Pipelines

2023-11-23T12:00:00Z

Building on our previous release that enabled the management of devices independently of instances. Now, the integration of individual devices into DevOps Pipelines is possible. This update marks a significant step towards more flexible and efficient device management within FlowFuse. In our ongoing efforts, we are also developing features to group devices, aiming to streamline and improve the overall device management experience.

Devices in DevOps Pipelines are available for every customer who has access to DevOps Pipelines. This includes all Cloud customers and those from the Pro Tier onwards for our self-hosted version.

Project Nodes for Devices

2023-11-23T11:02:00Z

From today onwards, Project Nodes will now be available for devices assigned to an application. Previously, it was necessary for devices to be bound to an instance to utilize this functionality.

Device Editor enabled by default

2023-11-23T11:00:00Z

With the latest update, devices operating in Developer Mode will now have the Open Editor feature enabled by default. This enhancement is designed to improve the User Experience.

Overhauling the Dashboard 2.0 Build Pipeline

2023-11-23T00:00:00Z

As a developer, sometimes you have to hold up your hands and realise something you've spent two weeks building needs to be thrown away and restarted.

Having shipped the third-party widget support for Dashboard 2.0 in line with Dashboard 1.0's approach, we then had the feedback that the way Dashboard 1.0 did things really wasn't good, and asking us to consider re-building the process to make the developer experience of working with Dashboard 2.0 far more seamless.

So, that's exactly what we've done with the 0.8.0 release, amongst a few other things.

Reminder: all new releases of Dashboard are now under the @flowfuse namespace, so you'll need to update to use @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard, and not @flowforge.

Migrating our Build Pipeline

Without getting too technical, as part of this work in supporting third-party widgets, we overhauled our build pipeline for Dashboard 2.0. This pipeline is responsible for taking our source code, and compiling it into a format that then gets deployed by Node-RED when running Dashboard.

Previously, we used Webpack, but now, we've switched over to Vite. This is a newer build tool, and is much faster than Webpack. It's also what we've now updated out Example Node to use too.

So now, when working with a third-party widget, Vite builds up all of your code, wraps it into a single umd.js file, and Node-RED then serves that file up for Dashboard 2.0 to load in.

We've also re-written our "Building Third Party Widgets" guide to reflect this change.

Debugging Dashboard

A new feature we've added in 0.8.0 is also for those developing Dashboard's core and third-party widgets. You can now navigate to /dashboard/_debug to explore the full configuration that Dashboard receives from Node-RED.

This is particularly useful when you're trying to debug why a widget isn't loading, showing the correct data, or generally isn't behaving as you expect.

Note in the above example, where we can see that the ui-dropdown has had it's options overriden by msg.options on injection.

You can read more about the debugging view here

What else is new in 0.8.0?

Whilst we focussed this article on the build pipeline overhaul, changes to third-party wdgets and debugging Dashboard, we did also squeeze quite a lot more into the 0.8.0 releases too with plenty other fixes and improvements:

You can also read the more comprehensive release notes for the release here:

0.8.0 Release Notes

Follow our Progress

As always, thanks for reading and your interested in Dashboard 2.0. If you have any feature requests, bugs/complaints or general feedback, please do reach out, and raise issues on our relevant GitHub repository.

Chart Improvements & Migrating to Dashboard 2.0

2023-11-09T00:00:00Z

It's been a little while since we've done an update, since we last posted we've moved into the 0.7.x releases for Dashboard 2.0. With these we're making big strides in improving the UX for charting your data, as well as starting to focus on migration paths from Dashboard 1.0 to 2.0.

Package Name Changes

Firstly a bit of news regarding the npm package we publish. Inline with our own company name change, we've had to update Dashboard 2.0's npm package, and so, we've changed from @flowforge/node-red-dashboard to @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard.

In the short term, we'll be keeping @flowforge available on the Node-RED Palette Manager, but it will be removed soon, and the associated NPM Package will be put into a "deprecated" mode.

NPM Package Migration

Unfortunately, this migration from @flowforge/ to @flowfuse/ requires a little bit of manual work, and isn't as easy as just clicking "update" in the Node-RED Editor.

In any case, there is no need to update your flow in this migration, you'll just need to uninstall @flowforge/node-red-dashboard and install @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard instead.

Running Locally

If you're running Node-RED locally, or in your own infrastructure, you'll need to manually uninstall the old package:

npm uninstall @flowforge/node-red-dashboard

and re-install the new one:

npm install @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard

Running in FlowFuse

Navigate to your Instance > Settings > Palette, and then change the @flowforge/node-red-dashboard entry to @flowfuse/node-red-dashboard (the latest version as of this post is 0.7.2).

Restart your instance, and the new package will automatically install.

Dashboard 1.0 to 2.0 Migration Guide

As part of our mission to ensure a smooth transition from Dashboard 1.0 to Dashboard 2.0, we have published a first draft of a Migration Guide.

As a starting point, we have comprehesively covered the Dashboard 1.0 widgets and their associated properties. We've then detailed which properties are already supported, which have partial support, and where appropriate, we do not support and why (most of the time, it's just because we haven't got round to it yet!)

We fully appreciate that the migration path is not yet complete, and we that we are missing some features and properties, but please know that we are working hard to ensure that as many of the features from Dashboard 1.0 are available in Dashboard 2.0. We will be updating this guide as we progress.

We will also be adding "event" and "dynamic properties" sections to the guide, to detail how you can update and control elements via runtime messages (e.g. dynamically change the label of a button), and how this differs (if at all) from Dashboard 1.0.

Whilst we aren't quite there yet, this guide offers a comprehensive breakdown on our progress in backporting all of the properties from Dashboard 1.0

Automated Script

An ambitious plan that we have is to also provide a Migration Script. Any feedback, ideas or concerns are most welcome as comments on the issue.

Whilst this will never provide 100% perfect migration, we hope to be able to provide a script that can be run against your flows to automatically convert as much as possible from Dashboard 1.0 to 2.0. In most cases, as you can see in the Migration guide, we match most properties 1:1, so this should do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Updates to UI Chart

Key Mapping

One of the core purposes of Node-RED Dashboard has always been to provide low-code access to charting your data. With the 0.7.x releases we've made some big improvements to the UI Chart node to make it easier to use and more powerful.

In Dashboard 1.0, it was common place to have to regularly re-format your own data into {x, y} structure to be chart-friendly. In 0.7.0 we've introduced the concept of key mapping, where you can specify which keys in your data object should be used for the x and y axes. This means you can now pass in data in the format you want to use, and the chart will do the rest.

For example, when rendering a chart of our weekly npm downloads, we have a data structure:

[{
    "day": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "downloads": 128
}, {
    "day": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "downloads": 256
}, {
    "day": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "downloads": 512
}]

Rather than having to pipe this into a function node and re-map the properties to { x, y }, we can now use the ui-chart's key mapping properties:

Resulting in the following chart:

Multiple Lines

Note above, another new option has been added to define "Series". In Dashboard 1.0 this was fixed as msg.topic at all times, and defined which line/series data points rendered too. Now, this is configurable, and can even be set as a key: type too, whereby each data point being treated individually, and grouped based on a given key/property.

Another great new feature here is the type JSON for this property. We can provide a list of series labels, and the chart will render each value from a single data point as separate lines.

For example, if we consider the data:

[{
    "day": "2023-10-23",
    "temperature": 28,
    "humidity": 16
}, {
    "day": "2023-10-24",
    "temperature": 26,
    "humidity": 19
}, {
    "day": "2023-10-25",
    "temperature": 27,
    "humidity": 24
}]

We can provide a series: ["temperature", "humidity"] like so:

Which would result in the following plot:

We appreciate this offers a new way of working with data in Dashboard, but hopefully, once you've tried it, you'll find it much easier to work with, and see the value it brings when working with your own data sets.

What else is new in 0.7.x?

Whilst we focussed this article on the migration paths and new UI Chart features, we did also squeeze quite a lot more into the 0.7.x releases too with plenty other fixes and improvements:

You can also read the more comprehensive release notes for each release here:

Follow our Progress

Certified Nodes

2023-10-26T12:00:00Z

Teams Tier customers can now leverage a curated selection of certfied Node-RED nodes, enhancing workflow efficiency and security.

Quality Assurance: Each certified node undergoes testing, ensuring it's free from harmful components, aligning with our commitment to reliability.
Proactive Security Measures: While prioritizing immediate resolutions for detected vulnerabilities, we maintain the discretion to revoke a node's certified status, ensuring system integrity. Affected customers will receive prompt notifications.
Support: Assistance for certified nodes is provided, aiming for, but not promising, issue resolution.

How? You can find all certified nodes in your Node-RED palette manager or on the dedicated page on our website.

Resource Monitoring in Audit Log

2023-10-26T10:00:00Z

In the FlowFuse Audit Log (see Documentation)of an instance, it will now display when the resource utilization of CPU or memory exceeds 75% over a period of five minutes. This should provide transparency regarding resource utilization and serve as an indicator for choosing the appropriate instance size.

Device Agent path bug fix

2023-10-26T00:00:00Z

The Device Agent now passes the PATH environment variable to the Node-RED instances. Erroneously, the agent didn't capture it to expose to Node-RED again for usage. This prevented some nodes from being installed, like node-red-serial-port when assigned to an application.

Enhanced Snapshot Selection

2023-10-16T11:00:00Z

Users can now effortlessly deploy snapshots for devices assigned to an application through a new "Deploy Snapshot" button, available in the device's "snapshots" tab, thereby enhancing the workflow with the option to set either instance-owned or device-owned snapshots as the target.

Blueprints

2023-10-16T10:00:00Z

FlowFuse Blueprints are now available on FlowFuse Cloud and, upon request, for Teams and Enterprise Self-Hosted customers. Blueprints simplify Node-RED deployments by offering pre-built, customizable flows for specific use cases, thereby accelerating both new user onboarding and solution development for our seasoned users.

Click here to learn more about Blueprints.

When creating a new instance, you can now also select a Blueprint.

Integrate your own widgets with Dashboard 2.0

2023-10-06T00:00:00Z

With a new release, comes new features for Dashboard 2.0, and the focus of this release has been on improving the developer experience for those building third-party widgets for Dashboard 2.0.

Dashboard 1.0 had a hugely popular ecosystem of third party widgets (e.g. ui-worldmap, ui-svg) and something we've been keen to support is a platform where these widgets (and more) can be built and used within Dashboard 2.0 too.

Whilst we can't support the existing Dashboard 1.0 extensions directly (given that we're now VueJS-based, rather than AngularJS), we hope that the framework, documentation and this article, will help springboard the community to build new (and transfer over old) widgets for Dashboard 2.0.

Building from `ui-template`

As with Dashboard 1.0, we've utilised the flexibility of our ui-template node here to enable third-party integrations.

If you're used the new ui-template in Dashboard 2.0 already, you'll know that you can provide raw Vue (HTML) content and it'll render that into your Dashboard. In 0.6.0, we've added a lot of new functionality to the guts of ui-template, which we can then extend with our third-party widgets.

This new functionality includes:

Custom Dependencies - Injection of external widget dependencies (e.g. other JavaScript libraries) via <head>.
On Input - onInput defines behaviour of the widget in Dashboard when it receives a message in Node-RED.
On Load - onMounted defines functionality when a widget first loads in Dashboard.
Custom Functions - Define general functions that can be called from within your widget at any point of your choosing
Extend Built-In Events - Our built in send function can be called within your widget's template, and will send a message back to Node-RED, with any content of your choosing.
Custom SocketIO Event Handlers - If you want to extend the communication between Dashboard and Node-RED, you can emit your own SocketIO events from Dashboard, and have respective handlers for those events in Node-RED.

We also have plans to expose more of this new functionality to the ui-template interface itself within Node-RED, but for now it's mostly available when developing third-party widgets.

Useful Resources

If you're interested in building integrations, then we've also built a couple of resources to help you get started:

Widget Development Guide - A guide for how to structure your own widgets, and
Example Integration (Repo) - We've open sourced a very simple ui-example node that demonstrates how you can build your own widget for Dashboard 2.0, that utilises all of the features highlighted above.

What else is new in 0.6.0?

Whilst we focussed this article on the third-party integrations, we did also squeeze quite a lot more into the 0.6.0 release too with plenty other fixes and improvements, including the separation of the Dash oard 2.0 nodes into a new "Dashboard 2" category in the Node-RED palette.

Custom Node Support

2023-09-28T12:01:01Z

An often requested feature is support for custom nodes. Although Node-RED instances today connect automatically to the official Node-RED catalogue, which boasts over 4,400 custom nodes, we understand that specific use cases may require access to additional or different NPM registries and catalogues.

Starting today, you can extend your Node-RED environment by adding custom Node Catalogues. We have introduced the capability to modify the .npmrc file, allowing you to install modules that are not hosted in the official registry.

DevOps Pipeline with action selection

2023-09-28T12:00:03Z

Starting today, you can configure a deployment stage to create a new snapshot, always copy the latest snapshot, or prompt you for an action. This provides a more flexible approach to managing snapshots, enabling you to directly push created snapshots through the pipeline rather than being limited to the current image on Node-RED instances.

Usability improvements to Device Management

2023-09-28T12:00:02Z

Four weeks ago, we began working on several usability improvements to our Device Management. This included the ability to associate devices at the application level, allowing for easier editing of Node-RED instances on edge devices.

Starting today, it will also be possible to create and manage snapshots for those standalone devices.

Introducing the Enterprise Tier

2023-09-28T12:00:00Z

We are excited to officially announce the implementation and introduction of our new Enterprise Tier. Starting today, all FlowFuse Cloud customers have the option to upgrade their tier directly through Team Settings -> Danger -> Change Team Type. For those who self-host FlowFuse, the differentiation between the Enterprise and Teams Tiers is now available as well, via license type.

Comprehensive details about the features included in each tier can be found on our pricing page.

API Endpoint for DevOps Pipeline

2023-09-28T12:00:00Z

The execution of DevOps Pipelines is now an official API endpoint. Therefore, automation and integration, for example via Node-RED, are now possible. For more details, see our API Documentation.

Dynamic Markdown, Tables & Notebooks with Dashboard 2.0

2023-09-06T00:00:00Z

Whilst we're still busy backporting through the existing Dashboard 1.0 features, we did want to highlight some new features we've built in Dashboard 2.0 released this week.

In our v0.4.0 release, we've introduced a new "Notebook" layout, alongside a new Table widget.

The Notebook layout is designed to allow users to create Dashboards structured like a Notebook (most often seen with the likes of Jupyter Notebooks or ObservableHQ).

Here we will deepdive into the Notebook layout, and show how, alongside our new Markdown Node (docs), Table Node (docs) and others, it's becoming easier to create dynamic and interactive Dashboards.

Note: If you're not familiar with Markdown, it's a simple markup language that allows you to format text. You can learn more about it here.

Dashboard Hierarchy

As a quick introductory note ahead of our below guide, each Dashboard is structured accordingly:

Widget: An individual functional block, e.g. button, chart, slider
Group: A collection of widgets that render together
Page: A single page/tab in your Dashboard. Each page can have it's own Layout, in this case we'll use "Notebook"
UI: Contains a collection of pages, deployed from Node-RED, provides the basic side navigation to switch between Pages.

Building a Notebook

To get started, drop your first widget (in this case, we'll add a ui-markdown) onto the Node-RED canvas. This in turn will prompt us to create our first Group/Page/Dashboard which we can name and configure accordingly.

Let's add the following Markdown to our first widget:

# Markdown Content

Here we can render dynamic Markdown content that is
easily _styled_.


We can inject `msg.payload`. For example, here is a
timestamp updating every second: {{ msg.payload }}

The joy of ui-markdown in Dashboard 2.0 is dynamic content, i.e. content that can be updated by passing messages to the ui-markdown node. We can wire an inject node, set it up to repeat every second, and connect it to ui-markdown. Now, our Markdown content will automatically update show this value.

Resulting in:

Adding More Widgets

Because the Notebook is just a layout, we can still wire together any of the available widgets and existing nodes and display them accordingly.

Let's wire a ui-button, HTTP Request, and ui-table node. When we click the button, it will perform the HTTP request, and then render the response in the table.

For this, we're going to use the Random Jokes API, and in particular, a call to https://official-joke-api.appspot.com/jokes/ten which will return 10 random jokes.

HTTP Request > Table flow" loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://flowfuse.com/img/generate-jokes-flow.png" width="undefined" height="undefined" />

We can also re-order the widgets on the page using the Dashboard 2.0 sidebar (as you could in Dashboard 1.0).

The above effort results in the following output in our Notebook:

What else is new in 0.4.0?

The above demonstrates just a few of the new features in the 0.4.0 Release, but we've also added other fixes and improvements. In particular, I want to call out Steve's great work on implementing custom class injection, the first of our new "Dynamic Properties", of which there will be more (e.g. visibility, disabled, etc.) to come.