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Last summer, I was building a small automation in n8n when I came across Activepieces. Both tools promise the same thing: connect your applications, automate your workflows, and host it yourself. But when I clicked through to Activepieces' GitHub repo, I noticed it's released under the MIT license. Truly Open Source, not just source-available like n8n.

As I dug deeper into these tools, I kept noticing something else: they're powerful and mature, yet almost non-existent in enterprise environments. Developers love them. Small teams rely on them. But large organizations are paying hefty premiums for proprietary integration platforms (iPaaS) or wiring integrations manually.

That gap crystallized something I'd been seeing across different contexts: business logic is moving out of individual applications and into the orchestration layer.

Today, most organizations run on dozens of disconnected tools. A product launch means logging into Mailchimp for email campaigns, Salesforce for lead tracking, Google Analytics for performance monitoring, Drupal for content publishing, Slack for team coordination, and a spreadsheet to keep everything synchronized. We copy data between systems, paste it into different formats, and manually trigger each step. In other words, most organizations are still doing orchestration by hand.

With orchestration tools maturing, this won't stay manual forever. That led me to an investment thesis that I call the Orchestration Shift: the tools we use to connect systems are becoming as important as the systems themselves.

This shift could change how we think about enterprise software architecture. For the last decade, we've talked about the "marketing technology stack" or "martech stack": collections of tools connected through rigid, point-to-point integrations. Orchestration changes this fundamentally. Instead of each tool integrating directly with others, an orchestration layer coordinates how they work together: the "martech stack" becomes a "martech network".

Why I invested in Activepieces

I believe that in the next five to ten years, orchestration platforms like Activepieces are likely to become critical infrastructure in many organizations. If that happens, this shift needs Open Source infrastructure. Not only proprietary SaaS platforms or source-available licenses with commercial restrictions, but truly open infrastructure.

The world benefits when critical infrastructure has strong Open Source alternatives. Linux gave us an alternative to proprietary operating systems. MySQL and PostgreSQL gave us alternatives to Oracle. And of course, Drupal and WordPress gave us alternatives to dozens of proprietary CMSes. When a layer becomes this foundational, Open Source options keep the entire ecosystem healthy and innovative.

That is why Activepieces stood out: it is Open Source and positioned for an important market shift.

So I reached out to Ash Samhouri, their co-founder and CEO, to learn more about their vision. After a Zoom call, I came away impressed by both the mission and the momentum. When I got the opportunity to invest, I took it.

A couple months later, n8n raised over $240 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, validation that the orchestration market was maturing rapidly.

I invested not just money, but also time and effort. Over the summer, I worked with Jürgen Haas to create a Drupal integration for Activepieces and the orchestration module for Drupal. Both shipped the week before DrupalCon Vienna, where I demonstrated them in my opening keynote.

How orchestration changes platforms

Consider what this means for platforms like Drupal, which I have led for more than two decades. Drupal has thousands of contributed modules that integrate with external services. But if orchestration tools begin offering those same integrations in a way that is easier and more powerful to use, we have to ask how Drupal's role should evolve.

Drupal could move from being the central hub that manages integrations to becoming a key node within this larger orchestration network. As I mentioned earlier, this represents the shift from "marketing stack" to "marketing network".

In this model, Drupal continues managing and publishing content while also acting as a connected participant in such a network. Events in Drupal can trigger workflows across other systems, and orchestration tools can trigger actions back in Drupal. This bidirectional connection makes both more powerful. Drupal gains capabilities without adding complexity to its core, while orchestration platforms gain access to rich content, structured data, publishing workflows, and more.

Drupal can also learn architecturally from these orchestration platforms. Tools like n8n and Activepieces use a simple but powerful pattern: every operation has defined inputs and outputs that can be chained together to build workflows. Drupal could adopt this same approach, making it easier to build internal automations and positioning Drupal as an even more natural participant in orchestration networks.

We have seen similar shifts before. TCP/IP did not make telephones irrelevant; it changed where the intelligence lived. Phones became endpoints in a network defined by the protocol connecting them. Orchestration may follow a similar path, becoming the layer that coordinates how business systems work together.

Where orchestration is heading

Today, orchestration platforms handle workflow automation: when X happens, do Y. Form submissions create CRM entries, send email notifications, post Slack updates. I demonstrated this pattern in my DrupalCon Vienna keynote, showing how predefined workflows eliminate manual work and custom integration code.

But orchestration is evolving toward something more powerful: digital workers. These AI-driven agents will understand context, make decisions, and execute complex tasks across platforms. A digital worker could interpret a goal like "Launch the European campaign for our product launch", analyze what needs to happen, build the workflows, coordinate across your martech network, execute them, and report results.

Tools like Activepieces and protocols like the Model Context Protocol are laying the groundwork for this future. We're moving from automation (executing predefined steps) to autonomy (understanding intent and figuring out how to achieve it). The future will likely require both: deterministic workflows for reliability and consistency, combined with AI-driven decision-making for flexibility and intelligence.

This shift makes the orchestration layer even more critical. It's not just connecting systems anymore; it's where business intelligence and decision-making will live.

Conclusion

When I first clicked through to Activepieces' GitHub repo last summer, I was looking for a tool to automate a workflow. What I found was something bigger: a glimpse of how business software architecture is fundamentally changing. I've been thinking about it since.

To me, the question isn't whether orchestration will become critical infrastructure. It's whether that infrastructure will be open and built collaboratively. That is a future worth investing in, both with capital and with code.

Use UNION aggregated fields in the Drupal Search API to unify facets and filters across entities. A practical guide, compatible with Solr, Drupal database (DB), and Elasticsearch.

Intuition

A client of mine requested the feature in their existing webform (on a Drupal10 website) to be able to generate an PDF print-out of the user’s input upon their every submission, and attach the generated PDF to the with the e-mail trigger by the webform’s handler.

This will ensure they have a copy of the user’s input as the ground truth to be referenced in the future, and the signature in the webform can be shared via the email as a part of the PDF, because by default the webform only allows you to attach the link of signature’s PNG image, which means (if you want any user who receive the email to be able to download the signature without a Drupal authenticated account) you will have to expose via a public link.

Leveraging Laravel to Modernize Guttmacher Institute’s Database jenna Tue, 10/28/2025 - 14:02 Drupal Client work

We recently partnered with the Guttmacher Institute on a fascinating challenge. Their team needed to migrate an existing data application built years ago in Silex PHP — a framework that’s no longer supported. The application stored large datasets in CouchDB, which were uploaded and parsed from XML and CSV files. Those datasets powered a series of interactive data visualizations embedded on Guttmacher’s Drupal site.

The primary motivation for rebuilding? A complex, outdated database layer in CouchDB — and a steep learning curve for Guttmacher’s internal team.

Key Objectives

As we began to scope the project, three main objectives emerged:

• Streamlined Data Management: Create a simple backend interface where internal users can upload CSV files to add or update records. If a unique data ID already exists, the record should update automatically. The data model would mirror the structure of the existing CouchDB datasets.
• Preserve the Existing Data Structure: Migrate the CouchDB data to a new system that maintains the same JSON-based framework. This was critical — any change in data structure would have required major updates to the Drupal and React applications that depend on the current API.
• Rebuild API Endpoints: Recreate two public API endpoints responsible for data calculations and transformations, ensuring downstream applications (Drupal and React) continue to function exactly as before.

Backend Development Considerations

Our first instinct was to rebuild the backend logic within Drupal, keeping everything inside the same ecosystem. We also discussed moving the data to MongoDB, since it would closely resemble the flexibility of CouchDB.

But after diving deeper into the requirements, it became clear that Drupal wasn’t the right fit. While we could have made it work, Drupal’s entity system and API layers introduce unnecessary complexity for a lightweight application like this. Supporting non-native databases (outside MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite) would also have added significant development overhead.

In short: Drupal’s power wasn’t the problem — it was overkill for the task at hand.

Framework Implementation

So what did we choose instead? Laravel, paired with Filament PHP for the admin interface and backend authentication.

Laravel offered the flexibility we needed — lightweight, elegant, and fast to implement. Its Eloquent ORM made it easy to define data models with minimal overhead, while Filament PHP allowed us to spin up an authenticated admin panel in minutes.

Filament’s built-in tools, like export and import capabilities, were especially valuable. We used them to handle CSV uploads, importing data directly into our custom data model designed to mirror CouchDB’s structure.

To migrate existing data, we built a Laravel Seeder. The process was straightforward: connect to CouchDB, iterate through the records, map each property to our Laravel model, and save them to the new datastore.

During the migration, we realized that only one property required JSON storage. Rather than introducing a new datastore like MongoDB, we simplified the stack further by using MySQL, which has supported JSON fields since version 5.7.8. Laravel’s native JSON model support made this transition seamless.

The Result: A Happy Client

The outcome was exactly what both Guttmacher and our team hoped for — a cleaner, faster, and easier-to-maintain application. By choosing the right tool for the job, we reduced technical debt, met tight deadlines, and empowered Guttmacher’s developers with a familiar and efficient workflow.

The new Laravel application now allows their team to manage datasets through a simple CSV import process — no more struggling with legacy code or unsupported frameworks.

At Aten, we believe every project deserves a thoughtful technical foundation. When you work with us, we take the time to understand your goals and choose the right technology to meet them.

Interested in modernizing your application? Let’s talk and find the right tool for your next digital challenge.

Travis Tomka

DXPR Builder AI Beta: When Drupal outperforms Elementor, Divi, Webflow, and the rest Jurriaan Tue, 10/28/2025 - 12:58

TLDR: Watch it build a page from a prompt → Online Demo → Download on drupal.org

So, we've been working on Drupal's content UX for over 10 years now, trying to make page building accessible to non-technical users. We've made a lot of progress, but honestly, something always felt like it was missing. The tools were getting more powerful, but making Drupal "easy" was still kind of a stretch. Your clients and their users will agree.

Then we started experimenting with AI.

I've been testing a bunch of other site builders: Webflow, Elementor, Divi, and about 10 others to see what they're doing with AI. Here's what I discovered: they're all bolting AI features on existing tools like an afterthought. They're treating AI as a feature, not a foundation. We took the opposite approach with DXPR. Instead of adding AI to a traditional editor, we built the entire experience around AI-first principles. The difference is striking, and I'd love to show you exactly how this fundamentally changes the way you build pages in Drupal.

Real-time unedited video

What We've Implemented So Far

Rather than just adding AI as a feature checkbox, we tried to think about how it could actually change the workflow. Here are the main things we've built:

Content RewritingWe've added controls for AI-rewriting content precision and control. Our users actually spend more time editing existing website content than making new pages. Single-Prompt Page Generation

You can describe a page in plain text and get a working layout. It's not perfect every time, but it's a pretty good starting point and saves a lot of manual setup. It's better than other AI writing tools.

Image Generation

Instead of switching to another tool, you can generate images right in the builder. It's integrated into the workflow, which seems to help with iteration speed.

Clone Competitor Pages

You can point the AI at a competitor page and have it screen-scrape the page and reproduce it with DXPR elements matching your theme. It sounds naughty but we know humans copy too, and AI does it better. For inspiration of course.

The goal was to create a workflow where these features actually work together rather than feeling like separate tools. We're trying to let the AI handle repetitive stuff so users can focus on the creative decisions.

Demo Videos

I've put together some demo videos that walk through how this actually works in practice. There are two versions: one with my narration and one with AI voiceover and edit.

• Drupal AI Page Builder - Complete Tutorial Series (Jurriaan)
• Drupal AI Page Builder - Complete Tutorial Series (AI Ashley)

These are pretty unfiltered demos. You'll see what works well and where we're still working out the kinks. I think it's important to show the real experience, especially since this is still in beta.

What This Might Mean for Drupal

I know Drupal isn't usually the first platform people think of when they want visual page building. We've always been strong on the backend, but the UI complexity has been a challenge.

What's interesting about this AI integration is that it might actually leverage Drupal's strengths in a new way. We've got this solid, flexible backend that other platforms can't match. And now we're able to put a much more accessible interface on top of it.

Obsessive optimization

Our AI performance is surprisingly fast too: page generation takes seconds, content rewrites happen in real-time. After years of building the foundation, it feels like things are finally clicking.

We even shipped a Rust / WASM HTML optimizer in DXPR Builder that runs in your browser and shaves a whopping 15% off of the token count of HTML we put into the AI, resulting in lower AI latency and better use of AI context capacity.

I Need Your Feedback

We're calling this a beta because we really want to hear from the community before we lock in the final release. What works for you? What feels off? Where do you see gaps or opportunities?

The team has put in a ton of work to get here, and I'm pretty excited about where we are. Your real-world testing is going to help us figure out what we got right and what still needs work.

If you can download DXPR Builder 2.8.0 from Drupal.org and test it out, that would be incredibly helpful. It's completely free including 10,000 words AI gen + 10 images per month in free AI credits. We've set up a FAQ and feedback page for questions and suggestions. Seriously, any input, positive or negative, helps us make this better.

And if you know anyone who might be interested in this kind of thing, feel free to share. We're trying to get this in front of people who might actually use it.

After working on this for so long, it's pretty cool to finally see how AI and Drupal can work together for content editors. Thanks for letting me share this with you all!

Want to Try It Out?

Download the DXPR Builder AI Beta and let us know what you think.

Download DXPR Builder on Drupal.org

DXPR AI FAQ & Submit Feedback

Want to know how the duo of decoupled Drupal and React can power modern marketing? Read this blog to learn how a headless setup simplifies every marketer’s tasks.

Explore how Drupal Canvas AI Agents transform simple prompts into fully functional web pages, enhancing automation, speed, and creative control.

Accessibility has always been part of Drupal’s DNA but keeping it consistent across large sites takes more than good intentions. As standards evolve, developers and editors must balance WCAG compliance with design, content, and performance. This post looks at how automation and AI can make that work easier. From adding automated WCAG checks to CI pipelines to using AI tools that guide content editors, Drupal teams can spot problems earlier and fix them faster. At Cheppers, we’ve built a reliable, developer-friendly testing system for real Drupal projects, and we’re already preparing it for the next generation of WCAG guidelines.

Today we are talking about AI News,Drupal Hooks, and Drupal 11. We’ll also cover Webform Scheduled Tasks as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/526

Topics

• AI in News Anchoring
• Drupal Hooks and Themes
• Adoption of Object-Oriented Modules
• Challenges with Theme Hook Orders
• Understanding Hook Ordering in Modules
• Simplifying Hook Ordering with Drupal 11.2
• Updating to Drupal 11: Considerations and Plans
• Exciting Features in Drupal 11
• Drupal Orchestration and Integration
• New England Drupal Camp Announcement
• State of Drupal Work and Future Prospects

Resources

• AI News Cast
• Drupal Hooks
• Driesnote DrupalCon Vienna 2025 Orchestration
• Activepieces

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

MOTW Correspondent

Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

• Brief description:
  • Have you (or your client) ever wanted to get fewer webform submission emails? Do you like getting emails on a predictable schedule and not any time a user decides to fill out your form?
  • If so, you might want to check out Webform Scheduled Tasks
• Module name/project names
  • Webform Scheduled Tasks
• Brief history
  • Created by mattgill on 22 November 2017
  • It has a 3.0-rc1 release available with Drupal 10 compatibility and is awaiting review of it’s automated D11 fixes.
• Maintainership
  • Its last release was in November 2023, but just a month ago I helped get Sean Dietrich approved as a new maintainer, so I’m hoping for a new release in the near future.
  • It has security coverage.
  • Tests exist to test the full functionality of the module and they are passing.
  • There is no standalone documentation, although a README is RTBC’ed. That said, the module page has a straightforward description of what the module does and how to use it, and getting it up and running is very straightforward.
  • Number of open issues: 24 open issues, only 1 of which is a bug against the current branch. I’ll also note there are 8 issues that are RTBC, so we should be seeing some fixes forthcoming.
• Usage stats:
  • 817 sites
• Module features and usage
  • Once you enable the module, Webforms will have an additional “Scheduled tasks” configuration screen.
  • You can create a task to email all results or just the results since the last export.
  • Once you enable a scheduled task, you can set a number of options:
  • its next scheduled run and the run interval (in hours, days, weeks, etc)
  • where to email the results, in what format (JSON or CSV), whether to delete submissions after they’re sent
  • There’s also a RTBC patch to allow you to configure file names to include date-time of export, which can help the recipients keep track of the exports.
  • After that, you just sit and wait for cron to do its thing.

Hi Readers,

At DrupalCon Europe 2025 in Vienna, Dries Buytaert used his keynote (“Driesnote”) to outline Drupal’s AI-first direction. He described AI as a major shift in how people use the web and emphasised that Drupal will evolve to meet it. Instead of focusing on new features, his keynote detailed a strategy to improve usability and integrate AI throughout the platform. The highlight was Drupal Canvas, a visual site-building tool designed to make Drupal more accessible for all users. For full context, see Dries’s State of Drupal presentation, October 2025.

The community has quickly embraced this direction. Over the past 18 months, contributions to Drupal have nearly doubled, helped by the “Starshot” initiative. That progress led to Drupal Canvas, which combines Drupal’s structured content system with a more intuitive interface. Dries described it as Drupal “repositioned for creators, marketers, and enterprise users.” Canvas launches alongside Site Templates, Recipes, Code Components, and a new Mercury design system, all aimed at simplifying setup and improving site-building efficiency.

According to the Canvas project page, users can now build and theme entire sites directly in their browser, with little or no code. Non-developers can design and edit visually, while editors can modify content anywhere on a page. Canvas still leverages Drupal’s core strengths—structured content and granular permissions—to maintain consistency and control. It’s a major step toward making Drupal approachable without losing its technical flexibility.

The mix of Canvas and AI has become a central topic across the Drupal community. Canvas introduces faster, collaborative site building, while new AI tools can generate page layouts, assist with content, and suggest updates within Drupal’s workflow. These improvements make it easier for small teams or non-technical users to maintain complex sites efficiently. A production-ready Drupal Canvas 1.0 is expected in November 2025, becoming the default experience in Drupal CMS 2.0 by January 2026, followed by a template marketplace in March 2026.

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• 12 Essential Drupal Modules for Conversational AI and Chatbot Integration
• State of Drupal Open University: A Community Initiative Bringing Drupal to Classrooms Worldwide
• DropWatch: John Bloomfield Launches New Drupal Update Monitoring Tool
• Drupal’s New AI Context Module Brings Context Engineering to the CMS
• Project LACI Adds Redline View to Enhance Legal Content Analysis in Drupal
• Drupal.org Launches Free 7-Day AI Demos with amazee.ai for Future-Ready Workflows
• KERN UX Design System Launches Drupal Integration with Community‑Driven Kickoff
• Southwark Council and Chicken Develop AI-Powered PDF Importer for LocalGov Drupal
• Search API Typesense Module Gains Momentum with Community Planning After DrupalCon Europe 2025

TUTORIAL

• Unmanaged Files in Drupal (Part 5): Enhancing the Twig Function

EVENT

• Join us in London for the Mautic World Conference
• "Insightful, Exciting and Exhausting!": Adaptive's Steve Allen Reflects on First DrupalCon Experience
• Exclusive Discount for Mautic World Conference 2025 in London and Online
• DrupalFit Announces Winners of Challenge – Vienna Edition 2025 at DrupalCon Vienna
• DrupalCamp England 2026 Announced for February 28–March 1 at University of Salford

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• Capellic Updates Logo as Part of Brand Refresh
• Four Kitchens Names Colleen Carroll as CEO, Begins New Era of Women-Led Leadership

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kazima Abbas,
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

The University of Namur has unified over 50 websites into one Drupal-powered platform, streamlining its digital presence across faculties. With WebstanZ as its implementation partner, the project improves UX, centralizes governance, and lays the groundwork for scalable, multilingual engagement.

The Drop Times (TDT) is opening our monthly Townhall meeting to the wider community on November 5, 2025, at 7:00 PM IST (13:30 UTC). Townhall is where all departments—content, social media, marketing and outreach, jobs, technology, and leadership—set the course for the month ahead. As part of our transparency initiative, anyone aligned with TDT’s mission to grow Drupal’s market share is welcome to join. We’re a nonprofit, ad-free portal covering interviews, organization news, tutorials, module releases, events, jobs, and Drupal adoption insights. The Google Meet link will be shared shortly; come add your voice to TDT’s roadmap.

Read more

The digital experience industry is at a crossroads. We’ve spent the past decade evolving from simple CMS websites to full-fledged Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) that promised to manage every touchpoint. Yet, as we stand in 2025, it’s clear that the next leap forward won’t come from yet another all-in-one platform. It will come from a new philosophy altogether. I call this new paradigm DEEP, or Digital Experience Enablement Platform.

DEEP: The Post-Platform OS for Intelligent Experience EcosystemsDEEP: The Post-Platform OS for Intelligent Experience EcosystemsMonday, October 27, 2025 - 10:30

Have you ever created a form in Drupal that had a dozen or so fields and looked like a long, messy list? Or maybe you wanted to limit the number of characters in a text field, but didn't know how to do it without programming? These and many other problems are solved by 10 modules that extend the standard Drupal Field module. The tools I will present in this article are worth knowing if you are an administrator or product owner of a Drupal site. The text is based on my video from the Nowoczesny Drupal channel.