Getting Started

Automating AWS Lambda Function Error Handling with AWS Step Functions (Aaron Rehaag, AWS, March 16, 2017)
"You can use Step Functions to create state machines, which orchestrate multiple AWS Lambda functions to build multi-step serverless applications. In certain cases, a Lambda function returns an error. Regardless of whether the error is a function exception created by the developer (e.g., file not found), or unpredicted (e.g., out of memory), Step Functions allows you to respond with conditional logic based on the type of error message in the form of function error handling."

Implementing Serverless Manual Approval Steps in AWS Step Functions and Amazon API Gateway (Ali Baghaii, AWS, Feb 15, 2017)
"A common use case for AWS Step Functions is a task that requires human intervention (for example, an approval process). In this post, I describe a serverless design pattern for implementing manual approval steps. You can use a Step Functions activity task to generate a unique token that can be returned later indicating either approval or rejection by the person making the decision."
 

AWS Step Functions Fluent Java API (Andrew Shore, AWS, Jan 31, 2017)
"The Step Functions console provides excellent support for visualizing and debugging a workflow and for creating state machine descriptions. State machines are described in a JSON document, as described in detail here. Although the console has a great editor for building these documents visually, you might want to write state machines in your IDE via a native Java API. Today, we’re launching a fluent builder API to create state machines in a readable, compact way. This new API is included in the AWS SDK for Java."
 

New – AWS Step Functions – Build Distributed Applications Using Visual Workflows (Jeff Barr, AWS, Dec 1, 2016)
"We want to make it even easier for you to build complex, distributed applications by connecting multiple web and microservices. Whether you are implementing a complex business process or setting up a processing pipeline for photo uploads, we want you to focus on the code instead of on the coordination."

Easily Create Complex Workflows with AWS Step Functions (Volodymyr Rudyi, Agile Vision, February 12, 2017)
"In this article, I’m going to demonstrate some basic features of AWS Step Functions and how they can be executed in a response to any event. We’ll create a simple workflow that will be executed once a new file is uploaded to an S3 bucket. It will process it, save contents to the DynamoDB, move the file to the “processed” folder and notify the user via email in 10 minutes after processing."

Visual Orchestration in AWS (Eric Shanks, AHEAD, January 5, 2017)
"Consider the following scenario: Enterprise IT requires that all virtual machines being deployed must be tagged with some important information and a configuration item (CI) must be added to their configuration management database (CMDB). How do we ensure that these services are being updated while allowing the developers to quickly deploy new machines in the cloud?"

Passing Data between Lambdas with AWS Step Functions (Trevor Turnbull, Dec 11, 2016)
"This is a small tutorial to demonstrate the passing of parameters between Lambda functions, using the new AWS Step Functions console to define a State Machine."

AWS re:Invent 2016: CMP319 - Building Distributed Applications with AWS Step Functions (Andy Katz, AWS and Manuel Pata, OutSystems, Dec 1, 2016)