Changelog

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

More goodness has been added to the FlowFuse Assistant 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 Assistant in the Node-RED Palette Manager today.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Recently, we introduced "Flows Explainer" to the FlowFuse Assistant. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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