Teemu Iljin

Case study

Workflow Automation Platform

A multi-tenant SaaS platform where teams design business workflows visually, then run, monitor and integrate them with the tools they already use.

Role
Founder & Lead Developer
Year
2025
Workflow Automation Platform: the visual workflow designer

The problem

Repeatable business processes such as invoice approval, employee onboarding, customer support and incident response are often stitched together by hand or with one-off scripts.

The goal was a single platform where a team can model those processes in a visual designer, run them securely for many organisations at once, and connect them to tools like Slack and Google Workspace.

Architecture

  1. Frontend

    React 18 · React Flow visual designer · React Query

  2. Edge

    Nginx reverse proxy

  3. API

    Spring Boot 3.2 REST API · Spring Security + JWT · Role-based access control

  4. Data

    PostgreSQL · Spring Data JPA · Flyway migrations

  • Real-time updates

    WebSocket execution tracking

  • Notifications

    Email, SMS and in-app

  • Integrations

    Slack, Google Workspace, webhooks

  • Delivery

    Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions

Requests flow from the React designer through Nginx to the Spring Boot API and PostgreSQL. Supporting services on the right handle live updates, notifications, integrations and delivery.

Key decisions

  1. 01

    Stateless authentication with JWT and four roles

    Tokens instead of server sessions keep the API stateless, so it can scale horizontally behind Nginx. Admin, Manager, User and Viewer roles control who can design, run or only view workflows.

  2. 02

    Tenant isolation built into the data layer

    Each organisation's workflows, tasks and users are separated at the data level, with tenant-specific access checks, so one platform can safely serve many customers.

  3. 03

    Security as part of the pipeline, not an afterthought

    Rate limiting and brute-force protection, security headers, input validation and audit logging of security events, plus OWASP dependency scanning built into the Maven build.

  4. 04

    Automated testing and code-quality tooling

    JUnit 5 and Spring Boot tests run in GitHub Actions against a real PostgreSQL database on every push. JaCoCo coverage plus Checkstyle, PMD and SpotBugs static analysis are configured in the Maven build.

  5. 05

    Templates to shorten time to value

    Ready-made workflows for finance, HR, customer service, marketing, IT operations and e-commerce let a new team start from a working example instead of a blank canvas.

At a glance

8
Node types: triggers, actions, conditions, delays, notifications, data processing, approvals, error handlers
8
Workflow templates across 6 industries
4
Access roles with tenant-level isolation
3
Notification channels: email, SMS, in-app

Tech stack

  • Java 17
  • Spring Boot 3.2
  • Spring Security
  • PostgreSQL
  • React 18
  • React Flow
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • GitHub Actions

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