I build custom services and integrations for ccaas platforms. something that's always annoyed me:
every workflow tool lets you export a workflow. cool, here's your JSON. now go rebuild the connections, the environment, the trigger, the data tables it works with, and whatever dashboard the customer wanted on top. by hand. every single time you install it somewhere new.
In my integration work, I used to reach for n8n and custom deployed services running on my own infra for Twilio, Cisco, Salesforce, others in that world. it's usually the same type of work on all my projects: sync some agent data, log some calls to a crm, run some post-call automation. copying the workflow definition took 5 minutes. rebuilding everything around it took another week. every customer. I ended up building my own tooling around service deploys using terraform, bash scripts, etc to be able to replicate my setup across projects. even still, I got project and config drift over time across a bunch of customers, huge headache to maintain.
this eventually led to me making my own packaging to cover the whole thing [the entire system around the workflow definitions]. I got a bit carried away and ended up making it into an entire platform over time.
what I built: a platform called QuickFlo that allows customers and consultants to quickly develop and deploy entire systems of business logic. the magic I feel here is enabling consultants to package common solutions to deploy to a bunch of their customers within just a few clicks + some install instead of months long engagements.
a package in QuickFlo bundles the workflow with its triggers [webhook, schedule, form, whatever], the data tables it uses, and any BI dashboard built on that data, data source included. it also knows what connections and env vars it needs, and includes skeletons of them in the package graph. install it in a new org, map the connections, done. few clicks instead of a rebuild. dashboards are built in too, which I did not expect to matter as much as it does. no separate BI tool bolted on.
also handles big data without falling over, which most of these tools don't. tested up to 500k row CSVs now, sort + dedup + join, one run, doesn't choke, because it streams in chunks and spills to cloud storage instead of holding it all in memory like many other workflow platforms do - kind of an apache spark move, just for workflow steps instead of a job cluster.
packages are everything here, honestly. you don't get 4,000 pre-built integrations — you get the steps to build the integration yourself. generic HTTP, OAuth, and if a system needs something that no step covers, there's a real Deno code step that pulls in actual npm or jsr packages at runtime, not a fenced-off scripting sandbox. build the integration, ship the whole thing as a package. public ones go straight in the marketplace, anyone can install them. if you just need two SaaS apps glued together, Zapier's still the right call for that. this is for when you're the one building the integration, not looking one up.
there's an input box on quickflo.app where you type what you want and it auto-builds live. it reads your actual connections, env vars, and step schemas while it works instead of spitting out a generic template. in sharing this, my hope is that it's helpful to others the same way it's been helpful for me and my own projects.
zajasa•3h ago
I build custom services and integrations for ccaas platforms. something that's always annoyed me:
every workflow tool lets you export a workflow. cool, here's your JSON. now go rebuild the connections, the environment, the trigger, the data tables it works with, and whatever dashboard the customer wanted on top. by hand. every single time you install it somewhere new.
In my integration work, I used to reach for n8n and custom deployed services running on my own infra for Twilio, Cisco, Salesforce, others in that world. it's usually the same type of work on all my projects: sync some agent data, log some calls to a crm, run some post-call automation. copying the workflow definition took 5 minutes. rebuilding everything around it took another week. every customer. I ended up building my own tooling around service deploys using terraform, bash scripts, etc to be able to replicate my setup across projects. even still, I got project and config drift over time across a bunch of customers, huge headache to maintain.
this eventually led to me making my own packaging to cover the whole thing [the entire system around the workflow definitions]. I got a bit carried away and ended up making it into an entire platform over time.
what I built: a platform called QuickFlo that allows customers and consultants to quickly develop and deploy entire systems of business logic. the magic I feel here is enabling consultants to package common solutions to deploy to a bunch of their customers within just a few clicks + some install instead of months long engagements.
a package in QuickFlo bundles the workflow with its triggers [webhook, schedule, form, whatever], the data tables it uses, and any BI dashboard built on that data, data source included. it also knows what connections and env vars it needs, and includes skeletons of them in the package graph. install it in a new org, map the connections, done. few clicks instead of a rebuild. dashboards are built in too, which I did not expect to matter as much as it does. no separate BI tool bolted on.
also handles big data without falling over, which most of these tools don't. tested up to 500k row CSVs now, sort + dedup + join, one run, doesn't choke, because it streams in chunks and spills to cloud storage instead of holding it all in memory like many other workflow platforms do - kind of an apache spark move, just for workflow steps instead of a job cluster.
packages are everything here, honestly. you don't get 4,000 pre-built integrations — you get the steps to build the integration yourself. generic HTTP, OAuth, and if a system needs something that no step covers, there's a real Deno code step that pulls in actual npm or jsr packages at runtime, not a fenced-off scripting sandbox. build the integration, ship the whole thing as a package. public ones go straight in the marketplace, anyone can install them. if you just need two SaaS apps glued together, Zapier's still the right call for that. this is for when you're the one building the integration, not looking one up.
there's an input box on quickflo.app where you type what you want and it auto-builds live. it reads your actual connections, env vars, and step schemas while it works instead of spitting out a generic template. in sharing this, my hope is that it's helpful to others the same way it's been helpful for me and my own projects.
Cheers.