A Developer's Guide to Business Process Automation with APIs

As developers, we live and breathe automation. We write scripts to deploy code, configure CI/CD pipelines to run tests, and leverage APIs to connect disparate systems. So why, in 2024, are our internal company operations still stuck in the dark ages of manual ticketing, endless email threads, and repetitive data entry?

Think about the last time you needed to onboard a new team member. It likely involved a flurry of requests to HR, IT, and Finance. Or considered the process for getting a new software license approved. These are repeatable, logic-driven processes—the perfect candidates for automation. Yet, they remain a frustratingly manual bottleneck.

What if you could treat your company's back-office like any other developer-friendly service? What if you could transform your back-office into code?

This is the core principle behind backoffice.services.do. It's a platform designed to turn complex internal procedures into simple, reliable Services-as-Software, all accessible through an API. This guide will give you a technical walkthrough of how to leverage this new paradigm to achieve true business process automation.

The Paradigm Shift: From Tickets to API Calls

Traditionally, business process automation (BPA) has been the domain of complex, heavyweight enterprise software that requires specialized consultants and months of implementation. The result for a developer is often just a web form that creates a ticket in a queue.

backoffice.services.do flips this model on its head. It introduces two key concepts:

1. Services-as-Software: We transform multi-step, human-driven procedures (like employee onboarding or expense processing) into deterministic, on-demand software services. The same way you call the Stripe API to process a payment, you can now call a back-office API to onboard an employee.
2. Agentic Workflows: Behind each API endpoint is a powerful, AI-powered agentic workflow. These agents are designed to execute tasks, interact with your existing systems (like your HRIS, ERP, or accounting software) via their APIs, and handle the complex orchestration required to see a process through from start to finish.

The result? The power to automate and orchestrate internal operations is placed directly in the hands of developers.

A Practical Walkthrough: Automating Onboarding with Code

Let's move from theory to practice. One of the most common and time-consuming back-office processes is employee onboarding. It involves creating user accounts, granting permissions, provisioning hardware, and updating payroll.

With backoffice.services.do, you can trigger this entire sequence with a single API call. Here’s how you'd do it using the TypeScript SDK.

import { Client } from '@do-sdk/client';

// Initialize the client for the backoffice.services.do domain
const backoffice = new Client('backoffice.services.do');

// Onboard a new employee with a single API call
async function onboardNewHire(employeeDetails: {
  name: string;
  email: string;
  role: string;
  department: string;
  startDate: string;
}) {
  const result = await backoffice.jobs.create('/onboard-employee', {
    name: employeeDetails.name,
    email: employeeDetails.email,
    role: employeeDetails.role,
    department: employeeDetails.department,
    startDate: employeeDetails.startDate,
  });

  console.log('Onboarding workflow initiated:', result);
  return result;
}

// Example usage:
onboardNewHire({
  name: 'Alex Doe',
  email: 'alex.doe@example.com',
  role: 'Software Engineer',
  department: 'Technology',
  startDate: '2024-09-01',
});

Breaking Down the Code

1. Initialization: We start by importing and initializing the client, pointing it to the backoffice.services.do domain.
2. The API Call: The magic happens in backoffice.jobs.create(). We're not just creating a record; we are initiating a job. We pass two arguments:
   • The workflow endpoint: /onboard-employee. This is a pre-configured agentic workflow designed to handle all the steps of onboarding.
   • The payload: A simple JSON object containing the necessary details for the new hire.
3. The Engine: When this code runs, the backoffice.services.do platform kicks the /onboard-employee workflow into gear. The agentic workflow begins its job:
   • It connects to your HRIS (e.g., Workday) to create the employee record.
   • It provisions a new email account in Google Workspace or Office 365.
   • It adds the new user to the correct Slack channels and GitHub teams.
   • It sends a notification to the IT department to provision a laptop.
   • It updates your payroll system.
4. The Result: The API call returns immediately with a job result object, containing an ID that you can use to track the status of the asynchronous onboarding process. This non-blocking pattern is instantly familiar to any developer who has worked with modern APIs.

Key Questions for Developers

As a developer, you're likely already thinking about the practical implications. Let's address the most common questions.

What else can I automate?

Any repeatable, multi-step business process is a prime candidate for back-office automation. Think beyond HR services. Our platform is built to handle a wide range of tasks across departments:

• HR: Employee onboarding/offboarding, payroll updates, benefits enrollment.
• Finance: Expense report processing, vendor invoice approval, budget requests.
• IT: Equipment provisioning, software license management, access control for systems.
• Legal: NDA generation and routing for signatures.

How does this integrate with our existing systems?

This is not a "rip and replace" solution. The agentic workflows are designed to be an orchestration layer that sits on top of your existing tools. Using secure API connections, our platform can communicate seamlessly with your core systems like Workday, SAP, NetSuite, Salesforce, and more. It unifies your tech stack, making data flow between systems as part of a single, coherent workflow.

Is this secure for sensitive data?

Absolutely. Security is foundational. backoffice.services.do is built with enterprise-grade security principles:

• Encryption: All data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest (AES-256).
• Isolation: Workflows run in isolated environments with strict access controls.
• Compliance: The platform is designed to help you meet compliance standards by creating auditable, deterministic records of every action taken.

Unlock Your Operational Efficiency

By treating your internal operations as a set of programmable, API-driven services, you unlock immense potential. You can embed these automated workflows directly into your own internal applications, build custom UIs for your teams, or trigger them from system events.

The era of manual back-office tasks is over. It's time to stop filing tickets and start writing code.

Ready to transform your company's operational chaos into clean, maintainable code? Explore backoffice.services.do and start building your first automated workflow today.