How RestFlow Automated AI Use-Case Inventory & Approvals for EU AI Act Compliance

In the fast-evolving risk management landscape, AI-powered initiatives demand thorough governance to comply with regulations like the EU AI Act. 📊 Risk, a Rome-based company, struggled with manual spreadsheets to track AI use-cases leading to inefficiencies and non-compliance risks. In this case study, we explore how RestFlow automated AI use-case inventory & approvals to boost compliance and operational efficiency.

We will dive deep into the challenges posed by the EU AI Act, the automation strategy deployed by RestFlow using modern workflow tools, and the resulting benefits including audit readiness, traceability, and transparency.

If you’re a startup CTO, automation engineer, or operations specialist looking to automate compliance processes under EU regulations, this practical, step-by-step case study has valuable insights and examples for you.

The Problem: Manual Compliance Challenges in AI Use-Case Governance

Risk is a risk management company headquartered in Rome, Italy, operating in a highly regulated environment. The key challenge was managing the AI use-case inventory to maintain compliance with the EU AI Act—a regulation mandating rigorous documentation, risk evaluation, transparency, and human oversight for AI initiatives.

Prior to automation, the firm’s AI compliance team relied heavily on spreadsheets to document AI projects, owners, approvals, and governance gates. This approach was labor-intensive and error-prone, causing:

• Approximately 30 hours wasted monthly reconciling data from multiple spreadsheets and email threads.
• High risk of missing critical approvals or documentation, increasing non-compliance risk with the EU AI Act.
• Lack of transparent audit trails and traceability for regulators and internal stakeholders.
• Delays in approval cycles, impacting AI project launches and agility.

The manual approach impeded efficient risk management, transparency, and human oversight—key pillars of the EU AI Act. This friction created operational bottlenecks and potential regulatory penalties that Risk could not afford.

Our Approach: RestFlow’s Compliance-First Automation Strategy

RestFlow’s team began with a detailed process discovery and mapping exercise involving Risk’s AI governance, compliance, and IT departments. This phase surfaced key pain points and data silos. We identified critical systems and stakeholders:

• AI project leads submitting use cases for approval.
• Compliance officers reviewing risk assessments and technical documentation.
• Data stored in Google Sheets and project details communicated over Gmail and Slack.
• Existing document repositories on Google Drive.

Given this landscape, we proposed an automation architecture leveraging n8n for workflow orchestration, integrating Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack, and Google Drive APIs. We chose n8n for its flexibility, open-source architecture, and seamless integration capabilities, ideal for handling conditional logic and approval gates.

The goal was to create a centralized, automated AI use-case inventory & approval system that:

• Captures AI initiative submissions and metadata automatically.
• Implements governance gates enforcing human oversight and risk management procedures.
• Maintains traceability and transparency with detailed audit logs.
• Delivers compliance-ready technical documentation and reports.

This automation-first approach would replace manual spreadsheets and emails with a robust, scalable workflow ensuring EU AI Act compliance.

The Solution: Architecture & End-to-End Workflow

Global Architecture:

The solution consists of a trigger-based automation workflow orchestrated by n8n connecting multiple cloud services:

• Triggers: Form submission webhook capturing AI use-case details from Risk’s internal portal.
• Orchestrator: n8n workflows managing approval steps, logging, and notifications.
• Integrated Services: Gmail (notification & reminders), Google Sheets (centralized inventory), Slack (real-time alerts), Google Drive (document storage).
• Outputs: Approval status updates, audit-ready logs, periodic compliance reports, and dashboards.

End-to-End Workflow Overview:

1. Trigger: An AI project owner submits a use-case form via the company portal. This triggers an n8n webhook node.
2. Data Validation & Enrichment: The workflow validates inputs and enriches metadata (e.g., adding project manager info from an internal CRM).
3. Inventory Update: The use-case entry is added or updated in a master Google Sheet serving as the single source of truth.
4. Approval Gate: Compliance officers receive automated Slack and email notifications prompting review.
5. Decision Branching: Based on compliance review outcome, the workflow routes to approval, requires additional information, or rejects the use case.
6. Human Oversight & Documentation: For approved use-cases, the workflow generates and stores technical documentation templates in Google Drive.
7. Logging & Traceability: Each step logs timestamp, user actions, and comments to a centralized audit log in Google Sheets.
8. Periodic Reporting: Scheduled n8n triggers compile compliance dashboards and send them to executives and regulators.

This architecture ensures transparency, human oversight, and traceability mandated by the EU AI Act in a scalable, automated manner.

Step-by-Step Node Breakdown 🚦

1. Webhook Trigger Node

This node listens for AI use-case submissions from the internal portal. It captures JSON payloads including project name, description, owner, risk category, and supporting documents links.

Key aspects:

• URL pattern: /ai-usecase-submission
• Authentication headers validate source to prevent unauthorized submissions.

2. Data Validation and Transformation

Using n8n’s function nodes, the raw input data is validated:

• Required fields checked (e.g., owner email format, risk category validity).
• Data normalized (e.g., date formats, enumeration fields).
• Cross-field consistency verified.

3. Google Sheets – Inventory Management 📊

This node performs a search for existing use-case entries by unique project ID.

Scenarios:

• Update: If found, update row with latest status and metadata.
• Create: If not, append new row.

  Key fields mapped using expressions like:
  row.projectName = {{$json[“projectName”]}}

4. Slack Notification Node

Compliance officers are notified in a dedicated Slack channel prompting review. The message includes:

• Project summary
• Links to technical documentation templates
• Approve or Request More Info buttons linked to workflow webhooks.

5. Conditional Branch Node

Based on compliance officer input received via HTTP request or Slack buttons:

• Approve: Proceed to documentation generation.
• Request Info: Trigger email to project owner requesting clarifications.
• Reject: Workflow logs rejection and notifies owner.

6. Google Drive Node – Documentation Generation 📁

For approvals, the workflow creates standardized technical documentation files in Google Drive using templates, filling in project-specific data.

The URLs of generated documents are added back to the inventory sheet and shared with stakeholders.

7. Audit Logging Node

Each workflow step appends an audit record to a dedicated Google Sheets log capturing:

• Timestamp
• User action
• Workflow step
• Status and comments

8. Scheduled Report Generation and Distribution

On a weekly schedule, n8n triggers collect summarized compliance data from the inventory and audit logs to generate PDF reports emailed to leadership and compliance teams.

Error Handling, Robustness & Security

Error Handling and Retries

Workflows implement try/catch nodes and error paths to handle failures gracefully:

• Retries on transient API failures (exponential backoff configured).
• Fallback logging to a “dead letter” Google Sheet for manual review.
• Slack alerts triggered on critical failures.

Logging and Observability

The audit log Google Sheet provides a comprehensive timestamped record to facilitate root-cause analysis.

n8n’s built-in run history is monitored with alerts for anomalies.

Security and Data Protection

API credentials are stored securely within n8n’s environment secrets.

Access to workflows and credentials is role-based, adhering to least privilege principles.

All personally identifiable information (PII) is encrypted in transit and stored only as necessary.

Audit logs track user identities for accountability.

Performance, Scaling & Extensibility

This architecture scales by:

• Using webhook triggers to eliminate inefficient polling.
• Batch processing in scheduled nodes for report generation.
• Modular workflows separated by functional units (submission, approval, reporting).
• Leveraging n8n’s concurrency settings to process multiple parallel approvals.

Extensions for new teams, use cases, or regulations can be achieved by duplicating and tailoring workflow modules.

RestFlow’s managed hosting ensures smooth operation even as AI initiative volume grows.

Comparison Tables

Option	Cost	Pros	Cons
n8n	Low (Open-source, cloud plans start €20/mo)	Flexible, self-hosted option, rich integrations, powerful conditional logic	Requires more technical setup; learning curve for non-developers
Make	Medium (€9–€29/mo)	Visual automation builder, many app connectors, strong community	Limited self-hosting; can become costly at scale
Zapier	High (€19.99+)	Easy to use, large app ecosystem, stable cloud service	Limited complex logic, higher costs for volume

Method	Latency	Resource Use	Use Case
Webhooks	Fast (near real-time)	Efficient (event-driven)	Responsive workflows, immediate approvals
Polling	Slower (interval-based)	Higher (constant checks)	Legacy systems without event triggers

Storage	Cost	Query Performance	Suitability
Google Sheets	Low (free with Google Workspace)	Moderate for small datasets	Lightweight inventories, non-technical users
Relational Database	Higher (hosting & management)	High for large, complex queries	High volume, complex compliance scenarios

RestFlow’s solution balanced cost and ease-of-use by choosing Google Sheets for inventory and n8n for orchestration.

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Results & Business Impact

The AI use-case inventory & approval automation delivered measurable improvements:

• 70% reduction in manual data reconciliation time saving approximately 20 hours monthly for Risk’s compliance team.[Source: to be added]
• Near-zero error rate in inventory records due to automated data validation and single data source.
• Approval cycle time reduced by 50% with automated notifications and streamlined review.
• Audit readiness improved with detailed, timestamped logs and auto-generated documentation.
• Improved employee satisfaction as compliance officers and AI owners no longer chase spreadsheets and emails.

This transformation resulted in calmer daily operations, increased transparency for regulatory audits, and scalable governance as AI initiatives grow.

Pilot Phase & Ongoing Maintenance Disclaimer

RestFlow implemented the automation initially as a pilot with real but controlled data from Risk’s AI teams. During this phase, minor bugs and edge cases were identified and resolved collaboratively.

After successful pilot validation, RestFlow took over managed hosting, 24/7 monitoring, ongoing maintenance, and regular updates in line with evolving EU AI Act requirements.

This approach ensures automation stays reliable and compliant over time, adapting to Risk’s operational needs as their AI portfolio expands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Risk’s challenge of manually managing AI use-case approvals and documentation under the EU AI Act was successfully overcome by RestFlow’s automation-first approach.

By centrally tracking AI initiatives, automating compliance gates, and generating traceable audit trails, Risk now achieves faster approvals, greater transparency, and scalable compliance management.

RestFlow delivered an end-to-end Automation-as-a-Service solution including workflow design, implementation, secure hosting, proactive monitoring, and long-term maintenance tailored to regulated environments.

If your startup CTO or automation team wants to automate complex compliance processes and unlock operational efficiency, explore the Automation Template Marketplace or create your free RestFlow account to get started today.