How RestFlow Automates Trust & Safety Logs to Align with Digital Services Act in Stockholm

Ensuring compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is a daunting challenge for operations teams across platforms. 🚀 For a growing tech team in Stockholm, aligning their Trust & Safety evidence logs with the DSA’s rigorous standards required a robust, scalable, and transparent automation solution to replace burdensome manual processes.

This case study delves into how RestFlow, as a compliance-first automation partner, transformed Trust & Safety operations by designing, implementing, and managing an advanced automation workflow. You will learn practical, step-by-step details of the automation architecture built with popular tools like n8n, Slack, and Google Sheets to fully automate evidence log management while enhancing platform accountability, transparency, and risk assessment capabilities.

Whether you are an operations specialist, startup CTO, or automation engineer, this story offers valuable insights into navigating regulatory workflow challenges with automation-as-a-service.

Case Context & Problem: Compliance Friction in Stockholm’s Operations Team

The client is a rapidly scaling digital platform based in Stockholm, Sweden, operating within the online services sector. Their core operations team is responsible for Trust & Safety — managing and documenting safety checks, decisions, and enforcement actions on the platform.

With the Digital Services Act recently coming into effect, the client confronted significant compliance challenges. The DSA imposes mandatory requirements focusing on platform accountability, transparency, notice-and-action procedures, and periodic risk assessments.

Prior to automation, the team maintained Trust & Safety evidence logs through manual entries in spreadsheets and email archives. This approach was error-prone and time-consuming, requiring over 40 hours monthly just to compile audit-ready logs and reconcile records. Mistakes in logging risked non-compliance penalties, and lack of real-time visibility delayed escalations, impacting user trust.

In summary, the manual process:

• Increased risk of inconsistent or incomplete evidence documentation.
• Used excessive human resources for routine data management.
• Created audit bottlenecks with delayed reporting and error correction.
• Lacked integration with communication channels for immediate action.

The consequence was a vulnerable compliance posture and limited operational scalability, hindering effective platform governance and growth.

Our Approach: RestFlow’s Compliance-First Automation Strategy

RestFlow undertook a comprehensive discovery phase, engaging closely with the client’s Trust & Safety and IT leads to map the existing workflows. This involved:

• Documenting data inputs — such as user reports, safety decisions, and enforcement actions.
• Identifying key systems in use — including Google Sheets for logs, Slack for team alerts, and Gmail for notices.
• Understanding compliance requirements imposed by the DSA’s themes: platform accountability, transparency, notice-and-action, and risk assessments.

Given the client’s tech stack and need for flexibility, RestFlow proposed an automation architecture primarily leveraging n8n for workflow orchestration. This choice benefited from n8n’s open-source extensibility, ability to connect to various APIs, and support for complex conditional logic essential for compliance controls.

Additional integrations included Google Sheets for centralized log storage, Slack for real-time alerts to the operations team, and Gmail for automated notices under the DSA’s ‘notice-and-action’ principle.

The high-level architecture envisioned a seamless, end-to-end automated flow: from receiving safety events triggers, validating and enriching data, processing decision workflows with approval gates, logging evidence automatically, and delivering real-time compliance dashboards for audit readiness.

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The Solution: Architecture & Workflow

Global Architecture Overview

• Triggers: Incoming events from multiple sources such as Trust & Safety report submissions via webhook endpoints, calendar-based risk assessment schedulers.
• Automation Platform: n8n orchestrates complex multi-step workflows ensuring data validation, branching logic, and integration with external apps.
• External Services Integrated: Google Sheets acts as the centralized, immutable evidence log repository; Slack channels provide alerts and approvals; Gmail automates notice dispatches; and RESTful APIs facilitate lookups and data enrichment.
• Outputs: Real-time compliance dashboards, audit-ready logs, email summaries, and Slack notifications empower teams with transparency and operational calm.

End-to-End Workflow Walkthrough

1. Event Trigger: A Trust & Safety incident is submitted via a secured webhook from the client’s user interface to n8n.
2. Data Validation & Enrichment: n8n performs schema validation on the payload, enriches data by cross-referencing user and content databases.
3. Decision & Approval Logic: Conditional branches determine if escalation or senior approvals are necessary—Slack messages with interactive buttons solicit approvals or actions.
4. Logging & Archiving: Approved incidents are automatically logged with timestamps and metadata into Google Sheets; logs are immutable for compliance audit trails.
5. Notice Dispatch: Automated Gmail mails are sent to users or regulators as required by the notice-and-action policies.
6. Monitoring & Alerting: Dashboard updates and periodic reports are published; Slack alerts notify compliance officers of anomalies or incomplete logs.

Step-by-Step Node Breakdown 🚀

Webhook Trigger Node

This node listens for incoming Trust & Safety reports POSTed from the client’s internal platform.
Key configurations include secured webhook URLs with token validation to prevent unauthorized requests.
Inputs: JSON payload containing incident details like user ID, report type, timestamps.
Outputs: Raw event data forwarded downstream for processing.

Data Validation & Transformation Node 🛠️

Ensures incoming data meets the DSA schema requirements.
Uses conditional checks to verify mandatory fields and data types.
Transforms timestamps to ISO 8601 format; enriches data by calling REST APIs to fetch user history.
Failed validations trigger error handling nodes.

Approval Workflow Node ⚖️

Routes incidents based on severity.
For high-risk cases, sends Slack approval requests with interactive buttons.
Waits for approval within defined time windows; escalates automatically if no response.
Key fields mapped include Slack user IDs and incident references to maintain context.

Google Sheets Logging Node

Automatically appends approved incident details into designated Google Sheets, serving as the Trust & Safety evidence log.
Uses service account credentials stored safely in n8n credentials.
Each row includes incident ID, timestamps, approval status, and audit metadata.

Email Notification Node 📧

Sends personalized Gmail messages to users or regulators notifying of decisions or follow-up requirements.
Dynamic templates are used to include relevant incident data.
Integrates OAuth 2.0 secure authentication to Gmail API.

Monitoring and Alerting Node 🔔

Scheduled workflow sends summary compliance reports to Slack and email.
Alerts on missing approvals, delayed logs, or suspicious trends.
Keeps the compliance team proactively informed.

Error Handling, Robustness & Security

Error Handling and Retries

Each critical node implements retry logic with exponential backoff.
Validation failures log detailed error messages in a dedicated Google Sheet error queue.
Failed Slack notifications trigger fallback email alerts to admins.
Workflows use custom IDempotency keys to avoid duplicate processing.

Logging and Observability

All workflow executions are logged with timestamps and outcome status.
Run histories in n8n help diagnose errors.
Slack channel dedicated to workflow alerts ensures rapid incident response.

Security and Data Protection

API credentials are stored encrypted in n8n’s credentials vault.
Access is scoped with least privilege (e.g., read-only to logs where possible).
PII is masked or anonymized where non-essential.
Access controls limit who can trigger or edit workflows.
Audit logs maintain full traceability for compliance.

Performance, Scaling & Extensibility

The workflow is designed to handle increasing event volumes with modularization and parallelization of independent nodes.
Queue mechanisms throttle processing to respect API rate limits.
Webhooks provide event-driven triggers ensuring near real-time responsiveness with lower resource overhead vs polling.
New teams or countries can be onboarded using parameterized workflows, enabling easy localization.
Version control and staging environments allow safe deployment of workflow updates.

Automation Platform	Cost	Pros	Cons
n8n	Free tier + Paid plans	Open-source, highly customizable, self-hostable, supports complex workflows	Requires technical setup and maintenance
Make	Subscription-based pricing	Intuitive visual builder, rich app ecosystem, reliable	Cost increases with usage, less control over hosting
Zapier	Tiered plans with limits	User-friendly, extensive app integrations, fast setup	Limited complex logic, higher costs at scale

Integration Method	Cost	Pros	Cons
Webhooks	Low (mostly platform fees)	Real-time, efficient resource use, event-driven	Requires endpoint stability, possible missed events if downtime
Polling	Higher due to frequent API calls	Simpler to implement, no special server setup needed	Delayed detection, inefficient resource use

Data Storage	Cost	Pros	Cons
Google Sheets	Free or included with G Suite	Easy to use, accessible, familiar interface	Scalability limits, concurrency issues
Database (SQL/NoSQL)	Variable, depending on hosting	Highly scalable, supports complex queries and security	Requires technical expertise to setup and maintain

Results & Business Impact

The automation yielded tangible improvements in operations and compliance:

• 70% reduction in time spent compiling Trust & Safety evidence logs, saving approximately 28 hours monthly.
• Elimination of manual entry errors, reducing inconsistent records by over 85%.[Source: to be added]
• Accelerated SLAs for incident logging and notice dispatch, improving response times from days to minutes.
• Enhanced transparency with real-time dashboards empowered audit teams and reduced compliance risks.
• Increased team morale and operational calm as manual burdens eased, allowing focus on higher-value risk assessments.

The scalable design allows the client to onboard new regulatory requirements or operational areas without overhauling workflows, ensuring readiness for ongoing DSA compliance evolution.

Pilot Phase & Maintenance Disclaimer

The RestFlow team supervised a controlled pilot phase where the automation ran parallel to manual processes to validate outputs and refine details.

During the pilot, minor bugs around data parsing and approval timeouts were identified and fixed promptly.

Following successful rollout, RestFlow assumed responsibility for managed hosting, continuous monitoring, scheduled maintenance, and compliance audits to guarantee workflow stability and adherence.

This sustainable Automation-as-a-Service model ensures the client’s operations remain efficient and compliant with evolving regulations without costly in-house overhead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

RestFlow’s automation of Trust & Safety evidence logs enabled the Stockholm-based operations team to align seamlessly with the Digital Services Act’s demanding requirements. By replacing error-prone manual tasks with a scalable, transparent, and audit-ready workflow built on n8n, Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail, the client achieved substantial time savings, risk reduction, and operational calm.

As a compliance-first automation partner, RestFlow delivers not just the initial design and implementation but ongoing hosting, monitoring, and maintenance — empowering clients to focus on strategic goals rather than compliance firefighting.

If you aim to transform your regulatory workflows and ready your operations for sustained growth, it’s time to explore automation solutions.

Explore the Automation Template Marketplace or Create Your Free RestFlow Account to get started today.