DocuFlow

Overview
DocuFlow is a secure, scalable platform designed for comprehensive document management, signing, and real-time collaboration. Built using the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js), the platform offers features like role-based access control, real-time collaboration, biometric authentication, blockchain-based document timestamping, and much more. This system is ideal for businesses looking to digitize their document workflows.

1. Multi-role Access

DocuFlow implements a robust Role-based Access Control (RBAC) system. This means that different users have different permissions based on their roles, such as Super Admin, Admin, and User. JWT (JSON Web Tokens) is used for authenticating users and determining their access rights. This ensures that sensitive actions, such as document approvals and data management, can only be performed by authorized personnel.

2. Admin Dashboard

The admin dashboard is a central control panel that allows admins to manage the platform. Key functionalities include:

• Subscription Management: The platform is integrated with a third-party payment gateway (e.g., Stripe) to handle subscription plans. This allows businesses to manage user subscriptions, billing cycles, and payment statuses.
• User Data Management: Admins can use MongoDB Aggregation Framework to gather insights and manage user accounts and document activity in an efficient manner. This ensures quick and flexible querying of large data sets.
• Document Activity: Daily document activity is cached using Redis, which improves performance by reducing the need to frequently query the database for recent updates. This also helps the platform scale to manage large datasets effectively.

3. Document Upload and Management

Users can upload documents securely to the platform, with support for different formats such as PDF and DOCX. Key document management features include:

• AWS S3 Integration: Documents are stored on AWS S3, providing a scalable and reliable storage solution.
• Document Versioning: Each time a document is uploaded or modified, a new version is created. This ensures that users can track changes over time and revert to previous versions if necessary.

4. Real-time Collaboration

DocuFlow supports real-time collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on a document simultaneously. This is implemented using a third-party document editor that allows for real-time tracking of changes, enabling teams to work together efficiently on the same document.

• Collaborative Editing: Users can make changes that are reflected instantly to other collaborators, ensuring seamless teamwork.

5. Document Signing Workflow

DocuFlow integrates digital signatures into its document workflow, allowing users to sign documents digitally. This feature includes:

• E-Signature Integration: Users can electronically sign documents, and the system generates a timestamped digital signature to verify document authenticity. The signature is secured using hashing algorithms.
• Document Approval: After signing, documents go through a multi-recipient approval process, where they must be approved by other designated users. The status of these approvals is tracked in real-time.

6. Blockchain-based Timestamping

To ensure document authenticity and immutability, DocuFlow integrates blockchain technology. For each document, a hash is generated using algorithms like SHA-256 and stored on the IOTA blockchain. This provides a tamper-proof record of when a document was created, modified, or signed.

7. Biometric Authentication

DocuFlow enhances security through biometric authentication. Users can log in using Windows Hello, which supports biometric login options such as facial recognition or fingerprint authentication via WebAuthn API. This adds an extra layer of security, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive documents.

8. Ticketing and Commenting System

The platform includes a ticketing system where users can raise issues or comment on documents. This is particularly useful for team collaboration and document review processes. Each ticket or comment is stored in MongoDB, ensuring that the platform can efficiently manage and search through a large number of comments.

• Threaded Comments: Users can add replies to specific comments, creating a threaded conversation for better organization.
• Notifications: Team members receive notifications when comments are added to documents they are working on, improving communication within the platform.

9. Withdrawal System

DocuFlow includes a secure withdrawal system for handling financial transactions related to document signing services. Stripe API is integrated for secure and seamless transactions, while GeoIP APIs restrict access to specific regions, ensuring compliance with location-based legal requirements.

10. Multi-recipient Document Approval

The platform supports multi-level document approvals, allowing documents to pass through a predefined approval process before they are finalized. This is crucial for companies that require sign-offs from multiple stakeholders. Each recipient's approval is tracked, and reminders are sent to those who have not yet approved the document.

• Event-driven Architecture: The approval process is built on an event-driven model that triggers notifications and approval requests based on document status changes.

Redis is integrated into the backend to handle caching, which improves system performance and scalability. The caching mechanism is used to store frequently accessed data, such as user sessions, document activity logs, and approval status. By using Redis, the platform reduces the number of direct database queries, speeding up data retrieval and reducing the load on the MongoDB instance.

Caching Benefits:

• Performance: Redis allows for fast data retrieval, especially for repeated operations like document queries and real-time collaboration updates.
• Scalability: By offloading frequent read requests from the database to Redis, the system can handle a higher volume of users and documents without compromising speed.

DocuFlow is deployed on AWS EC2 instances, ensuring that the platform is highly available and scalable.

Key Deployment Features:

• AWS EC2 Instances: The backend services are deployed on AWS EC2 to provide scalable compute power for managing user requests, document operations, and real-time collaboration.
• Load Balancing: Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.
• Auto-scaling: The EC2 instances are part of an auto-scaling group, allowing the platform to automatically adjust the number of running instances based on traffic and demand.
• Database Hosting: MongoDB is deployed on a managed AWS RDS instance, ensuring that the database is scalable, secure, and backed up regularly.
• File Storage: All documents uploaded to the platform are stored in AWS S3, providing scalable, secure, and durable storage.
• Redis Caching: Redis is deployed as part of an Elasticache cluster in AWS, ensuring fast access to cached data with automatic failover and backups.

Security:

• SSL/TLS Encryption: All data transmissions between the client and server are encrypted using SSL/TLS, ensuring that sensitive document data remains secure.
• IAM Roles: AWS IAM roles are used to manage permissions across services, ensuring that only authorized instances and users can access sensitive resources like the database and S3 buckets.

• Frontend: The platform's frontend is built using React.js, leveraging Material-UI for the user interface and React DnD for drag-and-drop document management.
• Backend: The backend is powered by Node.js and Express.js, providing a robust API for document operations, authentication, and subscription management.
• Database: MongoDB is used for storing user data, documents, and logs. It supports large data sets and provides the flexibility needed for dynamic workflows.
• File Storage: Documents are securely stored on AWS S3, ensuring high availability and data integrity.
• Real-time Communication: Socket.io is used for real-time document collaboration, allowing users to edit documents simultaneously.
• Blockchain Integration: IOTA blockchain is used for timestamping documents, ensuring their authenticity and immutability.
• Authentication: JWT is used for traditional authentication, while WebAuthn enables biometric logins.
• Caching: Redis is used to cache frequently accessed data, improving system performance.
• Payments: Stripe handles payments and subscription services, ensuring secure financial transactions within the platform.
• Deployment: The entire platform is deployed on AWS EC2 instances with auto-scaling, load balancing, and Redis caching for maximum scalability and reliability.

Conclusion
DocuFlow is a powerful solution for businesses that need a comprehensive platform for document management, signing, and collaboration. From secure biometric logins to blockchain-based timestamping, DocuFlow offers cutting-edge features designed to meet modern business needs. The platform's scalable architecture ensures that it can grow with businesses, while its real-time collaboration and document approval workflows streamline everyday operations.