Multi Tenancy

What is Multi-tenancy?

Multi-tenancy is a software architecture design that allows a single instance of a software application to serve multiple groups of users or “tenants” while keeping their data and operations isolated. This approach is commonly used in cloud-based applications and services to share resources and infrastructure among multiple customers or organizations efficiently. Multi-tenant environments can bring down overall costs on subscriptions and licenses by as much as 80%. This is on top of the time and efforts saved by both IT and business teams.

What does it mean for my business?

Imagine a multi-tenant application as a large apartment building. The building is a software application, and each apartment is a separate ‘tenant’. Each tenant has their own private space (data and configurations) within the building and is isolated. They share the same building infrastructure (software codebase and hardware resources) but are kept separate to ensure each tenant’s security, privacy, and customization.

Multi-tenancy can be used to create form automations for your entire enterprise – each department or team can be defined as a tenant so they have their own spaces to operate in, in cases where the forms and information/workflows are department specific. Multi-tenancy can also work across different organizations or businesses – think of a large OEM with individual franchises or dealerships. Each of the locations can be assigned as a tenant. Notably, in such a scenario, the central IT owner only needs to manage one instance of the formsflow application, streamlining operations and reducing complexity.

How can the feature help IT Management?

Most form builder and workflow management software were initially designed to cater to straightforward use cases typical of small businesses. Interestingly, even employees and teams within larger organizations often find themselves unintentionally subscribing to these form and survey solutions. This can lead to a situation where various team members are using multiple applications, resulting in increased costs and heightened security risks. Furthermore, it can create a disjointed experience when managing forms within the organization. Introducing a multi-tenant feature can help address these issues. With this feature, a central IT team can strategically separate different offices, franchises, or departments into distinct tenants, effectively segregating forms, associated data, and workflows. This approach provides the IT team with the flexibility to enable workflows to interact when necessary, all while consolidating billable resources under a single license, streamlining cost management and enhancing security.

Multi-tenancy for Solutions Consultants

formsflow.ai, being a Low code business application development platform, can be a great tool in the arsenal of solutions providers. If you are a software services firm building apps for clientele, formsflow.ai is a perfect fit. The multi tenancy feature could be used to serve multiple clientele from a single larger instance of the product. This could help you bring a sophisticated solution to your end client at low cost per client. Many of our partners have built strong service offerings atop formsflow.ai using the feature.

How does Multi-tenancy play out for end users?

formsflow.ai logically separates tenant data and authorization which enables:

• Application URL: Each tenant gets their own tenant-specific URL to access the application.
• Authorization: Each tenant’s data is secured using a tenant-specific authentication token. A user can be a member of multiple tenants with different roles and if a user is authenticated based on the tenant URL, the issued access token will get access to only that tenant’s data.
• Each tenant can have different sets of roles than the default formsflow.ai roles.
• Forms: Each tenant can create and publish their own forms.
• BPM: Each tenant can create and publish their own workflows. Workflows can be deployed which can be shared across all tenants on the platform. Please see this page for information on tenant-based task assignments.
• Analytics: Each tenant gets their own analytics organization to create dashboards.
• Each client can be spun off as a separate tenant.
• You can apply a custom theme to the instance

Are you ready to experience the transformative potential of multi-tenancy?

Contact us to get started.