How Thoughtworks solves the big (and small) problems with Okta Workflows

Thoughtworks is a global software consultancy firm with a reputation for tackling tough projects. As Steve Quirke, Identity team lead, explains: “We’re here to build the products that differentiate our customers from the competition. Clients hire us for our ability to digitally transform global enterprises at scale by applying strategic consulting and cutting edge technologies.”

Thoughtworks has over 10,500 employees spread across 19 countries and has been pioneering trends for the past 30+ years, such as agile software development, microservices, and data mesh. Operating from a philosophy of “choosing the best tool for the job,” the company isn’t afraid to embrace ascendent new developer tools and frameworks or figure out innovative ways to use the resources already at their disposal.

In many respects, this ethos is evident when examining how Thoughtworks uses Okta — their primary Workforce Identity platform.

Agility through custom Identity workflows

“Thoughtworks believes in leading by example. Culturally, our constant pushing to improve can make us appear self-critical. We often bring a questioning approach to our work: ‘Is this good enough?’ or ’Why isn't it like this?’” Quirke says. “And so we've always been looking to push the boundaries in our internal IT function too. We've been cloud first well before it was mainstream. When the pandemic hit and other companies were scrambling to set up VPN links for employees, we were fortunate enough to be able to continue operations almost 'as normal', because we already had systems like Okta in place.”

Like many companies, Thoughtworks has reaped the rewards of its early adoption of cloud-based Identity management. But some of their biggest successes have emerged from the creative use of Okta Workflows — a tool for creating custom Identity-based automation using business logic and integrating Identity flows with external services.

At a high level, Thoughtworks uses Workflows to expedite or eliminate routine/repetitive tasks that previously required human intervention — thus costing the company time and effort and distracting technical staff from delivering value elsewhere in the business.

“As a large organization with numerous employees, clients, and external partners, providing secure access and authentication is complex,” Quirke says. “Identity management only becomes more challenging when layered with an intricate ecosystem of SaaS apps, globally distributed users, and compliance regulations.”

Inevitably, lifecycle management represents a challenge for multi-national enterprise-scale organizations such as Thoughtworks, who have turned to Okta to help reduce the administrative burden. "I think it's important to contextualize the Identity challenges. Not only are we a large and globally distributed company, with many SaaS apps in play, depending on the client project, we also provide access to verified external partners." Quirke goes on to explain. "In order to maintain security as we efficiently onboard people, we require them to activate their accounts within seven days. If people missed that seven-day window — perhaps they missed the email as they were on vacation, or it mistakenly landed in their spam folder — we’d have to manually resend the activation link,” Quirke says. “Now, by automating this use case, it's a win-win for our team and the people onboarding.”

Thoughtworks solved this challenge by creating a simple Okta workflow that automatically resends the activation email to users after that seven-day window. Suddenly, a significant source of helpdesk tickets was gone.

Solving the big (and small) problems with Okta Workflows

This solution epitomizes the power of Okta Workflows. Workflows helps empower IT teams to quickly build solutions to once-stubborn problems, reducing costs and saving time. By eliminating tedious, manual, and recurring daily tasks that flood the IT team’s inbox, Workflows frees them to focus on high-value work that drives business outcomes at scale.

“Usernames are subject to a complex set of limitations,” Quirke says. “Some are imposed by legacy applications, with restrictions on the maximum length of a username. Others by preference — people like email addresses that relate to their name. Inevitably, this leads to namespace clashes, and over the years, we have established manual procedures to resolve these when they occur. A few years ago, we acquired a company, and we had a need to rapidly create accounts for all of those employees outside of the usual hiring processes.”

With Workflows, Quirke and his team could detect potential collisions and automatically suggest an alternative without the same degree of manual intervention. They built and deployed this workflow in less than one week — while also attending to their day-to-day responsibilities — thanks to the no-code, drag-and-drop capabilities of the tool.

Since these early pilots, Thoughtworks has radically expanded their use of Okta Workflows to tackle other operational challenges, from self-service application provisioning using Google Forms to hands-free processing of complex account management scenarios. And they accomplished this despite — in Quirke’s own words — not being programmers.

“I write code, but I'm mostly familiar with the kinds of scripts used for systems administration tasks. For people like me, there is a little bit of a learning curve with Workflows, but I was able to get up to speed pretty quickly. I attended some lunch-and-learn events that Okta ran, and that really helped it click and make sense as I got started,” Quirke says.

It helps, he adds, that many of the technologies and approaches used within Workflows aren’t proprietary but based on long-established technology standards.

“It’s UNIX. It’s JSON. I know all that stuff,” Quirke says. “These are all the types of things I used when manually calling APIs. All of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Right, I can build this,’”

“If you have a solid understanding of Okta — if you’re an Okta admin and you’ve been doing this for a couple of months — you can build cool stuff with Workflows,” he continues. “If you have an understanding of what you expect to put in, and what you want to get out, Workflows can supercharge what you can do with Identity.”

Okta Workflows makes it easy to automate Identity processes at scale — without writing code. For more information on how Workflows can help you navigate challenges of lifecycle management, application provisioning, and account management, check out the following resources:

Video: Getting Started With Okta Workflows - Building Your First Flow

Guide: Getting Started with Okta Workflows

Product Page: Okta Workflows

Thoughtworks is a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation. We are over 10,500 Thoughtworkers strong across 47 offices in 19 countries. For 30 years, we've delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator. Check out the Getting Started video here.