Case studies / Service portal · rules engine
Russian documents abroad: the route, step by step.
Anyone taking a Russian document abroad needs to know which office handles it, where it is, what it costs and how long it takes. The client, a translation agency, wanted a free reference service that explains this to anyone. On apostil4.ru you pick the document, the region that issued it and the destination country: the site builds the chain of steps, with address, fee, processing time and a link to the official source. In Russian, English and Chinese.
The problem
The answer changes with the document, the region and the country.
A diploma, a birth certificate, a power of attorney: each one follows its own path. And that path also depends on which Russian region issued the document and which country has to accept it. Anyone doing this for the first time faces a chain of offices, addresses, fees and processing times to piece together on their own, one bit at a time.
A reference service on a subject like this is only worth something if people can trust it: an out-of-date address or a figure with no source costs days to whoever follows it. That’s why the heart of the job isn’t the visuals but data discipline — together with a clean way to turn someone asking for help into a work request for the agency.
Our answer
A rules engine, fed by data that states its sources.
We built a service portal where the route isn’t hand-written page by page: a rules engine works it out from a curated dataset. Around it sit free tools that answer the next questions. And for people who’d rather hand the job to someone, a form that sends the request straight into the agency’s order system: translation, notary, apostille, consular legalisation, delivery of documents.
Rules engine · the route
Three choices, and the site maps the way.
The heart of the project. Behind the form sit 196 countries, 16 document types and 166 offices across 85 regions. The engine applies the rules to the chosen combination and returns the chain of steps: which office, at what address, for what fee and in how much time, with a link to the official source next to every step. The same logic runs both when the site is built and in the visitor’s browser — which is why even the 404 page can work out a route for any combination.
A route on a phone: first the outcome in cards — what the apostille goes on, whether the translation needs a second one, who translates — then the steps in order.
Every fact with its source
Free tools · notary calculator
After the route, the next questions.
Once you know the way, the practical questions arrive: what will the notary cost, when will it be ready, is the document still valid? Each has a tool. The notary fee calculator covers 85 regions and does the maths right in the browser, with no waiting. Next to it, a readiness calendar that allows for public holidays, and a document-validity checker.
The result shows up at once: the calculation happens in the browser, on the visitor’s own device.
The portal’s tools, all free:
Notaries from the official register
The dataset holds 2,476 notaries taken from the official register of the Russian Ministry of Justice.
From reference to request
The request lands in the order system, not in an inbox.
The portal is also the channel through which the agency gets new clients. Anyone who decides not to do it all themselves fills in the form, and the request goes straight into the agency’s order-management system through its API: no copy-and-paste, no emails to sort by hand.
That system is the TMS we built: the public portal and the back-office tool are connected with no manual steps in between.
How it’s built
Nine checks before every change.
A site that gives directions about official documents can’t afford a broken link or a page that crawls. So no change goes live without passing a nine-step automated check: the tests, a check of every link, the page-weight budget. There’s no database to maintain: the data lives in plain files and the site generator doesn’t depend on third-party libraries. Built between 12 and 24 September 2026.
The result
A service that says where every answer comes from.
countries in the dataset; the ones not yet verified say so
notaries from the official register of the Russian Ministry of Justice
broken links out of about 1.2 million checked before every change
BUILT BY STUDIO REMARKA FOR THE CLIENT — VERIFIABLE AT apostil4.ru
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