Hi everyone, and welcome to our n8n Master Course. 2
It's your Lead Gen Man here, and if you haven't heard about n8n, you might be living under a 3
rock. 4
n8n.io is a digital automation platform that allows you to build, test and deploy AI and automation 5
with minimal or zero coding at all. 6
It is a drag and drop AI agent builder that allows you to build AI agents within minutes and hours, 7
and not weeks and months. 8
n8n has become the hottest thing under the sun right now. 9
And to prove my point, let us go to Google search and let us search for worldwide from past 12 months. 10
So let us add our search term of n8n, and let us compare with Make.com and Zapier. 11
And if you haven't heard about Make.com or Zapier, they are similar tools like n8n, but n8n is 12
much more cheaper and scalable. 13
Let us compare that with Zapier and Make.com. 14
You can see the blue line, which indicates n8n, and the growth of n8n is exponential, like 15
Zapier, and Make.com has been in this field for more than 12 years now and everyone knows that. 16
But nowadays everyone is switching to n8n due to its scalability and due to its effectiveness. 17
So why wait? 18
And let's start building powerful agents by using n8n. 19
So head over to n8n.io and sign up or login with your account. 20
Yeah, it is free for the first 15 days as well as it is free forever if you are running n8n on your 21
local computer. (self-host) 22
Don't worry about this thing, just get started with n8n and then we will switch into much more complex 23
things. 24
But don't be like Jack. 25
Jack is a person who goes to YouTube, search for all the crazy n8n automation and workflows and just 26
mindlessly export it into his account. 27
And one day his boss asked him to make some changes or make some alternative and configuration into 28
their existing workflows. 29
And at that point, Jack wasn't able to do anything. 30
Even after exporting more than 100+ plus n8n automation and workflows, he was not able to make even 31
small changes for his company's workflow. 32
So don't be like Jack. 33
And this reminds me of this phrase Jack of all trades. 34
Master of none. 35
The summary of our Jack stories is: 36
It does not matter how big or how many workflows that you have imported. 37
It only matters that this automation and workflows solves your business queries and problems. 38
That's it. 39
And in order to build your customized and personalized workflows, you first of all need to understand 40
the fundamental blocks or the building blocks of n8n. 41
Otherwise, you will be like Jack who just goes to YouTube. 42
Import all these workflows and will not able to configure a little bit. 43
Because all businesses have different difficulties and challenges they are trying to solve. 44
And there is no one size fit for all automation or workflows. 45
And that's why you need to understand the fundamentals first. 46
Otherwise, you are going to have a hard time building automation and workflows inside n8n. 47
And that's why I am here. 48
In this lecture, I'm going to break down the entire building blocks of n8n. 49
And then after you have gained this knowledge, you can build literally any automation that you have 50
in your mind for your business. 51
But first of all, we need to understand why we are using n8n? 52
Obviously, we need to automate our business queries or our personal life. 53
So we need to understand what is automation? 54
We have understand what is n8n, right? 55
n8n is a digital automation platform that allows you to build, test and deploy AI agents and AI 56
automation with minimal or no coding. 57
Now let us understand what is automation? 58
I have gone to Google and search for the dictionary definition of automation. 59
Automation is a predictable set of predetermined actions that transfer one data to another data point. 60
I know my handwriting is not good, but you have to bear with me. 61
Let's let us first of all understand the automation definition. 62
So a set of predetermined actions: predetermined actions basically means that if our automation or 63
workflow will execute, then this thing will obviously happen. 64
That's why we have the definition of predictable set of predetermined actions that transfer data from 65
one point to another. 66
So let us take an example to visualize this much better. 67
Let's say we have an online form. 68
We are collecting the company name and company information, what kind of company they have or they 69
are in. 70
Now let's say if the form does not have any company name in it, no company name, we will just simply 71
ignore that form. 72
If that company is of low value, we will add that company to our email sequence. Next if that company 73
is high value. 74
We will add that to our Google Sheets. 75
And if that company is in our ICP or ideal customer profile, we want to get instantly notified inside 76
our slack send message to our slack. 77
And this is an example of automation. 78
Here we have predetermined action. 79
For instance, if that company is of low value, it will go to email step. 80
If that company is in our ICP, we will send that company to our slack message. 81
We know what will happen as per our criterias and condition that we have assigned inside our automation. 82
So we have covered this point till here. 83
Now the next thing in automation is we are moving data from one particle or one element, or we are 84
moving one atom to another atom in another space. 85
So we have our first data here. 86
We are sending them to our what kind of company they have. 87
And after assigning the criteria, we are sending our data to whatever module or whatever app that we 88
are going to use inside our automation. 89
So again, to summarize, automation is replacing manual or repeat tasks by using software or tools, 90
either partially or fully. 91
For instance, if you are not using automation here, right, we have to sort of have a human here that 92
will decide if this company is all right, if this company is high value, low value, or ICP. 93
But by using automation, we are replacing this manual task, increasing our efficiency, saving time 94
plus money. 95
All right. 96
Now I hope you understand why we use automation. 97
And for building automation we need to do some sort of help platform like n8n. 98
So let us explore n8n core components or building blocks. 99
The first core component inside n8n is trigger. 100
If you are building any automation:- trigger component will be your starting point in any automation 101
that you are going to build inside n8n. 102
So let us understand this with a racing gun analogy. 103
As you might notice, in any running race, there will be a gun and when that gun fires off, everyone 104
will start running. 105
This is what exactly trigger does inside n8n. 106
Whenever the trigger module starts, it will execute our entire automation or workflow inside n8n. 107
And again scenario/workflow/automation. 108
They all have the similar terminology inside n8n. 109
Again trigger model will initiate or launch your workflows inside n8n. 110
And that's why it is the most important core component of n8n. 111
So we have basically three types of triggers. 112
First is you can either start your automation by manually as well as you can schedule your automation. 113
For instance, if you want to run your automation, let's say every one minute, every one hour, or 114
at specific time, at specific day or at specific month, you can schedule your automation as that. 115
So let us take example, let's say every one minute, every one hour, every Friday at 5 p.m. whenever 116
you want to schedule, you can schedule automation. 117
Lastly, we have automatic or instant. 118
For instance, let's take our example of form. 119
So whenever someone will submit a form, it will automatically execute this automation and it will automatically 120
judge what kind of company they have. 121
So here there is no scheduling concept. 122
It will not check every single hour or every single minute. 123
It will only execute when it will receive external data. 124
Yeah. 125
So that's the beauty of Instant Trigger. 126
So let us take example of form submission. 127
Another example could be once a new row has been added to your Google Sheet or Airtable, it will execute 128
your workflow. 129
Whatever you want to have for trigger, you can use that and it will execute it instantly. 130
Google sheet property update or row update. 131
We can also have webhooks. 132
We will talk about webhooks later on. 133
Don't worry if you don't know what is webhook? 134
All right. 135
To again summarize there are three types of triggers. 136
You can run your automation manually, you can schedule your automation and you can instantly execute 137
your automation. 138
The benefit of instant triggers is for example, let us take this to comparison, right? 139
It will check every single hour and it will execute instantly. 140
So if you are dealing with sensitive data and if you want to update your Google sheet or whatever data, 141
you will definitely need to use instant triggers because you are playing with sensitive data and you 142
don't want to wait for one hour. 143
That's why we use instant triggers. 144
Now let us talk about the second core fundamental or second block of any time component. 145
So we have filters filter or filtering. 146
And it will have a shape like this. 147
So this is a funnel. 148
Filter, as the name suggests, will either allow or block certain type of data from flowing through 149
the next module. 150
It will allow or block certain type of data from flowing to the next path. 151
That's all you need to know about filtering. 152
And trust me, we're going to use filters a lot inside our automation. 153
Now the next thing or next core component we need to cover is Apps. 154
So App can be whatever you have in your mind- 155
It can be notion, it can be Google Drive, it can be slack, etc., etc.. 156
Now just simply selecting the app is not enough. 157
For instance, you need to give some sort of action or function that the apps need to execute. 158
That's why we have action component. 159
So the fourth component is action component. 160
So basically it will be inside apps. 161
Let's take example of Google Sheet app. 162
There are so many actions or so many functions we can do. 163
For instance we can delete a row. 164
We can update a row. 165
We can add a row, we can delete a cell, etc., etc.. 166
So just simply selecting an app is not enough. 167
We need to define certain functions or are actions we need to achieve from the apps. 168
That's why actions are so important. 169
Let's say we want to update a page. 170
I'm talking about notion app right from here. 171
We need to delete a page. 172
We need to delete a user. 173
So we need to define what actions that we need to do inside our automation. 174
For Google Drive we need to create a folder. 175
We need to delete a file. 176
We need to create a share link. 177
Similarly in slack we need to send a message. 178
We need to send message to the community. 179
We need to get the update we need to find or we need to search, etc. etc. 180
To understand actions even better, let us go to 30,000 ft height or the top of Mount Everest and let us see down the automation 181
or workflows. 182
Basically, every automation will follow this path inside n8n automation. 183
The first component obviously will be the trigger, right? 184
Without trigger, your automation won't execute or won't launch. 185
That's why trigger component will be a starting point in any automation that you are going to build 186
in n8n. 187
So we are going to have the first module of triggers. 188
You can set it up either instantly you can set it up either manually or scheduling. 189
Let us use the scheduling one. 190
Right. 191
So let us change the color. 192
We want to execute this automation every day at 9:00 pm. 193
Sorry 9 a.m. then what we are doing with this automation is we are either moving data from one place 194
to another. 195
We are either changing or manipulating data. 196
For instance, we want to sort our data or we want to use filters or filtering, segmenting, formatting, etc. 197
Basically, we are manipulating the data that we will get from triggers into whatever we want 198
to use. 199
And then what we are going to do is we are going to send it to Apps or basically actions, what actions 200
we want to perform inside our automation. 201
This will be actions and to quickly summarize actions. 202
It can be GET. 203
It can be SEND, it can be UPDATE. 204
It can be DELETE. 205
Yep. 206
So 90% of the time we are going to use this action like get, send, update or delete. 207
And that's the bird's eye view of n8n workflow. 208
The first we will have trigger. 209
Then we are manipulating data or changing data. 210
And then we are performing actions that we want to execute from our apps. 211
Yeah, that's pretty much it. 212
That's all you need to know. 213
Congratulations, guys. 214
You now know the fundamental or building block of n8n even much better than AI gurus that you see 215
in YouTube. 216
But one thing I want to emphasize is before you start building your automation, you will need to have 217
some sort of flow or wireframe in your mind before you get started, I will suggest that the best practices 218
here are having proper knowledge of apps and actions that you need inside your automation. 219
So I will suggest to do mappings. 220
Let's change the color to blue. 221
Mappings basically means this will be step one. 222
This will be step two. 223
This will be step three. 224
This will be step four. 225
So on. 226
So once you're inside n8n, you won't have to figure out what you need to do next. 227
And you won't be staring at the blank canvas. 228
You will have some sort of idea what you want, and you can easily start building automation inside 229
n8n. 230
That's all from my side. 231
And in the next lecture, we are going to cover some more additional context and some more additional 232
information that you need to know before building automation inside n8n. 233
That's all from my side and I will see you in the next one.