One of the things I need to do with my current job is to optimize my workflow and find ways to automate some of my side tasks. With that, I also find ways to apply automation to my personal workflow.

Finding automation workflow tool

I explore some free workflow automation tools available and I come up and the selfhosted n8n. I also created my very first automation after banging my head for several hours (just kidding). It is about sending links from my RSS Reader to my reading list page. Here is the workflow diagram:

My first n8n workflow

Workflow contents

  1. I use Miniflux RSS reader for consuming tech articles and content (check it out, its great!). Miniflux have a webhook integration that when I click the save button there, it sends a POST request containing the data of a certain RSS feed/article. The webhook will trigger the whole workflow
  2. The data will then pass to a IF conditional node that will check the webhook event type. Miniflux sends two types of event, the save_entry and new_entries event. I only need the save_entry for the workflow. If it receives the new_entries event, it will drop and finish the workflow.
  3. The workflow will then extract the needed fields from the webhook such as the title of the article and the url. The extracted data will then be converted to a json and added other frontmatter data.
  4. The github node will then pull the reading list page from its repository and will extract all the contents of the page. Meanwhile, the code node will remove all the prior frontmatter and extract only the current links published.
  5. The workflow will then merge the json file contents and the links published. This makes the new link appended at the top of the reading list page.
  6. The merged text/data will be converted again to a markdown file that makes up the newly edited reading list page.
  7. The new reading list page will then be committed to the website’s repository and will be published to the production.

Its great to learn this kind of tool by doing, even though you need to be familiar with its fundamentals. The thing is, its easy to read or learn the fundamentals of workflow automation, but the actual practice and process is what takes time and effort to master.

As long as you can read and follow a flowchart, you’ll be fine learning workflow automation.

I’ll try to create more workflows. Its a great feeling when you do some tasks that will automatically be completed without manual intervention.