n8n Quick Start Tutorial: Build Your First Workflow [2025]

hey I'm Max the original flowgrammer and welcome  to your n8n quick start i'm going to teach you the   key fundamentals to building any n8n workflow that  includes triggers and actions how items of data   work between steps in your n8n workflows how to  map data between those steps and transform it and   route it based on business logic i'm also going to  teach you how to connect to apps and services so   you can perform actions in those apps and services  in your app stack and we're going to do this all   with a super simple workflow it's an installation  request so there'll be a web form and it'll send a   notification to Slack it's a simple workflow to  teach you the key fundamentals of N8N that you   can leverage in your actual use cases and if you  came here wanting to build some fancy AI stuff I   hear you it's very exciting there's a lot of hype  about it right now but I strongly recommend that   you watch this video first learn these foundations  and then jump off into that agentic future all   right with all that in mind let's switch to N8N  and begin i'm here in a brand new n8n workspace

and let's start a new workflow from scratch this  is going to take us to the workflow canvas this is   where you build out your workflow activate it and  then it runs automatically it saves you a bunch of   time let's add our first step to the workflow and  that's going to be a workflow trigger in Nen we   have triggers that kick off workflows and then we  have actions that perform steps in your workflow   there's lots of different types of triggers that  you can leverage for example if you want to kick   off the workflow based on an event in an app or  service that you use in your app stack you can   go on to on app event if you're building an AI  chatbot perhaps you're going to start off with   our chat trigger since today we're creating a  web form automation let's start off with an on   form submission cuz n8n is going to give us a web  form that we can give to the end user to fill out   to kick off the workflow let's click to add that  to the canvas this added the node to the canvas   by default the trigger node the form trigger and  we can see that it's a trigger node because it's   got this lightning bolt on it and if I hover near  it gets its own execute workflow button let's   go ahead and set it up there's various parameters  that you need to fill out before you can execute a   step these are required fields as you can see here  there's an error around the form title so let's go   ahead and give it a title request an installation  and let's also give it a description fill out this   form to request an installation we'll reach out  via email to finalize your appointment next let's   add the form fields that we want the users to  actually fill out these are called form elements   in n8n let's add the first one and let's ask for  the email and since an email is text we could keep   this to text but we do have a specific email type  and this offers a bit extra data validation when   the user fills that out if they get the email  wrong so let's add that and we won't add a   placeholder for now but let's make it required and  then let's also capture their preferred install   date so we can do a bit of conditional routing  based on that and I can show you how to work with   data and manipulate it in n8n as well and let's  set that to a date because then it'll be a nice   little date picker for the user to use for now  let's respond when the form is submitted so it'll   just say "Hey great your form was submitted. " But  in future you could make this a multi-step form   if you're evolving this now that I filled out the  parameters of my node the next thing is we need to   test it and we do that by clicking execute step in  the case of the form trigger this pops up a test   form this is what your end user is going to see  once you activate the workflow let's go ahead and   fill that out name. com let's say my preferred  install date i need this in two days like I'm   really busy i got to get this stuff installed so  I submit that okay let's go ahead and close that   popup and we can see that it executed successfully  and there's a green check mark in my output here

and I have some output data here as well how nodes  work in n8n be it a trigger or an action is they   run their step and then they output some data and  that's what we can see here in the output there's   a few different ways to visualize that data  for example I'm looking in JSON mode right now   because most of this data does get passed in JSON  format in n8n so this is a rather true to form   representation of that data i can also see it as  a table if that's useful for the type of data I'm   looking at and there's also a schema view which  extrapolates the schema of this data and shows   it in a format where if I had nesting I could also  collapse it this would be a good juncture in time   to talk about n items what they are and how to  work with them so as you can see we have one item   of data in my output and if I go to my workflow  we can see the node executed successfully it's   got a green check and there's an item of data  coming out of that as well what is an item of   data basically each node in nin8nn including this  trigger node outputs an array of items that's its   payload that it sends out that you can pipe in to  the next step now the one contract between nodes   in n8n is that they always need to pass along this  array and it should have zero to many items in   this case we have one item of data in here because  there's one element in this top level array which   is why there's one item here that's going to  be useful for you to know because most nodes   perform their step on each item of data and a lot  of folks sometimes get the looping paradigm wrong   and try to add looping steps when they don't need  to because again nodes perform each step on each   incoming item of data that will become clearer in  the next step when we add some conditional routing

before we continue though if I continue to test  my workflow be it from this execute step button   here or execute workflow button here i'm going  to continue seeing that popup and I'm going to   have to fill it out now in our web form that's not  too bad there's just two form fields but what if   it's a subscription event for Stripe or something  that's difficult to replicate for my main system   it's going to be really annoying to basically keep  creating test data as I do that so what you can do   is pin the data in this node so each time that we  run it just outputs the pinned data to do that   we can hit this pin data button here this data  is now pinned we can see that visualized in the   canvas as well so each time I mash this execute  workflow button it doesn't actually run it just   outputs whatever payload was sitting in there  super useful pro tip that I highly recommend   with pin data once I activate my workflow it  won't be used on those production executions   but it will stay here for when I come back here  for a future session when I maybe want to test my

flow let's now add some conditional routing logic  that routes it to Slack if the preferred install   date is within 7 days and otherwise continues the  workflow to do that I'll click the plus button   here and since I want some conditional routing  we need to go into the flow section of my nodes   panel and here there's various things that can  control the flow what we need here is an if node   if you do need to have multiple output branches  depending on more complex conditional logic you   could also opt for the switch node in this case  we're just checking if it's under 7 days away so   we can use the if node and I'll drag and drop that  onto the canvas just to contextualize this we can   now see I've got my pin trigger sending one item  of data into my if node if I open it up I can see   that I've got the one item of data flowing into  here and in the if node it also has parameters   that we set up to inform how the step runs and we  do this by setting up one or many conditions that   we evaluate and they might evaluate to true or  false and they'll go out the true branch or the   false branch let's set up the first condition to  do that we want to check if the preferred install   date is 7 days into the future of right now or  not so we can actually drag and drop that onto

this value and this turns it to an expression in  n before it was set to fixed that's the default   so it just treats this as text which I can also  type but if it's set to an expression anything   within these curly brackets will be treated as  an expression that is evaluated and we can see   the evaluated result here is that date so I can  drag and drop data from previous nodes and map   them into the steps for current nodes to inform  the current step right so the next thing that   we need to do is the operation that we want to  evaluate basically value one to value two right   since this is a datetime we do have date and time  operators which is useful because dealing with   date and times can be a little clunky mentally and  so this kind of helps make sure that you got sound   logic for that so let's set this to is before or  equal to and we're going to get an error because   we don't have anything set in the second value  yet but for the second value how to think of this   i have a date we don't know what time it is and  we want to check if it's younger than 7 days from   now so we got to get the now and add seven to it  right to do that we can set an expression go ahead   and set an expression there and I'll do two open  brackets and in here I see an autocomplete shows   up and in nan we do have a helper function to get  the time right now it's called dollar now so let's   click to add that and we can see it's printed  a date time but we want now plus 7 days so if I   hit period I can access autocomplete and see the  various helper methods that I can use if you're   familiar with JavaScript this is also JavaScript  so you can apply JavaScript methods here as well   but the Nadin team has a bunch of helper methods  in addition to JavaScript for the things that   uh JavaScript might not cover let's add the  plus method and we can see here there's a   mini documentation on how to use it we need to  specify the an integer on how much to increment   the current datetime and the units to do that by  so days so actually we need exactly what's in this   example so let's click to add that and then in  here let's write seven days and we can see that   is now 7 days in the future if we run this it  does work because this gets cast to a date even   though this is currently a text as you can see  there's a little a character there to make this a   bit more robust and just to show the different  methods at work I can again hit a period here   to access this autocomplete and there is a two  datetime method available here there's a bunch   of others that you can look at as you're going  through your use case but this one makes it just   a little bit more robust so now we're comparing a  datetime to a datetime let's test that it's true   that's great we could test this again make sure  the logic's working because we set a date 2 days   in advance so this should go to the false branch  that's working correctly we'll set that back great   so now we've got conditional logic we're routing  to the true branch and we can see that's coming   out there now before we add the slack node let's  annotate our workflow so it's a little clearer   when we come back and we can do that by actually  modifying the name of this if node let's say is   within 7 days it's a little tip I like to do for  my conditional nodes is phrase it as a question   so it's kind of clear what the true condition  means versus the false condition and before we   add the slack step for the false branch just for  completeness let's actually add a no operation   node now as the name implies the no operation  node doesn't really do anything but it can be   renamed for example there's a few more advanced  use cases for it but right now we're just going   to use it as a placeholder so it's clear later in  the flow if we want to evolve that on to the Slack

step let's click the plus from the true branch  because if it's within 7 days we want to send a   Slack notification to someone on the team that's  going to be within action in an app i can also   just search for it from here but just so you see  where that is in the app I would go into action   in app i could scroll down to find it or again  just search inline here let's click on Slack now   there's a lot of different actions in Slack again  I could search for that but what we're looking for   is to send a message and so I'm going to click on  this send a message action here and it's connected   to my workflow we can just confirm that by going  back to the canvas and seeing that's going to the   true branch now we just need to set up the slack  step for most app nodes you are going to have to   set a credential for it this is an entity within  edit end when you add your API key or whatever   that service expects and then niten can connect to  that service on your behalf i have already created   a slack credential for my Slack but you can create  a new one in line from here as well you're going   to see this screen here if you're on NADN cloud  I do recommend the oorthth route because you get   the fancy just click to connect experience you  go through the Slack popup and it auto connects   otherwise you are going to have to go create an  access token but if you're stuck on that you can   open the edit in docs to do that and you can also  rename your credential as well i'll use one that I   already created but that is going to be the first  step now the resource and operation is already   set cuz we picked that from the nodes panel so  we're sending a message now we need to pick who   we send this message to right so let's drop down  here and let's send this to a channel and in this   case let's pick from a list although I could also  set this by ID again there's an expression here   that could be a dynamic thing in a more advanced  workflow in future so let's go ahead and select a   channel let's send it to the sales channel and  let's do a simple text message but you could   use Slack blocks in future that's what's going to  allow you to have buttons and all manner of those   sorts of things and for the message text let's set  this to an expression and let's actually open this   up so I can see a bit of a bigger view and I'm  going to paste in the static text that I would   like so new install request within 7 days contact  email preferred install day and again here we're   just going to drag and drop values from earlier in  my workflow the most recent node is autoexpanded   but I could also map values from previous nodes  as well in this case they're the same because   the conditional node doesn't manipulate data  it just routes it so let's go ahead and get   that preferred install date and map that here as  well now again here I could combine these texts   i could I write a lot more but you get the idea  i can combine static and dynamic text to send a   useful notification all right let's test this by  running it we got a success check which means it   worked let's go over to Slack and confirm that and  great we can see that came in here contact email   name and email automated with this end workflow  perfect we can open up that workflow if ever need   to troubleshoot future let's run that one more  time just to be sure worked again here and now   we see two here perfecto next let's go back to  my workflow canvas and before we get too excited   let's save our workflow now that the workflow  is saved if we leave this it's not going to work   automatically yet because we haven't activated  the workflow so far we've run a test execution   we've done a test form but we need to activate the  workflow and then as the workflow runs executions   are going to occur in the execution tab of this  workflow so you can see there's a bunch of these   test workflows that we just ran signified by this  beaker icon here and if I take that production URL   from the web form so if I go in here I copy that  and in a new tab I enter that i can see the form   is now live and if I fill this out let's do  a different one let's say max at company code   and let's pick an install date also pretty soon  and submit that we can see firstly that ran   really quickly that's very cool but then if I go  into my workflow into executions I can see I have   an execution that came in that doesn't have this  beaker icon this is a production execution i can   go in here i can inspect that i can understand  if it failed perhaps or if I want to update the   logic and one last thing to point out a little  pro tip before you go is that I can copy this   into the editor this is going to unpin the current  data that I have repin the data from that current   execution and now I could continue building  with that latest production execution which   is super useful if you're troubleshooting or if  you're just evolving your workflow wow you did   it good for you i hope you found this video  helpful you're well on your way to becoming   a flowgrammer if you keep it up there's a ton of  resources in our global community to help you on   your journey as you learn the first place you're  probably going to want to go is community. n. io   that's our official community forums where you can  post questions we've also got the n8n templates   library that's n8n. io/workflows really excited  for you to start your automation journey everyone   at believes that you should own the means of your  automation and so on that note happy flowgramming

we've done a test form but we need to activate the  workflow and then as the workflow runs executions   are going to occur in the execution tab of this  workflow so you can see there's a bunch of these   test workflows that we just ran signified by this  beaker icon here and if I take that production URL   from the web form so if I go in here I copy that  and in a new tab I enter that i can see the form   is now live and if I fill this out let's do  a different one let's say max at company code   and let's pick an install date also pretty soon  and submit that we can see firstly that ran   really quickly that's very cool but then if I go  into my workflow into executions I can see I have   an execution that came in that doesn't have this  beaker icon this is a production execution i can   go in here i can inspect that i can understand  if it failed perhaps or if I want to update the   logic and one last thing to point out a little  pro tip before you go is that I can copy this   into the editor this is going to unpin the current  data that I have repin the data from that current   execution and now I could continue building  with that latest production execution which   is super useful if you're troubleshooting or if  you're just evolving your workflow wow you did

it good for you i hope you found this video  helpful you're well on your way to becoming   a flowgrammer if you keep it up there's a ton of  resources in our global community to help you on   your journey as you learn the first place you're  probably going to want to go is community. n. io   that's our official community forums where you can  post questions we've also got the n8n templates   library that's n8n. io/workflows really excited  for you to start your automation journey everyone   at believes that you should own the means of your  automation and so on that note happy flowgramming