5 Pro Tips for N8N AI Automation 🤖

So you're getting started with automation.

N8N AI been there.

So here are, five not so obvious tips for you to improve your workflows.

I believe that by the end of this video, you will not only build better scenarios, better workflows, but also debug better and incur on less errors.

if you don't know me, I'm, Luis.

I run lfsa Digital Automation Agency.

This is my YouTube channel.

And if you're not subscribed, now is the time before we get started.

Shall we?

And the very first thing I want to talk to you about is very simple tip that is for you to name the nodes you are building.

So this workflow I built for the sake of this video, you see no node is named, they come with the generic names and you can tell by, well first of all it doesn't say anything.

And when you have the same type of nodes, repeated they just add a number after.

So you see code and then code one thing for the HTTP request.

So you know nothing about this workflow.

Right.

But just by looking at it, nothing at all.

And naming the workflows will do two things for you in the future.

When you come back here for whatever reason into this workflow, you will remember it better and understand better.

because when you are working on it, you know, in that week that you're building, you know everything about it.

one month after, don't think so.

And also the second benefit is when you are debugging.

So let's run this workflow here, just to see what happens.

See Problem in Node HTTP Request 4.

That doesn't say much to you, so you would have to go to remember what that node is doing and then it will try to debug it when you have names.

So you would name every single one of these nodes.

If you go to TP requests.

This is fetch.

Leads from API.

This is parse lead data.

it's a code node.

The loop is already self explanatory, you don't need to rename it.

And this set is format lead fields.

Very important, very underrated.

Okay.

This is Score qualify leads.

Format.

Leads.

Enrichment, Enrich via let's say Apollo.

We are assuming Apollo here.

Format after Apollo then.

this is research after per Black City.

We are assuming this is what this HTTP would do, right?

It's an example.

okay, generate outreach, email.

Format, email config.

And let's stop right here because this is the node that is breaking.

We know that for, for now.

we forgot this one, sorry.

So by now you probably have recognized that this is a workflow that pulls leads data, enriches them, generates email and sends them.

So when you run it and you gonna receive the same error, it's much better.

Send via instantly, you know exactly what happened, you don't know HTTP Request 4, but.

Now when it fails, the error is saying what means something to you, which is send via instantly.

So you know exactly what broke and you know where to look.

just as important, or almost just as important, I like to use sticky notes again to help me remember what that, workflow is doing.

lead enrichment and outreach pipeline what it does, and then it goes about saying everything.

You don't need to use this to go through every single node, but at least the logic of it, because the logic is very important when you go back to that workflow one month after to improve on it, debug on it, or modify it.

And by the way, I can show you with a real example as well.

I just found an old workflow of mine.

To be honest, I didn't remember I have this as you can see I'm using like Google sheet which I normally don't.

this was me trying something that a client has requested probably and I built to test tested on my AN810 and then the final product was probably on the client's instance.

So you can see it looks confusing but when you zoom in you know what this is doing.

it runs every day at 6:00am and it goes through the RS SS feed of several news channels looking for related to AI.

And this is merging all the feeds, filter for recent ones based on date criteria, filter for AI articles to ensure we are talking about AI as the main topic, remove duplicates.

And you see how important this filter is.

For instance it went, it came from 36 to 10 and this one even more like thousand to 36.

just one, every time to go through the AI node that is creating an AI summary for that news.

prepare for storage the set node.

So we are naming putting standard names and we are starting to Google sheets.

And this is the Google sheet.

You see I started this in August 2025 and I probably never stopped the workflow because if you go through now it's like until the day before yesterday or yesterday, and you see all the information about the AI news that I have here, the summary etc.

So this is a real example that I have for you on naming it properly, all the nodes.

Alright, moving on.

Okay, so tip number two is for you to, and I've talked about this before, pin and edit the data that you need for testing.

Let me explain.

You are definitely going to find yourself building workflows that are triggered by for instance a webhook.

That is true for others as well, but I think the webhook is the best example.

when you are, let's say you just finished building this workflow that's quite simple.

You receive as an order webhook, determine the value of the order and then that will determine if it should go to the vip, discount, path or not.

And then you reply back to the webhook and for testing purpose, just make sure that I publish this.

Let's send a webhook can see that it was executed by just looking at this.

And you can also see here that this execution.

Has this data that I just pinned.

So you could just keep executing it again with the same data without having to send the webhook every time.

and that's very important in production.

So let's look at the data.

We are checking if the amount of the order is above 100.

This case is 250.

So you should go to the VIP discount.

The VIP discount will determine what kind of discount you get.

In this case 15%.

It's going to reply back with 15% and the tier etc.

Now instead of sending different webhooks all the time, you can just come here and click on this button to edit.

So in this case let's just change the order number to I don't know, 17, the ID that and the amount to 50 and save.

And then it spinned.

Let's run it again.

It went into the other branch for this when I could have just came to this other temporary workflow that I have and click Execute step again.

Doesn't change a lot in terms of time, when you are building in production, when you have a CRM connected that is firing a webhook whenever a new lead comes in, instead of having to either wait for a new lead to come in or to simulate a new lead coming in with fake information, you can just pin the data here and edit the.

Pin the data.

I think it's common knowledge at this point, but editing, a lot of people don't know about it.

And it's time saving.

Again the same type of tip, which is simple but very useful and can come in very handy for you.

Let's move on.

Now the tip number three Use Please use errors workflows.

I'll give you again one example in this very simple workflow here that you just saw fails when you are in production.

you wouldn't know that this has failed at 3:00am in the morning, right?

Or 10:00pm, at all.

You would know only when the client complains with you.

So what you want to do is create this error workflow.

In this case, this is it that I have created.

Let me just publish this.

And what you need to do is connect this working workflow to that error run and N8N has it in its settings.

This possibility you see error workflow to notify when this one errors and you go for demo 3B And now when this workflow fails, this one will get notified.

We run formatted and in this case I'm using a Slack but you can use email.

We can do whatever works better for you.

Okay, so now let's see if we trigger this workflow.

Let's refresh this and just trigger that workflow.

It's just sending a HTTP request to this webhook.

This execution should fail.

There we have it.

And this should have triggered this workflow here.

There we have it.

See and this should have sent me a Slack message.

Let's see.

There we have it.

Workflow error from the N18 select bots that I have Connected via an 810 and it says the error and if I click here it should open that workflow that we just saw.

Perfect in the exact execution where it failed.

That is lifesaver for you.

Moving on to the number four.

All right.

The number four is actually one of my favorites because people don't expect it and it's honestly a little bit funny.

And also I can use it to show you how you should or I would recommend you to migrate from Google Sheets to airtable.

So let's start with a Google sheet that you have here, list of 20 leads, we want to perform search here or a get here to only get the leads that are from LinkedIn.

And if we run it here, we're gonna see that we get the six leads that are from LinkedIn.

You see source LinkedIn, it's working.

So Sarah, Elena, Ryan, Alex, Sophie, Julia, Novak.

But what happened is sometimes when you have your Google sheet, and that has happened to me in the past, you have a lot of windows open and it's easy for you to mess up for any reason with the header.

So you can see it's either for you.

Let's say I'm replying to an email, that I want to reply, say thank you and I think I have the cursor on my email and I'll just go, thanks.

I'll see my email, didn't type and then I'll go try it again and it works.

Or I move the cursor and it works.

But it's too late because this is changed now.

So if I go here and try to execute it again, it's gonna fail because that column source does not exist anymore.

So I would have to fix it.

And believe me, it happened that you were going to just oversee it or not notice it.

So of course there is one solution that I like to recommend here, which.

Protect sheets and range.

Add a range.

This is the one, the first row set permission and you want to show a warning when editing this range.

Done.

That's all you need because now if you wrongly type something here, it's gonna give you a heads up.

So we cancel this and this is a good, let's say solution kind of workaround.

of course you can transform this into a table as well.

But there's something even better which is the airtable.

A lot of people don't know about it or they don't use it, but I think it's much better because the connection via API for me I have experienced less errors.

So it's more reliable.

Especially when you have big chunks of data and you can see that you are not losing anything in terms of data view.

See it's quite nice.

when you compare to this, yes you could transform this into a table would be better.

But this for me is actually much better.

And you have a lot of formats that you can create.

This is a new feature that I didn't even know about it.

So when you have a new column you can use one of these many pre selected formats that already works as a check for you because it won't allow a different type of records to enter that column.

And also every has its record id.

You can choose to show it or not show it.

If you just add the column Record id it's going to show you.

Of course you want to name it Record id.

And another thing I could go on and on about airtable here I'm just going to show you that you have multiple ways to view the same data.

So the same grid view but now I just filter for lead the scores that are higher than three, so four or five.

you have 11 guys here and you also have a pipeline board that you can stack by for instance in this case status.

to do.

In progress and done.

and then you can customize these cards as well by adding or changing information.

So let's remove the row and add the source for instance.

then you can see it here.

So I like airtable a lot.

And just to show you if you execute it, both will return the same thing.

So the six leads that are from LinkedIn also here.

Those are the same once Sophie, Ryan, etc.

That one is a bit funny but it's honestly one of my favorites.

And do consider airtable.

They have a free plan but once you start to have more, more data you're going to have to pay.

All right, so finally number five.

And that is for you to use the set node to clean data.

Even When you think it's not necessary, it is.

so I'll give you one example here and I can mention others.

So in this example we are receiving a webhook that's a lot of information.

You are definitely going to work with webhooks that are at least this size and even much more.

So before you do something with that webhook, in this case, process the order.

For you want to add a node just to extract what you want and with a standardized syntax or naming syntax.

in this case we are getting name, email, order ID and amount.

That's all we need to work with it later.

So we go from this, which is a lot of information, to let's execute the workflow to this very simple JSON with 4 items n.

There we have it.

The order is processed.

Again, this is for one example.

Another example might be when you are working, for instance with AI agents or AI voice agents, where one of the information that you have is the agent id.

you might want to have this set node at the beginning of your workflow to clean the data, but also to add the manual information that, it's not being sent by any node.

For instance, the agent id, that's what you want to insert.

Because in the future, if you want to change it, that agent ID to another, you don't have to look it up in each node that information is being used.

You can only come here.

And in this case it would be something like agent id, Say a random number.

And when you move on from that, instead of going for each one of the nodes that use that information in the payload in the body, for instance of the HTTP request, you would just change it here once.

So that's also a good practice.

So, yeah.

I hope you have enjoyed the video.

I think this is very, relevant especially for beginners that are starting to build, If you like this type of videos, make sure to follow the channel to subscribe for the channel should post more often, I guess.

And if you have any doubts, any ideas, just drop a comment.

Cheers.