Short course
n8n
In almost every department, part of the working day goes into repetitive gestures: copying form responses into a spreadsheet, chasing the same people by email, compiling the same report every Monday, watching an inbox to pull out attachments, alerting a manager when an indicator crosses a threshold. None of this calls for particular intelligence, only regularity. These are exactly the tasks a machine does better than a human. n8n is the tool that lets you hand them over to the machine. In it you build visual chains, called workflows, where each step is a block: a trigger, a condition, an action in a piece of software, a message being sent. The blocks are connected with the mouse. No line of code is needed for the vast majority of professional needs. This module is short and deliberately focused on a single goal: that by the end of the five sessions, every participant leaves with at least two automations genuinely running on their own tools and saving them time from the following week. There is no decorative theory here; each notion is introduced because a concrete workflow needs it. The module stands alone: it can be taken independently of any other programme in the catalogue. It naturally complements the applied artificial intelligence and business intelligence courses, without being a prerequisite or a compulsory sequel.
- Duration
- 5 sessions, 15 hours
- Format
- In person or online
- Credential
- Training certificate
Tuition50,000 XOF
By the end of the programme, you will be able to
- Recognise, in your own work, the tasks worth automating and those that are not
- Create an n8n account and understand the difference between the cloud and self-hosted versions
- Find your way around the interface: canvas, nodes, connections, executions, history
- Build a complete workflow from trigger to final action, and put it into service
- Use the common triggers: schedule, form, incoming email, webhook, file change
- Read and handle structured data, and understand JSON logic without being a developer
- Write simple expressions to transform data along the way
- Set conditions, branches and loops in a workflow
- Connect n8n to Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Telegram, WhatsApp and your organisation's tools
- Query an external programming interface with an HTTP request, even without a dedicated node
- Bring an artificial intelligence model into a workflow to write, summarise or classify
- Handle errors, monitor executions and fix a failing workflow
- Document and secure your automations, in particular the management of connection credentials
Who it is for
Target audience
The module is for anyone whose work involves repetitive tasks on a computer: executive assistants and secretaries, monitoring and evaluation officers, database managers, communications officers, sales staff, project managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and freelancers. The fee is the same for everyone, whatever the profession or organisation.
Prerequisites
- Being comfortable with a computer and a browser: creating an account, managing files, using email and a spreadsheet
- A laptop, Windows or macOS alike, and an active email address
- Bringing at least one repetitive task from your real work, since that is what you will build your workflows on
- No programming skills are required, and none are taught. The technical notions that come up — structured data, requests, connection credentials — are explained in plain language, at the point where a workflow needs them.
Teaching method
Fifteen hours across five three-hour sessions. The first four are fixed in advance; the fifth is agreed with the group, to give everyone time to run their workflows and come back with the difficulties they actually hit. The module can be followed in person in Ouagadougou, entirely online, or alternating between the two, at the same fee.
n8n runs in the browser. Each participant creates their account during the first session, with the trainer; the free plan is ample for everything built during the module.
One point decides how the tool is used afterwards. n8n comes in two forms: an online version, billed per execution above a free threshold, and a self-hosted version, free, installed on the organisation's own server or with a host. The first suits individual needs and small volumes, the second suits organisations handling sensitive data or large volumes. Both are presented with their real costs, and the self-hosted installation is demonstrated in class without being required.
The accounts used for exercises — email, online spreadsheet, instant messaging — are created with test data. No real sensitive data is handled without the participant's explicit agreement. The artificial intelligence model used in the fifth session runs on a key provided by Waaldé Impact for the duration of the course; everyone learns how to obtain their own and what it costs.
Requirements: a laptop running Windows or macOS, a stable connection and a recent browser. Nothing heavy to install, since most of the work happens in the browser.
Detailed program
5 sessions · 15 h of teaching
- What automating really means, and the three questions to ask before automating anything
- Spotting candidate tasks: repetitive, frequent, rule-based, requiring no human judgement
- The tasks you should not automate, and why insisting costs more than the expected gain
- Placing n8n among neighbouring tools: Zapier, Make, Power Automate, and what sets n8n apart
- The cloud version and the self-hosted version: cost, limits, data confidentiality
- Creating your account and exploring the workspace
- The basic vocabulary: workflow, node, connection, execution, connection credentials
- The interface: the canvas, the node library, the execution panel, the history
- Anatomy of a workflow: a trigger, one or more actions, an observable result
- Building your first complete workflow end to end and running it manually
- Activating a workflow, deactivating it, duplicating it, exporting and importing it
- Guided exercise: a form is submitted, the response lands in a spreadsheet and a confirmation message goes out automatically
- Manual, scheduled and event-based triggers, and how to choose
- The schedule trigger: every hour, every morning, every Monday, the last day of the month
- The form trigger and the incoming email trigger
- The webhook explained simply: an address waiting to be spoken to
- Understanding the data flowing between two nodes, the logic of items and fields
- Reading JSON without being a developer: objects, lists, nested values
- Expressions: retrieving a value from a previous node, concatenating, formatting a date
- The field editing node, to rename, add or remove data along the way
- Conditions with the IF node and multiple branches with the Switch node
- Processing several items in turn: loop logic and grouping results
- Filtering, removing duplicates and limiting the number of items processed
- Delays and waiting between two steps, useful when external services impose limits
- Reading the execution history to understand what actually happened
- Guided exercise: a workflow that, every morning, picks up new spreadsheet rows and acts only on those meeting a condition
- Connection credentials: what they are, where they are stored, how not to expose them
- Connecting a Google account and authorising n8n properly
- Google Sheets: reading, adding, updating and looking up a row
- Gmail: sending a message, reading an inbox, extracting an attachment, applying a label
- Google Drive: uploading a file, creating a folder, reacting to a new document
- Google Forms and collection platforms: retrieving responses as they come in
- Telegram and WhatsApp: sending an alert to a person or a group
- Management tools: Airtable, NocoDB, Notion, and conventional databases
- The HTTP request node, the key that opens every service without a dedicated node
- Reading the documentation of a programming interface and extracting the three pieces of information you need
- Authentication by key and by token, explained on a real case
- Handling files: conversion, extracting text from a PDF, generating a spreadsheet
- Guided exercise: every attachment received by email is filed in a folder and logged in a tracking spreadsheet
- Building a workflow end to end from a stated need, not from a tool
- Collection automation: from the field form to the consolidated tracking table
- Reporting automation: producing and sending a weekly report without thinking about it
- Alert automation: notifying the manager as soon as an indicator crosses a threshold
- Reminder automation: automatically chasing those who miss a deadline
- Administrative automation: generating a document from a template and sending it
- Sales automation: recording a lead, confirming it, scheduling the follow-up
- Chaining several workflows together and avoiding duplicate executions
- Error handling: the dedicated error workflow, automatic retries, alerting the administrator
- The limits of free services: quotas, call frequency, volumes, and how to work within them
- Documenting a workflow so that a colleague can take it over
- Guided exercise: each participant automates the real task they brought and puts it into service
- Why pair a language model with an automation, and when to refrain
- Connecting an artificial intelligence model to a workflow and controlling the cost of calls
- Having a text written, summarised, translated or rephrased in the middle of a workflow
- Automatically classifying messages, requests or open-ended survey answers
- Extracting structured information from free text or a scanned document
- The agent node: giving tools to a model and framing what it may do
- Building an assistant that answers from the organisation's documents: principle and limits
- Checking the model's output before acting: the human review rule for sensitive decisions
- Confidentiality: which data must never leave for an external service
- Monitoring and maintenance: checking executions, spotting a silent workflow, keeping a register of automations
- Workshop: reviewing each participant's workflows, collective troubleshooting and improvements
- Regular pauses to compare the solutions produced and discuss the choices made
- Final summary: the standard approach to repeat for any new repetitive task
Assessment and certification
There is no final assessment in this module. As the training is short and entirely practical, it aims to build a working reflex rather than to certify a level through an exam.
A training certificate is given to each participant at the end of the fifth session. It is issued by Waaldé Impact, signed by the trainer, and states the module title, the 15 hours, the period and the list of topics covered.
Each participant also receives:
- All the workflows built in class, exported and ready to import into their own account
- A library of about twenty template workflows covering the most common professional needs
Upcoming sessions
Next dates being prepared
Leave your email: we will let you know as soon as registration opens.
Frequently asked questions
50,000 XOF per participant. Training for a team or an organisation is quoted on request.
5 sessions, 15 hours.
Yes: you can attend onsite or online, as you prefer.
Being comfortable with a computer and a browser: creating an account, managing files, using email and a spreadsheet ; a laptop, Windows or macOS alike, and an active email address ; bringing at least one repetitive task from your real work, since that is what you will build your workflows on ; no programming skills are required, and none are taught. The technical notions that come up — structured data, requests, connection credentials — are explained in plain language, at the point where a workflow needs them.
Yes: participants who meet the completion requirements receive a Waaldé Impact certificate with a unique number that employers can verify online.
Fill in the online enrolment request: no payment is taken on the site. The firm reviews your application, then contacts you to confirm your place and the payment terms. No session is scheduled yet: leave your email on this page to be told when registration opens.
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