INTRODUCTION
Project Background
Many industries are beginning to embrace workflow automation in their operations, and it brings numerous benefits to the business. So here we come to introduce our tools in this topic i.e. workflow automation tool. Thus, the workflow automation tool is a tool that included the process of developing, simplifying, executing and automating a series of processes that are automatically routed between people, technology and data according to predefined business rules.
It also needs to deal with what is the task that makes us feel boring, like those tasks that are part of our workflow, that need to be done recursively in our daily life and at the same time consume a lot of our time to complete the tasks. These platforms provide a way to create these workflow automation processes with minimal coding required and have brought a convenient way to help those people who are not familiar with coding to use these workflow automation platforms.
Problem Statement and Motivation
It will also help save human time in performing tasks in a workflow and minimize the possibility of errors occurring during the progress of the workflow by the human itself, as the system automation will have a consistent workflow rule in handling each task once the workflow is created and configured. At the same time, it will make it simpler for individuals to cope with the daily tasks that they wish to complete on their own.
Project Scope
Project Objectives
Impact, Significance, and Contributions
Finally, after gaining a thorough understanding of the material, we will proceed to design our useful and complex workflow using the multi-system flow tool provided by the various platforms. Our world is moving towards an information technology revolution where most people start using IT devices to perform their daily tasks. Introduction” in Chapter 1, “Literature Reviews” in Chapter 2 and “Proposed Method/Approach” in Chapter 4 and Chapters 5 and 6 include “Preliminary.
In this part of the project, we will also find how to install these workflow automation tools, as well as show some other existing templates that have been created before or the creation model for us to test its functionalities. In the third chapter, it was mentioned about the overall system design and the general idea or concept of workflow automation.
LITERATURE REVIEWS
Review on Workflow Tools
- Reviews of n8n
- Reviews of Zapier
- Reviews of Microsoft Power Automate
Zapier University is one workflow integration tool platform that offers some tutorial videos to help new users get started with their app. Certification – Users will be able to participate in their quiz to receive their certification. If students choose to use the free version of Zapier, they won't be able to take advantage of all the features available to them, such as multi-level Zaps, filters, auto-repeat, and many others.
Workflow ordering support only - a generated workflow can move forward but cannot move back a step (A B C). Error Guide – It will present the error message and a possible way to resolve the error whenever an error occurs in the tested workflow.
Review on Other Workflow Tools in Market
- Review of QMetry Automation Studio
- Review of Automate.io
- Review of Integromat
- Review of Tray.io
- Review of IFTTT
- Review of Tallyfy
- Review of WP Fusion
- Review of Catalytic
- Review of LeadsBridge
- Review of API Fuse
- Review of Coupler.io
Lack of documentation – Platform documentation is hard to find. Simple Interface – Provides a drag and drop builder that makes the workflow building process much easier. Provide Solution Presentation (Workflow Template) – Provides a predefined workflow template that the user can use immediately.
Blog Community – It provides blog community for users to find out the important information about the platform. Free Use for Small Use – It offers a forever free plan by limiting the import size and flow rate.
Comparison of All Review Workflow Tools
WP Fusion • A no-code solution that leverages plugins to enhance your website's functionality. Using Coupler.io platform's shared integration API • Synchronizes data between applications in real time.
SYSTEM METHODOLOGY/APPROACH
System Theory
In addition to that, the development of this tool has made it possible to integrate and synchronize not only the work that can be done by these programmers, but also the work that can be done by the people who have no knowledge of programming, such as business people who want to integrate their business platform together on their own.
System Design Diagram
- System Architecture Diagram
- Use Case Diagram
- Use Case Diagram for WooCommerce Platform Site on Data Synchronization
- Use Case Diagram for SuiteCRM Platform Site on Data Synchronization Features
- Use Case Diagram for n8n Editor Platform
- Activity Diagram
- Activity Diagram for n8n
- Activity diagram of n8n in synchronizing WooCommerce & SuiteCRM Platform
SYSTEM DESIGN
System Design
From what is shown in the diagram above, when creating any automation program, you have to worry about when we need it and then what we will do for it. How we will use it to solve our problem that will make our life better is the core concept when we create automation workflow. As shown above, it posed the question that you should think about when generating the idea of workflow automation that will bring your convenience.
It guides you step by step to think about what to create and how to create the workflow automation.
System Requirement
- Hardware Requirement
- Software Requirement
The web browser is a prerequisite as it is used to allow us to browse the website of each workflow automation tools platform to use their services or even to browse the application that installs on our computer that host in our port. However, you can also use another editor, and it is compatible to edit. It is also not necessary if we don't want to host our n8n service on our server configured in MS Azure.
This is used with the Postman to create a callback for us to test on our functionalities in our workflow that was created. This is the easiest way to use n8n services as I just plug and play to use the service.
SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
Hardware Setup
Software Setup
System Operation (with Screenshot)
Timeline
SYSTEM EVALUATION AND DISCUSSION
System Testing and Performance Metrics
Project Challenges
Furthermore, the too reliance on API of workflow platform to integrate data from one platform to another platform causes the limitation where unable to connect or synchronize two or more platforms if they have not provided API service or the API services provided by the platform that needs to integrate is weak or has errors. Furthermore, the rate of transfer from one platform to another platform by automating workflow platform is unknown which leads to the problem of users not being able to know if the data will be stuck on mid process. The alert feature of failure automation flows are not details that cause the users to not know what the problems are to solve when the workflow process fails.
When transferring a large set of data during a run-time period, if one job process gets stuck, all subsequent processes will also get stuck, potentially causing data loss during workflow transfers. To fix the above error, this project also implements a server monitoring platform which is Zabbix to help monitor the incoming and outgoing network of the server to ensure the smoothness of the data transfer by monitoring the speed/data transfer rate. However, between the installation and implementation of the Zabbix server, it took considerable time for a successful implementation.
This is because the implementation process and installation process of Zabbix server are quite complicated. Others, in this project we have also found that the lack of documentation provided by those workflow automation platforms causes the longer time required to explore or learn to use these platform tools. Then, in the development of WooCommerce platform customer data synchronization with SuiteCRM customer data, the data synchronization process is quite slow.
The action scheduler that activates the synchronization processes is stuck due to the platform installing on the desktop and connecting to the network for others to browse using the reverse proxy method, so the process speed fully depends on the network and desktop speed. The slow network and process of the desktop which causes the process trigger to slow down and decrease, need some time to transfer or even manual click of trigger action to synchronize. However, this limitation will be solved when we implement the platform online, so it is still not a big problem at this moment.
Novel aspects of this project
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conclusion
Recommendation
On the "My Integration" page, click the "+ New Integration" or "Create New Integration Selection" button to create a new integration token. Finally, click on "Run Node" to test our workflow and try to send a note to the Telegram bot to see if it works. Scroll down to "Enable Personal Access Tokens" and enable Personal Access Tokens then click the "Save" button.
Double click on the next node which is the "Google Sheet" node to open its configuration tab. In the "Account Setting" tab, go to the "Security" section and click on the "Edit" next to "Personal Access Tokens". Then click the "Create Token" button and insert "n8n-app" in the "Token description" tab and then click "Save" button.
Now, in your Mattermost, click on the "+" button and select "+ Create New Channel" to create a new channel to receive the changes. Now click the "Run Workflow" button below to test the workflow and try inserting some data into the Google Sheets. In the next click on the "Add Cron Time" button under the "Trigger Times" sections.
Then in the "+" button add function to the editor and the configuration box will be prompt. Follow as previous node, click "+" button to add Send Email node to our editor workspace and its configuration box will be prompt out. In the text, click the gear button and Add expression to edit the expression.
Then add the Set node by clicking the "+" button and the configuration tab for the specific node will be displayed. Next, set the Keep Only Set switch to true and click the "Execution Node" button to test the node functionalities if it works. To make sure the node is working, click the "Run Node" button afterwards to test the node.
