If you’ve heard about automation tools but assumed they were only for developers, n8n is about to change your mind. It’s an open-source workflow automation platform that lets you connect apps, schedule tasks, and move data between services — all through a visual, drag-and-drop interface. You don’t need to write a single line of code to build something genuinely useful. In this guide, you’ll build a practical workflow from scratch: a scheduled automation that fetches the latest posts from an RSS feed and delivers a daily email digest straight to your inbox. Along the way, you’ll learn the core concepts that underpin every automation you’ll ever build in n8n.
Core Concepts to Understand First
Before touching anything, it helps to understand four terms. A workflow is the entire automation — a sequence of steps that runs from start to finish. A trigger is the event that starts the workflow: a schedule, a webhook, a form submission. A node is a single step in the workflow — it might fetch data, transform it, filter it, or send it somewhere. Finally, nodes are connected by edges (the lines between them), which define the order in which data flows. Data passes from one node to the next as a series of items — think of each item as a row in a spreadsheet.
Step 1: Open n8n and Create a New Workflow
Log into your n8n instance — either your self-hosted version or the n8n Cloud free trial at app.n8n.cloud. On the main dashboard, click New Workflow in the top-right corner. You’ll land on a blank canvas. Before doing anything else, click the workflow name at the top (it’ll say something like “My workflow”) and rename it to something meaningful, such as Daily RSS Digest. Saving regularly with Ctrl+S (or Cmd+S on Mac) is a good habit to get into.
Step 2: Add a Schedule Trigger Node
Click the large + button in the centre of the canvas (or click Add first step). Search for Schedule Trigger and select it. This node fires your workflow automatically at set intervals. In the node settings panel that opens on the right, set the trigger interval to Days and choose your preferred time — for a morning digest, 8:00am works well. Close the panel. Your first node is in place.
Step 3: Add an RSS Feed Read Node
Click the + icon to the right of the Schedule Trigger node to add the next step. Search for RSS Feed Read and select it. In the settings, paste the URL of the RSS feed you want to monitor. Any standard RSS or Atom feed URL will work — for example, a competitor’s blog, an industry news site, or a trade publication. For testing purposes, the BBC News RSS feed is a reliable choice. Set Return All to on if you want every item in the feed, or leave it off to return only the most recent ten. Close the panel.
Step 4: Add a Set Node to Format the Data
At this point, the RSS node returns a lot of fields — publication dates, authors, GUIDs, descriptions — most of which you don’t need. Add a Set node next. In the settings, switch the mode to Manual Mapping. Add two fields: one called title mapped to {{ $json.title }}, and one called link mapped to {{ $json.link }}. This strips the data back to just the two fields you care about. Every item flowing through this node will now have only a clean title and a URL.
This is also a good moment to understand how to inspect your data. Click any node that has already run and look at the Output tab in the panel. You’ll see every item that passed through, with all its fields. This is invaluable for debugging — if something looks wrong downstream, tracing back to see what data actually arrived at each node will almost always reveal the problem.
Step 5: Add an Aggregate Node
Your workflow currently outputs one item per RSS entry — potentially ten or more separate items. To send a single email digest, you need to combine them into one. Add an Aggregate node. Set it to Aggregate All Item Data (Into a Single List). This merges all your individual items into a single item containing an array — perfect for generating one summary email rather than a flood of individual messages.
Step 6: Add a Send Email Node
Add a Send Email node. You have two main options here: configure SMTP credentials (using your email provider’s outgoing mail settings) or connect a Gmail account via OAuth by selecting the Gmail node instead. For most beginners, Gmail OAuth is the simpler route — click Create new credential, follow the Google sign-in flow, and you’re connected in under two minutes.
In the node settings, fill in your To address, a subject line (something like Your Daily News Digest), and build the email body using an expression. A simple approach: {{ $json.data.map(item => item.title + ': ' + item.link).join('\n\n') }}. This generates a plain-text list of headlines with their links. Close the panel.
Step 7: Test the Workflow
Click Test workflow at the bottom of the screen. n8n runs the workflow once immediately, regardless of the schedule, so you can see exactly what will happen in production. Watch each node light up green as it completes successfully. If a node turns red, click it to open the execution log — you’ll see the exact error message, which fields were involved, and in many cases a suggestion for fixing it. You can edit the node and click Retry without rerunning the entire workflow from the top.
Test mode is separate from production mode. In test mode, n8n shows you the data at every step in real time, which is ideal for building and debugging. In production mode (once the workflow is active), executions run silently in the background and are logged under Executions in the left sidebar. You can review every past run there, see whether it succeeded or failed, and inspect the data at each step after the fact.
Step 8: Activate the Workflow
Once your test email arrives and everything looks correct, flip the Active toggle in the top-right corner of the canvas. The workflow will now run automatically every day at 8:00am. That’s it — your first n8n automation is live.
Going Further: Templates and UK Business Use Cases
The n8n template library (accessible via the Templates tab in the sidebar) contains hundreds of pre-built workflows covering everything from Slack notifications to CRM updates. Browsing it is one of the fastest ways to learn — open a template, look at how the nodes are wired together, and adapt it to your needs.
For UK businesses in particular, this kind of workflow has immediate practical value. You might monitor a competitor’s blog RSS feed to stay across their product announcements. Companies House publishes RSS feeds for new filings, useful if you track specific companies. Industry trade publications — whether in construction, logistics, legal, or financial services — almost always offer RSS feeds, making a curated daily digest easy to build and genuinely time-saving.
Once you’re comfortable with the basics, the same pattern extends to far more powerful workflows: pulling data from APIs, writing rows to Google Sheets, triggering Slack messages, or processing form submissions automatically. The RSS digest is just the beginning.
Related n8n Guides
- n8n — The Complete Self-Hosted Automation Guide
- What Is n8n? The Self-Hosted Automation Tool Explained
- How to Install n8n with Docker: Self-Hosted Setup Guide
- n8n vs Zapier vs Make: Which Automation Tool Should You Choose?
- n8n + Gmail: How to Automate Your Email
