The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
How do you audit an automation setup before touching it, when the documentation says 14 automations are live and nobody is sure? Four days, one checklist, and the finding that shapes the rebuild.
An elevator manufacturer running its ERP on monday.com handed over documentation listing 14 live automations. The audit found none of them running. Not broken, not there. Every process the team believed was automated was being done by hand by someone who had stopped mentioning it.
The audit, four days:
1. Inventory what exists, not what is documented. Every board, every column, every native automation, every integration and every external tool with a key. Dead and live both go on the list.
2. Trace each process end to end. Where does a work order start, who touches it, where does it stall. The stalls are where the automations should have been.
3. Test what claims to run. Fire the trigger, watch the log. A recipe that is switched on and never fires counts as absent.
4. Rank by hours lost. The cross-board hand-offs cost the most, so they go first.
5. Write the spec before the build. One line per automation: trigger, condition, action, owner, failure route.
The rebuild that followed: 25 automations across 9 boards on monday.com and Make.com, each live-tested including the cross-board cases, with Slack alerts when something does not complete. The diagram shows the audit and rebuild path.
The lesson that travels: the gap between what a team believes is automated and what actually runs is the first number to find. It is usually bigger than anyone in the room expects, and it is the whole business case.
Full case study on my profile. The 5-day audit on my services page is this checklist applied to Make.com, Zapier or monday.com.
Prem Patel, Nex Automations. Make.com Level 5 certified, official Make partner, Zapier Certified Expert.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Trending
retrofuturism
Share your favorite designs from the past exploring the distant future. Or your own take on the aesthetic 🚀
halftone
Dots. Texture. Grain. Let's see your designs using the halftone technique.
Midjourney
Creatives are showing off what they're making with Midjourney.
colorgrade
Video editors sound off: How do you enhance the mood of your video in color grading?
Related posts
Just wrapped up another AI automation workflow 🚀
This one is an AI-powered Resume Screening Automation built to streamline the recruitment process.
The workflow:
📄 Receive resume via webhook
→ Extract text from the PDF
→ Use AI to extract candidate data
→ Evaluate and score the candidate
→ Store candidate data
→ Automatically shortlist top candidates
→ Notify the recruiter via email
→ Move qualified candidates to the next stage or keep them in the talent pool
→ Send updates to Slack
The goal was simple: reduce manual screening and help recruiters focus on the best candidates faster.
I enjoy building practical AI automations that connect AI models with real business workflows, APIs, databases, email, and communication tools.
If you're looking to automate repetitive processes using AI, n8n, APIs, OpenAI, or custom workflows, feel free to connect with me.
#AI #AIAutomation #Automation #n8n #OpenAI #ArtificialIntelligence #RecruitmentAutomation #HRTech #WorkflowAutomation #BusinessAutomation #NoCode #AITools
This is the difference between automation and an AI agent. 🤖
A traditional automation says:
“When X happens → do A → then B → then C.”
It’s predictable, reliable, and perfect for repetitive processes. But what happens when the next step isn’t always the same? That’s where an AI agent comes in.
Instead of following one fixed path, an agent can:
→ Understand the goal
→ Analyze the situation
→ Decide what information it needs
→ Choose the right tool
→ Take an action
→ Check the result
→ Decide what to do next
For example, imagine a lead-generation workflow in n8n.
Traditional automation:
New lead → Scrape website → Find email → Add to CRM → Send email
Every lead follows the same path.
Agentic workflow:
New lead → AI Agent
The agent decides:
🔎 Does this company fit the target profile?
🌐 Should I research the website further?
📊 Is there enough information to qualify the lead?
✉️ Should I generate a personalized message?
⚠️ Is human approval needed before outreach?
The workflow becomes goal-driven instead of purely step-driven.
And this doesn't mean replacing automation.
The most powerful systems combine both:
n8n handles the reliable execution.
AI handles decisions where the path isn't always predictable.
That’s what makes an agentic workflow different from simply adding ChatGPT to an automation.
The future isn't: Automation OR AI
It's: Automation + AI agents + the right tools.
Great visual! "Automation does the work, AI agent decides the work" is probably the clearest way to explain this shift to clients.
New release: Python API Automation Reliability Kit
If an API script works on the happy path but fails under pagination, rate limits, duplicates, or restarts, this kit provides a tested starting point for fixing those failure modes.
Included:
Python reliability engine
18 automated tests
Pagination, retry, and idempotency patterns
Adapter and acceptance playbooks
Deployment and rollback checklist
Buy the kit for $49: https://ko-fi.com/s/fd75e9be8a
Need it adapted to a real API? Message me with the provider, current code, and failure symptoms. Do not send credentials or production data.