Automated Workflow Apps

This week I wrapped up a small Power Apps and Power Automate solution for our team and it is already making our workflow feel lighter. We were juggling scheduling requests and calendar holds in a way that left a lot of room for missed steps. People were sending messages in different places and tracking follow up work manually. These requests impact timelines, client communication, and how we plan the rest of our work. Everyone needs clarity on what is coming, what is waiting for review, and what needs action. It was too easy for something to slip through the cracks. So I built a simple Power Apps screen and two lightweight automations to keep everything organized. The app lets you create a new calendar hold or update the status of an existing one all in one place. The automations handle everything that used to rely on memory. Here is what the solution does now: → When someone submits a new class request through the app, it is automatically labeled with a Status of Hold so nothing starts in a blank or unknown state. → A Power Automate flow creates a calendar event that blocks the time for our team with session details and the hold end date. If the status changes, the event is updated or removed automatically. → The team sees all pending items in one clean table inside the app and on the shared team calendar. → A second automation checks our list every day and looks for any hold that ends today. When it finds one, it notifies our admin and client services teams so they can follow up with the client at the right time. The result is exactly what we needed. ★ Items no longer get lost in chat threads or long email chains. ★ Everyone works from the same information, which removes a lot of guesswork. ★ The workflow is consistent, which makes collaboration smoother. No one has to track calendar blocks manually. No one has to chase down missing details. The workflow stays organized with minimal effort from the team. This is the kind of automation I love! Something that simplifies the day and removes repetitive work. And the pattern is useful in so many places. • Healthcare teams scheduling equipment or appointments • Facilities teams tracking room reservations or maintenance tasks • Higher education departments managing events or reviews • Nonprofits organizing volunteers and donation pickups • HR teams coordinating onboarding or training sessions Any team that handles requests and needs a simple way to see what is on Hold, what is approved, and what is overdue can adapt this approach. If you want a straightforward automation that makes work feel lighter, this is a great place to begin. Let’s start building!

You’ve probably been here: Your team needs internal automation, but your customers are asking for integrations too. You look at tools like n8n and Integration App, and they both promise to connect systems, save time, and reduce complexity. At first glance, they might seem similar. But they solve very different problems for very different users. n8n is built for internal users, people inside a company who want to automate their own workflows. Think of ops engineers, technical support teams, or developers who need to hook up Jira, Slack, Notion, and other tools they already use. The experience is visual, flexible, and highly customizable. You can run it on your own infrastructure, use JavaScript logic, use it with Cursor and design pretty much any workflow you need. For example: “When a deal is closed in Salesforce, send a message in Slack and create a new page in Notion.” In short, app-to-app workflows. Integration App, on the other hand, is built for product teams at SaaS companies. It’s not for automating internal ops, it’s for powering customer-facing integrations. If you’re building a product and want to let your users connect their favorite tools (like HubSpot, Notion, QuickBooks, etc.) or any tool with an API directly inside your app, that’s where Integration App fits in. You’re not building workflows for yourself, you’re building integration features that feel native to your product. You want your users to click “Connect to X,” go through auth, see mapped fields, and never leave your app. And you need it to scale across thousands of users, each with their own data and credentials. This is where Integration App shines: it handles auth, mapping, data flow, and UI and scales using LLMs to 100s of external applications, all built to work seamlessly inside multi-tenant SaaS products. In short, n8n is for internal workflows. Integration App is for external integrations, the ones your customers use. And here’s the key: you can use both. Use n8n to automate how your internal team works. Use Integration App to let your customers connect the tools they love, inside the product you built.

Today Glide becomes a whole new beast with the beta release of ⚡ Workflows–eerily powerful automations, perfectly integrated with Glide, continuing in our tradition of elegant tools with understated power. All of our customers pair Glide with a third-party automation tool like Zapier or Make, which are great for connecting your app to a wide array of existing services, but awkward for data-intensive automations that our customers want to achieve for a few reasons: 1. Shared data and compute: previously, customers implemented the same logic in Glide & the automation tool, drastically increasing maintenance cost. Glide Workflows have direct access to the same tables and computations as your apps, so your interfaces and automations remain in lockstep. 2. Zapier and Make are optimized for processing single events, connecting tool A to tool B. Glide Workflows are designed for operations on tables and batch data; for example, it's easy to loop over all Orders, then all Items per Order, and then finally complete a summary step. Looping is absent, primitive, or convoluted in these other tools. 3. No-code computations as steps. Glide Workflows has access to Glide's set of powerful computational primitives, making it simple to run AI, call APIs, manipulate numbers and text, without using any formulas or code. Chain these computations with actions to build simple but powerful workflows. 4. One subscription. Businesses want to consolidate their vendors. Agencies want simpler billing for clients. No-code solutions are often cobbled together with many tools, but we want building in Glide to be simpler than that. Business customers get access to scheduled triggers today, and webhook, email, and integration triggers are coming soon. Looking forward to your feedback!

#AutoCon3 From Clicks to Code: Optical Network Automation Journey at GARR Matteo Colantonio, Optical Network Engineer at GARR, shared their journey to automate the optical network at GARR, an Italian research network. They started by looking at widely adopted tools, including Ansible. It worked to help the team update 92 transponders However, they realized Ansible has scaling limitations when things get complex. In the optical layer, some devices don’t support NETCONF so you have to develop a module. If you have simple procedures, such as pushing config, Ansible is fine. But as you get into complex logic to configure services, not just boxes, you may want to reconsider your life choices. They also tried working with vendor controllers. Provisioning optical circuits can take 40 to 50 clicks across 4 GUIs. The vendor controllers sort of worked. It didn’t replace all the manual clicks. They still had to do manual pre-provisioning work, create cross-connections on some cards, and fix non-meaningful names, and add descriptions. They also don’t have a single optical line system, so the controller API only works with one vendor. The Workflow Orchestrator Framwork They discovered Workflow Orchestrator developed by SURF, a Dutch research network. It’s been open-sourced and lets other organizations adopt the framework. workfloworchestrator.org What do you get out of the box? -It’s a framework, not a turnkey solution, but it lets you define your network services or entities, or domain models for your organization -It lets you track instances -It defines clear procedures, or workflows Everything is stored and tracked in a database for object and relational mapping You start by defining building blocks, such an optical fiber. There’s a fiber name, terminiations, OSS ID, etc. You turn these blocks into Products to manage the lifecycle of a Block. Workflows make things happen. It uses Python functions, so you can do whatever you want. It can handle very complex logic. They went from 50 clicks and 15 to 20 minutes to an automated workflow that takes 50 seconds. Was it Easy? No. It’s harder than getting started with Ansible, but it was worth it. From this project they got: -Central service definitions -Consistent execution of service management -They have a consistent architecture -If new hardware comes in, they can modify clients without having to modify workflows Key Take-Aways: 1. If you want to develop a scalable, maintainable solution, the best option is to go with abstract and composable models, and to go with stateful instances of these models. 2. If you want your network to be programmable, use the devices’ programmable interfaces and YANG models, not just CLI 3. Make sure your transformation is sustainable. Automate one service at a time to nudge people out of their comfort zones

🚀 Did you know that 83% of enterprises are struggling with AI implementation due to technical complexities? Yet the solution might be simpler than you think. 💡 The rise of AI Agents is revolutionizing how businesses automate their workflows - and you don't need a PhD in Machine Learning to leverage them. As an Applied AI researcher, I've tested numerous AI Agent builders to identify the most effective solutions for different business needs. Here's my analysis of the landscape: For Enterprise Solutions: Microsoft Copilot Studio stands out with its seamless integration across 20+ Microsoft apps, making it ideal for organizations already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. What impressed me most was its robust internal audit capabilities and marketing automation features. For Sales Teams: Salesforce's Agentforce is a game-changer, particularly for large sales organizations. Its native integration with Slack and extensive Salesforce app support creates a powerful ecosystem for sales automation and customer engagement. For Open Source Innovation: Flowise AI and DIFY are leading the charge in the open-source space. What sets them apart is their support for advanced frameworks like Langchain and LlamaIndex, enabling complex use cases while maintaining accessibility. Another notable mention is Langflow, which offers impressive drag-and-drop capabilities. The No-Code Revolution: For teams just starting their AI journey, Zapier Agents and AgentGPT offer intuitive platforms with extensive capabilities. They're particularly effective for automating routine tasks without any coding knowledge. For those seeking a middle ground, Autogen Studio provides a fantastic workflow-based approach to AI Agent building. The most successful implementations I've observed combine no-code tools for quick wins with low-code solutions for more complex, customized workflows. 🔍 Pro Tip: When choosing an AI Agent builder, focus on: 1. Integration capabilities with your existing tech stack 2. Scalability potential as your use cases grow 3. Support for both simple automation and complex workflows I've personally tested each of these platforms in real-world scenarios, and I'm seeing remarkable results, particularly in customer service automation and internal process optimization. 💡 All tools mentioned have free trials available - perfect for testing and finding the right fit for your organization. What's your experience with AI Agents? Are you using any of these tools in your organization? Let's discuss in the comments 👇 Check the first comment for direct links to all tools mentioned! #ArtificialIntelligence #DigitalTransformation #AIAgents #TechInnovation #BusinessAutomation #FutureOfWork

How I Saved 2 Hours Daily by Eliminating 11,000 App Switches on My Mac I recently built Automation Assassin, a tool that analyzes workflow patterns and eliminates inefficiencies through intelligent automation. The results were eye-opening. The Problem Discovery After analyzing a week of my Mac usage data, I discovered I was making 11,000 application switches - with peak hours hitting almost 2,000 switches. The main culprits were constant toggling between Cursor and Safari, and between Telegram and Safari. The Solution Approach Automation Assassin works in several stages: 1. Pattern Analysis: It examines app usage history and website visits to identify repetitive patterns and “death loops” 2. Context Understanding: Using LLM, it interprets these patterns and requests additional context to understand the underlying reasons for the behavior 3. Intelligent Automation: It generates custom code to automate workflows and eliminate unnecessary switches Real-World Applications • Development Testing: Frequent Cursor-to-browser switches for web app testing → Solution: MCP server for auto-testing or hotkey script for 60/40 screen split • Multitasking During Downtime: Watching videos while waiting for Claude Code to complete tasks led to constant app switching → Solution: Triple split-screen setup for simultaneous monitoring • Muscle Memory Errors: Accidentally switching to wrong apps due to habit → Solution: Tracking script that suggests closing distracting apps when this occurs frequently Beyond Simple Automation What sets this approach apart from traditional productivity tools is the combination of: - Deep behavioral analysis - AI-powered interpretation - Custom automation generation - Recognition that some behaviors require coaching rather than just automation The Impact Conservative estimates suggest these automations will save tens of thousands of dollars annually in recovered productivity time. More importantly, it’s revealed patterns I wasn’t consciously aware of. Next Steps I’m continuing to refine the tool and explore deeper behavioral patterns. The repository will be available soon for those interested in analyzing their own workflows.

Process chaos isn’t just frustrating. It’s destroying your profit margins. I saw this in action yesterday: a nail appointment turned into a 2-hour productivity nightmare. 💅 Not because they were busy. Not because they were short-staffed. But because of process blindness. The scene was painfully familiar: no appointment system, constant interruptions, staff juggling too much, and frustrated customers. If this sounds like your business, you’re leaving money on the table. Research shows automation can free up 20–30% of managers’ time and improve accuracy and efficiency across the board. Throwing more hours or people at process problems doesn’t solve them. You need intelligent systems to cut through the noise. Here are 7 automation solutions we implement in our Culture & Workflow Reset program, with simple action steps: 1️⃣ Client Communication Hub AI phone systems handle calls and bookings automatically. ⏱ Cuts interruptions, saves 3–5 hours per week per employee. 👉 Replace your front-desk phone with an AI-enabled system that auto-books into your calendar and routes urgent calls only. 2️⃣ Automated Client Experience Smart follow-ups, confirmations, and reminders. 📈 Reduces no-shows by up to 29% and boosts client satisfaction. 👉Use an AI CRM that sends automated confirmations, follow-ups, and post-appointment surveys without staff time. 3️⃣ Intelligent Task Management AI assigns and prioritizes work. ⚡ Cuts management overhead by 25–30% and reduces delays. 👉 Integrate tools like Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com with AI rules so recurring tasks are auto-assigned to the right person. 4️⃣ Process Documentation Auto-generated SOPs and training guides. 📘 Speeds onboarding by 40% and reduces early mistakes. 👉 Use AI transcription and process mapping tools like Scribe or Loom to automatically turn workflows into step-by-step guides. 5️⃣ Real-Time Customer Analytics AI feedback and trend tracking. 🔍 Issues identified 2x faster, with 75% more accurate resolutions. 👉 Add AI-powered survey tools like Qualtrics or Medallia that analyze responses instantly and flag emerging issues. 6️⃣ Admin Automation Smart invoicing, reporting, and data entry. 💰 Saves 8–10 hours per month per employee, with more than 90% accuracy. 👉 Connect your finance system to AI-powered invoicing like QuickBooks, Xero, or Bill.com so invoices and reports run automatically. 7️⃣ Dynamic Resource Planning AI-optimized scheduling and resource allocation. 📊 Improves utilization by 20% and reduces overtime costs by 25–30%. 👉 Use AI scheduling tools that balance workload across staff, auto-adjust when demand shifts, and prevent double-bookings. Ready to stop losing time and money to process chaos? Comment RESET or DM me to book your 30-minute Workflow Assessment. ♻️ Share if your company needs a culture reset ➕ Follow Rene Madden for more insights on driving transformation in financial services

How I Automated Image Creation Using Google Sheets + AI Most teams don’t struggle with ideas. They struggle with execution. Designing images. Writing prompts. Uploading files. Tracking links. Updating sheets. That’s where time disappears. In this video, I walk through a fully automated workflow that removes all of those manual steps. Here’s what this system does: • Reads image ideas directly from a Google Sheet • Runs on a schedule without human input • Filters rows to avoid duplicates or wasted work • Cleans and converts each idea into a clear prompt • Automatically generates images using Google Gemini • Uploads images to Google Drive • Writes the image link back into the same sheet • Keeps ideas, images, links, and status tracked in one place Everything runs quietly in the background. I’m Adnan Ghaffar. I’ve been building software for over a decade and helping businesses automate workflows since 2019. My focus is simple: find the step that slows everything down, fix it once, and let the system run smoothly after that. If your team feels busy but nothing moves fast, this kind of setup can completely change how work gets done. Take a look and see if it fits your workflow. Adnan Ghaffar CEO, CodeAutomation, Chicago, IL, USA http://codeautomation.ai/ #WorkflowAutomation #GoogleSheetsAutomation #AIAutomation #BusinessAutomation #NoCodeAutomation #AIWorkflows #ProcessAutomation #ProductivitySystems #AutomationTools #AdnanGhaffar #adnan

If you think AI = ChatGPT, you're missing out. 7 tools to automate your work with AI: I've spent 15+ years building large software systems and automation. I've learned that the upfront cost of automating repetitive tasks leads to: - Huge time savings  - Better efficiency  - Fewer costly mistakes Today's AI automation landscape has changed everything. Here are 7 powerful tools that can transform your productivity: Top 7 Workflow Automation Tools ➡️ 1. N8N An open-source workflow automation tool that allows for both no-code and advanced custom coding. Self-hosted for full data control or paid cloud service. • Self hosting option (open source) • Most developer friendly option • Custom JavaScript/Python ➡️ 2. Make A powerful visual automation platform with AI agents and complex multi-step workflows. • Drag-and-drop interface (no-code) • AI agents recently added • Perfect for business process automation ➡️ 3. Zapier The leading no-code automation tool connecting thousands of apps through simple "if this, then that" logic. • Extremely beginner-friendly interface • Massive app ecosystem • Great for everyday business automation ➡️ 4. Relay This one was new to me, but I really like the UI. Collaborative workflow automation platform for team-based multi-step processes without coding. • Create AI agents that work for you • Popular tool integrations • Connect 100+ apps in minutes. ➡️ 5. Gumloop User-friendly platform for building AI-powered workflows without coding knowledge required. • Visual interface • Pre-built AI templates • Built for non-technical users ➡️ 6. FlowiseAI Open-source, low-code platform for building custom LLM applications and AI agents with visual nodes. • 100+ LLMs, Vector DBs • Developer friendly (SDKs) • Integrated traces ➡️ 7. Relevance AI Low-code/no-code platform specialising in AI-powered agents and data intelligence automation. • Complex business process automation • Multi-model AI support with rapid deployment • Best for teams handling large datasets My favourite quote on automation: ❤️ "Automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."- Bill Gates Which automation challenges are you facing in your business right now? --- Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network and follow Owain Lewis for more.

I really believe that, as a Power Platform Solution Architect, choosing the right automation/integration tool can be one of the most important decisions you have to make. Most of the time, the default is Power Automate. It's fast, it's low-code, and the M365 integration makes it feel like the obvious choice. For a huge chunk of department-level automation, it genuinely is. But if you pick Power Automate for a workflow that needs to run 50,000 times a day, you're going to hit throttling, licensing headaches, and performance ceilings that force a rebuild 12 months in. (and rebuilds are never cheap). Logic Apps is where you go when you need scale. Pay-per-execution, Git integration, native to Azure. Built for the enterprise side of the house. And then we have Azure Functions. When the logic is complex or you need control over performance and dependencies, that's where writing code earns its place. So the question isn't "which one is best". The real question is: what is this specific workload optimising for - speed of delivery, scale, cost, control, or integration depth? Once you can answer that, the tool picks itself. I built this cheat sheet to make that call a bit easier, so keep it handy. 💌 And if you want the hi-res version alongside 100's of other resources, you can download it here for free: https://lnkd.in/gsKBUaM7 #PowerPlatform #PowerAutomate #AzureLogicApps #AzureFunctions #SolutionArchitect