I got a B because I misread a due date — built this to never open a syllabus manually again

Built with n8n
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First week of semester. Five or six syllabi drop. Each one is 8-12 pages. You skim through looking for exam dates, assignment deadlines, office hours, textbooks — mentally trying to piece together what the next 16 weeks look like across all your courses.

Then week three arrives and someone realizes an assignment was due the 14th, not the 17th.

Built a workflow that reads every syllabus the moment it lands in Drive and posts a structured summary to Slack — all deadlines sorted chronologically, grading breakdown, required materials, instructor contact. Done before you’ve attended your first class.

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What it does

Syllabus dropped in Drive → extracts all course data → sorts deadlines chronologically → logs to course tracker → posts full summary to Slack

About 12-15 seconds per syllabus. Drop 5 syllabi, get 5 structured summaries within 2 minutes.

What gets extracted

Course: Name, code, credits, semester, department

Instructor: Name, email, phone, office location, office hours

Schedule: Meeting days, time, location, semester start and end dates

Materials: Required textbooks — title, author, ISBN; optional materials flagged separately

Grading breakdown: Every category with percentage weight

e.g., Assignments: 30% | Midterm: 25% | Final: 35% | Participation: 10%

Assignments: Name, type, due date, weight, description

Exams: Name, date, time, location, weight

Upcoming deadlines: All assignments and exams merged, sorted chronologically, top 10 listed

Policies: Attendance, late work, academic integrity

What lands in Slack


📚 New Syllabus Processed

CS401 - Advanced Algorithms

👨‍🏫 Dr. Maria Santos | [email protected]

🕐 Office Hours: Mon/Wed 2-4pm, Room 312

📅 Schedule: Mon, Wed, Fri at 10:00am — Building A, Room 204

📊 Grading: Assignments: 30% | Midterm: 25% | Final: 35% | Participation: 10%

📝 Assignments: 8 | Exams: 2 | Required Materials: 2

Upcoming Deadlines:

📌 Assignment 1 - Sorting Algorithms: Feb 14

📌 Assignment 2 - Graph Problems: Feb 28

📌 Midterm Exam: Mar 12

📌 Assignment 3 - Dynamic Programming: Mar 21

...

📄 View Syllabus

What lands in Google Sheets

Each row: Course Code, Course Name, Credits, Semester, Instructor, Email, Office Hours, Schedule, Grading, Assignments (count), Exams (count), Required Materials (count), Added Date

One row per course. All your courses for the semester in a single view. Never hunt for an instructor’s email again.

Setup

You’ll need:

  • Google Drive (“Syllabi” folder)

  • Google Sheets (free)

  • n8n instance (self-hosted — uses PDF Vector community node)

  • PDF Vector account (free tier: 100 credits/month — a full semester costs about 20-25 credits)

  • Slack

About 10 minutes to configure.

Download

Workflow JSON:

Course-syllabus-processor.json

Full workflow collection:

khanhduyvt0101/workflows

Setup Guide

Step 1: Get your PDF Vector API key

Sign up at pdfvector.com — free plan works.

Step 2: Create Drive folder and Sheet

Folder: “Syllabi” — copy folder ID.

Sheet headers:


Course Code | Course Name | Credits | Semester | Instructor | Email | Office Hours | Schedule | Grading | Assignments | Exams | Required Materials | Added Date

Step 3: Import and configure

Download JSON → n8n → Import from File.

Google Drive Trigger: Connect Drive, paste folder ID

PDF Vector - Extract Syllabus: Add credential, paste API key

Log Course Info: Connect Sheets, paste Sheet ID

Notify Student: Connect Slack, select your personal or study group channel

Accuracy

Tested on syllabi from US universities across engineering, business, and humanities.

  • Course name, code, instructor: ~97%

  • Schedule (days, time, location): ~94%

  • Assignment names and due dates: ~92% — works best when dates are explicit (Feb 14) vs relative (Week 3)

  • Grading breakdown with weights: ~93%

  • Required textbooks: ~95%

  • Exam dates: ~96%

Cost

A full semester of 5-6 courses uses about 20-25 credits — well within the free tier.

Customizing it

Google Calendar integration: After Slack, loop through the assignments array and create a Calendar event for each deadline automatically

Study group sharing: Point Slack to a shared group channel — everyone gets the same notes when any member uploads a syllabus

Master deadline view: Create a second Sheets tab “Deadlines” and append each assignment and exam as individual rows — one row per deadline across all courses, sorted by date

PDF Vector n8n integration

Full workflow collection

Questions? Drop a comment.

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The accuracy breakdown (97% course names, 96% exam dates) is solid for PDF extraction. A few follow-up ideas: (1) How do you handle syllabus updates mid-semester — versioning logic? (2) Has anyone extended this with Google Calendar integration for automatic deadline events? (3) For students with 10+ courses, does the workflow batch efficiently or does it hit any PDF Vector rate limits? The 12-15 seconds per syllabus is impressive.

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Good points all three. On versioning — there’s no built-in diff logic right now, so a re-uploaded syllabus creates a new row. Simplest workaround is using the course code as a matching column and running an update instead of append, but I haven’t implemented that yet. Worth adding.

Calendar integration is in the customization section but I haven’t built it out as a separate workflow — it’s on the list. The assignments array is already structured so looping through and creating events would be maybe 2-3 extra nodes.

On rate limits — PDF Vector’s free tier is 100 credits/month and each syllabus uses about 3-4 credits, so 10+ courses is still comfortably within the free tier (~40 credits for a full load). The workflow processes files sequentially as they’re dropped in the folder, so no batching issues. If you’re uploading 10 files at once the trigger fires 10 separate times and they queue naturally.

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good day @Truong
Very useful build. The most important addition I’d consider is a human-review step for critical dates before trusting them fully. In this use case, one missed or misread deadline matters far more than a minor metadata error, so highlighting deadlines for quick confirmation could add a lot of real-world value.

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