Seeking feedback on the documentation šŸ“–

Announcements
1

Hi! Iā€™m Deborah, n8nā€™s tech writer :wave:

A quick request for feedback: when you were getting started with n8n, which docs were most important for you?

1 Like
3

Templates, quick how to do guides

2 Likes
4

Thanks! Do you feel workflow templates now help fill that gap? Or are there other templates youā€™re thinking of?

6

Overview | n8n Docs Built-in methods and variables were very helpfull in understandig how to connect nodes in a way I want them to connect!

1 Like
7

Definitely having workflow templates and see how they work, helped me ramp up very fast into the platform.

In general, the documentation is always useful, but there are some nodes, as the crypto, which I would say the documentation needs more tech details. It was super hard for me to understand how it worked and at the end decided to continue using the logic I had in my code node and using CryptoJS.

1 Like
8

Some of them are seems outdated and not relevant, I remember some complicated issues with batching and dividing files into chunks and community members ā€˜howtosā€™ were helpful instead of templates

1 Like
9

While I canā€™t tell which doc parts I was browsing, but I can tell what I needed first.
I was looking for license options, cloud/on-prem options and tech limits comparison between them. E.g. workflow count limit, executions limit, log size limit.
Then what you can and canā€™t do with cloud, like setting up corporate VPN.
Then if/how concurrency works in workflows.

1 Like
10

Well, Iā€™ve only just started. As a newbie to n8n as well as Javascript, I would have liked to see videos, walking through all the steps.
I have been spending the last week on YouTube and have only (yet) to find a handful of useful stuff. Mostly itā€™s the same ā€˜Letā€™s build a sampleā€™ without much meat.
Today, I did find Connect n8n with Mastodon Tutorial - YouTube which was very helpful in just nailing what is required on the Mastodon side so kudos to @dalandanstudio for that.

2 Likes
11

Hi Deborah,

Examples are critical.

Some of the components lack context and descriptions and this makes consuming them rather hard.

To some extent you have to consult the documentation of the third party API and then try and comprehend the functionality of the n8n component.

3 Likes
12

The doc of the nodes. But it can be improved. Generally itā€™s a pretty small explanation. It would gain to get some more examples of code, or a link to example of codes.

What I found the most difficult with n8n is to understand with the code node, how to consume inputs and how to generate the correct output from the code. There is the doc about it, but:

  • you could add a link from the code node to that variable convention doc
  • you could add multiple examples of code in JavaScript and python on how to generate such output (json and binary)

You should also add when there are limitations: for example the python code node is in beta. The limitation: itā€™s difficult to debug because you get errors from the JavaScript ion python interpreter but not from python itself.

2 Likes
13

Im very new to N8N and personally I find the documentation lacking. No Disrespect, it just needs a lot of work.
Most of the node docā€™s are a blurb about what it does with little to no information about settings and what they mean/do.
When there are examples, they are workflows that appear to be just displays of the nodes.
At this point Ive just been asking chatgpt to explain how to do something in N8N and it gives a good walkthrough with code examples and what to put where.

3 Likes
14

I need examples! Lotā€™s of examples!

Examples would have been so helpful especially for the last project I did. I needed to scrape data from an email which had an HTML TABLE object with the line items for a Purchase order in it. Examples for the HTML, Convert to XLS, and Send Email nodes (with attachment) would have saved me a lot of headaches!

And what is this parameter[ā€œbinaryPropertyNameā€] thing and are there other parameters like it? :wink:

Thanks!

3 Likes
15

Hey folks! Just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback so far. Iā€™m going to let this thread run for a couple of weeks, then collate all the feedback.

16

Hi Deborah, for sure it was that 2-part tutorial (beginner and intermediate). I followed that to setup the pipelines in those exercises and that taught me a lot about the basics then Iā€™m able to use ChatGPT and asking questions in the forums to figure out the rest.

1 Like
17

When I started with n8n, the Self-Hosting n8n page was a lifesaver. It had all the detailed steps and tips I needed to set up and manage my n8n instance, which was super important for getting the most out of the tool in a way that fit my needs.

2 Likes
18

  1. Integrations/Nodes could be better categorised by function/role
    Example categories could are Sales, Marketing, Databases, Cloud Services. Would help in getting an overview of whatā€™s available, what could be an alternative and what might need to be built.

  2. Load docs in a sidepanel in-app
    I have too many tabs open! Would be nice if we could just dynamically load the docs in a sidepanel so we donā€™t have to jump and break the flow. Not suggesting this sidepanel load the docs site, probably more useful a detailed breakdown of options in the node.

  3. Docs may need to be versioned
    n8n development pace and release cycle is fast but users are presumely slow to update. I think it would make sense to keep docs stable for at least 2-3 prior significant releases. ElasticSearch Docs do this very well.

1 Like
19

For me Read/Write Files from Disk | n8n Docs

The parameters werenā€™t clear enough on how to use it and lead to some headaches when I couldnā€™t figure out why I couldnā€™t get the binary data out of the input despite me being able to see it.

I also think plenty of screenshots / images / diagrams work wonders for stuff like this.

1 Like
20

I set up a selfhosted install of n8n and thought the documentation was spread all over. I didnā€™t know there was certain environment variables I needed to set up. I only learned about these after I had issues and spent hours googling the problems.

1 Like
21

Hello Deborah,

Iā€™ve been exploring different platforms like Make, Boomi, n8n, and Zapier to automate the process of detecting when an XLSX document is created on Sharepoint and then extracting specific content to transfer it to another system.

While testing n8n, I encountered a setback as it lacks native integration with Sharepoint. Despite reaching out to the community for help, most responses directed me to Microsoftā€™s API documentation or n8nā€™s custom HTTP connection documentation. Ultimately, Make stood out as the most user-friendly option, allowing me to achieve significant progress with just a few clicks.

Best regards.

1 Like