How to Automate Sharing Release Notes via Slack and Email with n8n

Introduction

In product teams, timely communication of release notes to stakeholders, customers, and internal teams is crucial. Manually compiling and distributing release notes can be tedious, error-prone, and lead to delays in sharing important updates. Automating this process reduces manual effort, ensures consistency, and improves transparency. This guide walks you through building an automation workflow using n8n—a powerful no-code/low-code automation platform—to automatically share release notes via Slack and email whenever a new release is published.

Tools and Services Integrated

– n8n: Our automation orchestrator
– GitHub (or any Git repository): Source of release notes, e.g., GitHub Releases or CHANGELOG.md
– Slack: For internal team notifications
– Email service (SMTP, Gmail, or any transactional email provider): To email external stakeholders

Use Case

Whenever a new release is tagged or a release note is updated in the repository, this workflow triggers, fetches the latest release notes, formats them, sends a Slack notification to a product or dev channel, and delivers an email summary to a mailing list or stakeholders.

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Technical Tutorial: Step-by-Step Guide to Building the Automation in n8n

1. Setting up n8n

– Sign up for an n8n cloud account or deploy a self-hosted instance.
– Familiarize yourself with n8n UI and node system.

2. Defining the Trigger

– Choose the starting point for the workflow.
– Options:
* Webhook (e.g., triggered by an external CI/CD pipeline or GitHub webhook)
* Scheduled Trigger (polling repository periodically for new releases)

Example Setup: Using GitHub Release Webhook

– In GitHub repository settings, configure a webhook for “Release” events.
– In n8n, add a Webhook node:
* Set HTTP Method: POST
* Save the webhook URL generated.
– Configure GitHub to send release events to this URL.

3. Parsing the Release Data

– Webhook payload from GitHub contains release info (tag name, release notes, author, publication date).
– Use a Set or Function node to extract and format the relevant fields:
* tag_name
* name (release title)
* body (release notes markdown)
* published_at

Example Function Node JavaScript snippet:

“`javascript
const release = items[0].json;
return [{
json: {
tagName: release.release.tag_name,
releaseName: release.release.name,
releaseNotes: release.release.body,
publishedAt: release.release.published_at,
url: release.release.html_url
}
}];
“`

4. Formatting Release Notes

– Slack requires markdown-compatible text; email can be HTML or plain text.
– Use the Markdown node to convert release notes if needed.
– Optionally sanitize or trim release notes to a summary.

5. Sending Slack Notification

– Add Slack node, authenticate using a bot token with chat:write permissions.
– Configure to post message to a channel:
* Channel: e.g., #product-updates
* Message text: Include release name, tag, release notes snippet, and link.

Example Slack message template:

“`
:rocket: *New Release Published!*
*{{ $json.releaseName }}* ({{ $json.tagName }})
{{ $json.releaseNotes | truncate(300) }}
<{{ $json.url }}|View full release notes>
Published on {{ $json.publishedAt }}
“`

6. Sending Email Notification

– Connect an Email node (SMTP, Gmail, or transactional email service)
– Configure the recipient list (stakeholders or mailing list)
– Compose email subject and HTML body using the release data

Subject example:
“`
New Product Release: {{ $json.releaseName }} ({{ $json.tagName }})
“`

Body example (HTML):
“`

New Release Published: {{ $json.releaseName }} ({{ $json.tagName }})

Published on {{ $json.publishedAt }}

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