## Introduction
Product teams in startups or scaling companies often rely on direct customer and internal feedback to source new ideas, identify pain points, and prioritize features. Managing product suggestions can quickly become overwhelming without an efficient process, especially if feedback arrives from multiple channels such as emails, Slack messages, or web form submissions. Automating this product suggestion box workflow not only streamlines capturing and organizing feedback but also ensures timely responses and effective collaboration.
This guide walks you through building a fully automated product suggestion box workflow using **n8n**, an open-source workflow automation tool. We will focus on integrating popular services such as Google Forms for submission, Google Sheets for aggregation, Slack for internal notifications, and Gmail for acknowledgment emails. The result is a robust, scalable workflow that helps product teams capture suggestions, prioritize, and track them with minimal manual effort.
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## Problem Definition and Benefits
### Problem:
– Manual collection of suggestions via scattered channels causes lost or delayed feedback.
– Difficulty in consolidating and tracking suggestions leads to poor prioritization.
– Slow acknowledgments impact customer satisfaction.
### Who Benefits:
– Product Managers and teams get structured, real-time insight into user needs.
– Customer Success teams can improve transparency and communication.
– Customers and internal stakeholders receive timely confirmations.
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## Tools and Services Integrated
– **n8n:** Workflow automation platform to orchestrate the entire process.
– **Google Forms:** Frontend for submitting new product suggestions.
– **Google Sheets:** Central repository to store and organize suggestions.
– **Slack:** For real-time internal notifications upon new submissions.
– **Gmail:** To send automated acknowledgment emails back to submitters.
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## Overview of Workflow Logic
**Trigger:** Submission of a Google Form entry
→ **Step 1:** Retrieve form data
→ **Step 2:** Append submission to Google Sheet
→ **Step 3:** Send an acknowledgment email to the submitter
→ **Step 4:** Post a message to a Slack channel alerting the product team
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## Technical Tutorial: Step-by-Step Implementation
### Prerequisites
– n8n instance running (self-hosted or n8n cloud).
– Google account with access to Google Forms and Google Sheets.
– Slack workspace with a channel designated for product suggestions.
– Gmail account configured in n8n.
### Step 1: Create Your Google Form
1. Create a new Google Form titled “Product Suggestion Box.”
2. Add fields relevant to suggestions, for example:
– Name (Short answer)
– Email (Short answer)
– Suggestion (Paragraph)
– Priority (Dropdown: Low, Medium, High)
3. In the Form settings, ensure you collect email addresses or have an email field.
### Step 2: Setup Google Sheet to Store Suggestions
1. Create a Google Sheet titled “Product Suggestions.”
2. Create headers corresponding to your form fields plus