## Introduction
For product teams aiming to build customer-centric products, collecting and prioritizing feature requests effectively is crucial. A roadmap voting system enables stakeholders—internal teams, customers, or beta users—to vote on proposed features, helping product managers make data-driven prioritization decisions. However, manually collecting votes through emails, spreadsheets, or forms can become messy and time-consuming as feedback scales.
This guide will show you how to automate a roadmap voting system using n8n, a powerful open-source workflow automation tool. By the end, you’ll have a scalable workflow that collects votes, tallies results automatically, and sends real-time updates to your team and stakeholders.
### Who Benefits?
– Product Managers can gather prioritized customer feedback without manual overhead.
– Startup Teams can validate feature ideas quickly.
– Automation engineers and operations specialists get a maintainable system easily adapted or scaled.
### Problem Solved:
Replacing tedious manual aggregation and reporting of roadmap votes with an automated, transparent process that integrates across communication and data tools.
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## Tools and Services Integrated
– **n8n:** Workflow automation platform.
– **Google Forms:** For collecting vote submissions.
– **Google Sheets:** To store votes and aggregate results.
– **Slack:** To notify the product team of new votes and voting milestones.
– **Email (SMTP):** For sending summary reports to stakeholders.
## Overview of How the Workflow Works
1. **Trigger:** A new vote is submitted via Google Forms.
2. **Fetch:** The n8n workflow pulls the vote data.
3. **Store:** It appends the vote to a Google Sheets document.
4. **Aggregate:** The workflow recalculates the tally of votes per feature.
5. **Notify:** Sends a Slack message notifying the team of a new vote and milestone updates.
6. **Report:** Periodic summary emails are sent to stakeholders.
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## Technical Tutorial
### Prerequisites
– A Google account for Forms and Sheets.
– Slack workspace and credentials to create app and webhook.
– SMTP credentials (e.g., Gmail SMTP) for sending emails.
– n8n instance set up locally, self-hosted, or via n8n.cloud.
### Step 1: Create the Google Form
– Create a Google Form to collect roadmap votes.
– Fields might include:
– Voter’s email or identifier (optional)
– Feature choices (single or multiple options)
– Additional comments (optional)
– Link the Form responses to a Google Sheet to keep raw response data.
### Step 2: Prepare the Google Sheet for Aggregation
– Create a new Google Sheet named e.g., “Roadmap Votes Aggregation”.
– Set up columns:
– Feature Name
– Vote Count
– List all possible features in the first column, initialize Vote Count with 0.
### Step 3: Configure n8n Credentials
– Create Google Sheets and Google Forms API credentials in n8n.
– Connect Slack via Incoming Webhook.
– Configure SMTP credentials for email node.
### Step 4: Build the n8n Workflow
#### Node 1: Google Forms Trigger
– Use **Google Forms Trigger** (via webhook or poll using Google Sheets Trigger if webhook not supported).
– Set it to trigger when a new Form submission occurs.
#### Node 2: Get Submitted Vote Data
– Fetch form response details (features voted for).
– Parse the submitted data. If multiple selections allowed, split entries accordingly.
#### Node 3: Google Sheets – Append New Vote
– Append the new vote data (voter ID, feature(s), timestamp) to the raw responses sheet.
#### Node 4: Google Sheets – Read Current Vote Counts
– Read the aggregation sheet containing features and their current vote counts.
#### Node 5: Function Node – Aggregate Votes
– Use JavaScript code to tally votes by:
– Summing all votes from raw data (or incrementing current aggregation counts based on latest vote).
– Update the feature vote counts accordingly.
Example pseudocode:
“`js
const votes = items[0].json.votesArray; // array of features voted
const currentCounts = items[1].json; // current vote counts
votes.forEach(feature => {
if(currentCounts[feature]) currentCounts[feature] += 1;
else currentCounts[feature] = 1;
});
return [{ json: currentCounts }];
“`
#### Node 6: Google Sheets – Update Aggregation Sheet
– Write back the updated vote counts into the aggregation sheet.
#### Node 7: Slack Notification
– Compose a message highlighting the new vote.
– If certain milestones hit (e.g., a feature crosses a vote threshold), add an alert.
– Post to a dedicated Slack channel to keep the product team informed.
#### Node 8: Email Report (Optional – Scheduled)
– Use a Cron node to schedule daily or weekly summary reports.
– Read the aggregation sheet.
– Format results into an email-friendly template.
– Send via SMTP node to stakeholders.
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## Common Errors and Tips to Make it More Robust
– **API Quotas:** Google Sheets API has daily quotas. Cache data where possible and avoid excessive polling.
– **Data Consistency:** Ensure votes appended are properly timestamped to avoid double counting when reprocessing.
– **Slack Rate Limits:** Batch notifications or throttle messages to avoid spamming.
– **Validation:** In the Google Form, set required fields and validation rules to prevent malformed inputs.
– **Security:** Secure n8n endpoint and credentials; consider OAuth flows for API access.
– **Error Handling:** Implement n8n error workflow or error nodes to catch and alert failures.
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## How to Adapt or Scale the Workflow
– **Add Authentication:** Allow only registered users to vote by integrating with an auth system.
– **Extend Voting Options:** Support weighted votes or ranking features.
– **Multi-form Integration:** Merge multiple feedback sources by adding more triggers.
– **Dynamic Features List:** Automate keeping the features list updated from product backlog tools like Jira or Airtable.
– **Dashboard Visualization:** Integrate with tools like Google Data Studio or Grafana to visualize voting trends.
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## Summary
Automating a roadmap voting system with n8n empowers product teams to collect, process, and act upon user feedback efficiently and transparently. By integrating Google Forms, Sheets, Slack, and email, the workflow streamlines collaboration and prioritization without manual effort.
### Bonus Tip
For richer interaction, consider building a Slack slash command integration where users can vote directly within Slack. This reduces friction and accelerates feedback cycles—a natural next step once your basic voting automation is stable.