How to Build Your First Automated Workflow with Make

🤔 What Is Make?

Make (formerly Integromat) is a visual workflow automation platform that connects your apps and automates repetitive tasks. Think of it as a robot assistant that watches for events and responds automatically. ⚡

With Make, you can:

• Automatically save email attachments to Google Drive
• Post new blog articles to social media channels
• Sync leads from forms to your CRM
• Send Slack notifications when important events happen
• Process orders and update inventory across platforms

Make offers 1,000 free operations per month — more than enough to build your first few workflows.

🆕 Step 1: Create Your Account

1. Go to make.com and click "Get started free"
2. Sign up with email or Google SSO
3. Verify your email address
4. You'll land on the dashboard — click "Create a new scenario"

No credit card required for the free tier. 🎉

📐 Step 2: Create a New Scenario

In Make, a workflow is called a "scenario." A scenario consists of modules connected by lines:

Concept	What It Means	Example
🟢 Trigger	The event that starts everything	"New row in Google Sheets"
⚙️ Action	Something Make does in response	"Send an email"
🔀 Router	Splits the flow into branches	"If amount > $100, go path A"
🔍 Filter	Conditions between modules	"Only if status = 'active'"

Click the big "+" button in the center of the canvas to add your first module.

🟢 Step 3: Set Up the Trigger

The trigger is always the first module. Let's build a practical example: automatically saving new Google Form responses to a Slack channel.

1. Click "+" and search for "Google Sheets"
2. Select "Watch New Rows"
3. Connect your Google account (Make will ask for permissions)
4. Select the spreadsheet and sheet that receives form responses
5. Set the interval to "Every 15 minutes" (or faster if needed)

Make will now check for new rows every 15 minutes. When it finds one, the scenario fires. 🔥

⚙️ Step 4: Add Actions

1. Click the "+" that appears to the right of the Google Sheets module
2. Search for "Slack"
3. Select "Create a Message"
4. Connect your Slack workspace
5. Choose the channel (e.g., #new-responses)
6. Map the fields from your spreadsheet into the message:
   • Name: {{1.name}}
   • Email: {{1.email}}
   • Message: {{1.message}}

The double-curly-brace syntax pulls data from the previous module — Make shows you a visual picker for available fields. No code required. 👌

🔀 Step 5: Add Filters and Logic

Click the line between two modules to add a filter. For example:

• "Only notify for high-priority" — Filter: priority column equals "urgent"
• "Skip empty rows" — Filter: email field is not empty
• "Business hours only" — Filter: current hour is between 9 and 17

For more complex logic, add a Router module to split into multiple paths. Each path can have its own filter and actions — like routing urgent requests to one channel and regular requests to another.

✅ Step 6: Test and Activate

1. Click "Run once" at the bottom-left to test with real data
2. Check the green checkmarks on each module — green = success, red = error ✅
3. Click any module to see the data that passed through it
4. If everything looks good, toggle "Scheduling" to ON
5. Your scenario is now live and running automatically 🚀

💡 Start with "Run once" testing before activating. This prevents accidental spam messages or duplicate data if something is misconfigured.

🏗️ 5 Starter Workflows to Copy

1. 📧 New Lead → CRM + Welcome Email

Trigger: New Typeform submission → Action 1: Create contact in HubSpot → Action 2: Send welcome email via Gmail

2. 📱 Social Media Auto-Poster

Trigger: New WordPress post → Action 1: Post to Twitter → Action 2: Post to LinkedIn → Action 3: Send to Buffer queue

3. 💰 Invoice Processor

Trigger: New email with PDF attachment → Action 1: Extract data with AI → Action 2: Create row in accounting spreadsheet → Action 3: Notify #finance in Slack

4. 🎫 Support Ticket Router

Trigger: New support email → Router: Urgent → Slack DM to on-call | Normal → Create Trello card | Billing → Forward to finance

5. 📊 Weekly Report Generator

Trigger: Schedule (every Monday 9am) → Action 1: Pull data from Google Analytics → Action 2: Generate summary with ChatGPT → Action 3: Send report via email

🧙 Pro Tips

• 📌 Name your scenarios clearly — "Lead Form → HubSpot + Email" not "Scenario 47"
• 🔄 Use error handlers — Add a "Resume" or "Rollback" module to handle failures gracefully
• 📊 Monitor executions — Check the execution history regularly for silent failures
• 💾 Version your scenarios — Clone before making big changes
• ⏱️ Optimize intervals — Don't poll every minute if every 15 minutes works fine (saves operations)
• 🧩 Use templates — Make has hundreds of pre-built templates in their template gallery

For a deeper comparison of Make vs. other platforms, read our workflow automation platform comparison. ⚡

🎯 Automation isn't about replacing humans — it's about freeing them to do work that actually matters. Start small, automate one thing, then build from there.