Starting simply.
WHAT TO CHOOSE
Something small, frequent and low-risk.
WHY LOW-RISK
Early automations fail, and failure should not damage anything.
WHAT LOW-RISK MEANS
Nothing is deleted No money moves No customer sees it directly A person can still do it manually
WHAT A GOOD FIRST AUTOMATION LOOKS LIKE
A form submission creating a record and notifying someone.
WHAT TO BUILD
The trigger The action Nothing else, initially
WHY NOTHING ELSE
Complexity added before the basic version works cannot be debugged.
WHAT TO TEST
With real data, before using it.
HOW
Submit test entries and verify every result.
WHAT TO CHECK
That the data arrives correctly That formatting is preserved That nothing is duplicated That failures are visible
WHY DUPLICATION SPECIFICALLY
It is the commonest automation error and it corrupts data quietly.
WHAT TO ESTABLISH
What happens if the automation fails.
WHY
Silent failure is worse than no automation.
WHAT TO SET UP
Notification on failure.
WHAT TO RUN INITIALLY
The automation alongside the manual process.
WHY
It verifies the results without depending on them.
HOW LONG
Until it has handled the exceptions you expect.
WHAT TO DO THEN
Stop the manual process.
WHY THAT STEP MATTERS
Automation added without removing the manual work saves nothing.
