Playbook 1
A contact form goes in. The AI sorts each message as sales, support, or billing, writes a reply draft, and posts it for your team. Then you watch it make a mistake and fix it with one sentence.
Only two steps use AI: Sort and Draft reply. Everything else is fixed plumbing. That is the whole idea of a workflow: you already know the steps, and AI does only the steps that need judgment.
File: . Change your setup and the diagram and file change with it.
Click Download workflow above, then in n8n create a new workflow and choose Import from file from the ... menu. Or use Copy to paste into n8n and paste onto an empty canvas.
Steps with a warning triangle need an account. Open each one and pick the credential you made in Lesson 0:
inbound-drafts channel in each.#inbound-drafts in each.Open Contact Pinelands and click Test step. A form opens in a new tab. Fill it in with M01 and press Send.
Hi there, we just closed on a house in Burlington County and the central air is original to the house, about 20 years old. Could someone come out and give us a quote on a replacement? We'd like it done before summer. Thanks, Jordan
Expect: Sales, with a polite draft offering a visit.
Back in n8n, the steps turn green one by one. Then look in the Teams channel#inbound-draftsyour team inbox for the Sales draft.
Click Executions at the top and open that run. Click Sort: on the left is exactly what the AI was told, on the right exactly what it answered, including a one-sentence reason. Click Draft reply and do the same.
This is the habit that matters most. Every run leaves a record you can read. If you can't audit it, don't automate it.
Read Pat's message below. Before you send it, decide: sales, support, or billing? Then send it the same way.
My AC broke AGAIN and I am NOT paying for another visit. Your guy was just here two weeks ago and charged me $340. Fix it.
Expect: First run: Billing (the planned miss). After your fix: Support, and the draft mentions the 30-day callback guarantee.
Most people say support. The AI says billing. Open the run and read the Sort step's reason. The AI did exactly what it was told: the prompt says billing is "anything about invoices, charges, payments, or money," and Pat mentioned money twice. That is not the AI being dumb. It is a bug in the instructions.
Open Sort. Scroll to the end of the prompt and paste this on a new line, then close the step:
Rule: if a customer says a recent repair failed again, that is support, even if they mention money or paying. It is covered by our 30-day callback guarantee. Examples: "The furnace you fixed last week is making the same noise and I don't want to pay twice." -> support "Can you resend my invoice from March?" -> billing
Save the workflow.
Send Pat's message again. Now it lands under Support, and the draft tells Pat the return visit is free under the 30-day callback guarantee. Then send M03 to check billing still works:
Hi, I think I was charged twice for my spring tune-up, invoice 4471. Can you check? Thanks.
Expect: Billing.
Open AI model and pick a different model from the list. Send Pat's message once more. Your fix still holds, because the fix lives in your instructions, not in one vendor's model. That is why we build on a workflow tool instead of inside one AI product.
Add a fourth category. Pinelands also gets job applications. Add careers to the Sort prompt and to the list in Sort output, add a fourth rule to Route by category, and copy one of the post steps for it. Then write a message from a job seeker and test it.
Look at the workflow you wrote on your card. Where does a message or request arrive, what are the categories a person sorts it into today, and where should the draft land for review? Write the sorting rules the way you would explain them to a new hire, including the exceptions, like Pat. That paragraph is your Sort prompt.
A test form only listens while you are testing. Click Test step on Contact Pinelands again, then submit within a couple of minutes. To use the form for real, publish (activate) the workflow and use its production URL.
The AI did not answer in the required shape. Run it again; if it repeats, raise the model a notch (for example a larger model in the AI model step) or check that the Sort output list still contains exactly sales, support, and billing.
Open the post step that ran and read the error. Most often the team or channel is not selected, or the account cannot post there. For email, check the address in the step and your spam folder.
Check that you pasted the rule into Sort, not Draft reply, and saved. Models are not perfectly consistent: run it three times. If it misses even once, make the rule stronger, for example "This rule overrides the billing definition."