Welcome to n8n on your WHC VPS! n8n is a workflow automation tool — think of it as a way to connect your favourite apps so they can talk to each other automatically, without you lifting a finger. Whenever a form is filled, an email arrives, or a file shows up in a folder, n8n can react, transform the data, and send it wherever you need.
This guide will walk you through your very first workflow, from logging in for the first time all the way to a real, working automation that notifies you whenever someone submits a form. No prior automation experience is required.
By the end of this guide, you’ll have built a workflow that sends you a message every time someone fills out your Google Form. Along the way, you’ll learn the core concepts you need to build anything else n8n can do.
Before You Begin
You’ll need:
An active n8n service in your WHC Client Area (your instance has a hostname like cloudXXXXXX.mywhc.ca and is already running).
A Google account (free Gmail works perfectly).
A Slack workspace or an email address where you want notifications sent.
That’s it. No coding, no server configuration, no SSL certificate headaches — your n8n instance is pre-installed, secured with HTTPS, and waiting for you.
Procedure
Step 1: Launch n8n from Your Client Area
WHC uses single sign-on (SSO) to get you into n8n — there’s no separate password to create, remember, or forget. If you can log into your WHC Client Area, you can log into n8n.
Log in to your WHC Client Area.
Go to Servers. You’ll see your n8n service listed with its hostname (cloudXXXXXX.mywhc.ca) and a size label like VPS 2G, VPS 4G, VPS 8G, or VPS 16G.
Open the service by clicking on the hostname or the Manage button on the right.
On the service page, you’ll see an n8n card with a Launch n8n button. Click it.
A new tab opens at cloudXXXXXX.n8n.mywhc.ca, you’re signed in automatically, and you land on the n8n dashboard. No password prompt, no setup wizard — you’re in.
Take a quick look around. The sidebar is intentionally minimal:
Overview (top left) is your home page — it lists all your workflows and credentials.
The + icon at the top of the sidebar is how you create new things — click it and you’ll see options to create a Workflow or a Credential. (Project is an Enterprise-only feature and can be ignored.)
At the bottom: Templates (ready-made workflows you can import), Insights (usage stats), Help, and Settings.
You won’t see a separate "Executions" menu item — execution logs live inside each workflow, on the Executions tab of the workflow editor.
Back in the Client Area, the Status panel shows your instance’s live memory and disk usage — a handy place to check on your VPS’s health without leaving the Client Area.
Why SSO matters for security: Your WHC Client Area is now the front door to your n8n instance. That makes protecting it more important than ever. Use a strong, unique password for your Client Area account, and enable two-factor authentication (2FA) from your Client Area profile if you haven’t already. Anyone with access to your Client Area can launch n8n and run any workflow connected to your email, files, or customer data.
Step 2: Understand the Three Concepts You Need
Before we build anything, here are the only three concepts you need to get started:
Workflow: A sequence of steps, built on a visual canvas. You drag and drop nodes, then connect them with lines. That’s the whole thing.
Node: A single step in a workflow. A node might be "watch this Google Sheet," "send a Slack message," or "rename this file." n8n ships with over 400 built-in nodes.
Credential: The secure place where n8n stores your login details for other services (your Google account, your Slack workspace, etc.). You set up a credential once, and then reuse it across as many workflows as you want.
That’s it. Every automation you’ll ever build in n8n is just nodes connected into a workflow, using credentials to talk to outside services.
Step 3: Prepare Your Google Form
n8n doesn’t watch Google Forms directly — instead, we’ll use a small trick that works really well: we’ll link your form to a Google Sheet, and have n8n watch the sheet for new rows. Every form submission adds a row, so this gives us exactly what we want.
Go to forms.google.com and create a new form (or open an existing one). For this guide, add a couple of simple questions — a name field and an email field work fine.
Click the Responses tab at the top of the form.
Click the green Link to Sheets icon and choose Create a new spreadsheet. Give it a memorable name like n8n Test Form Responses.
Open the new spreadsheet. You’ll see column headers matching your form questions, plus a timestamp column. Leave this tab open — we’ll need it in a minute.
Submit a test response to your form so that there’s at least one row of real data in the sheet. This makes the n8n setup much easier later.
Step 4: Build Your First Workflow
Back in n8n, let’s build the automation.
Create a new workflow
On your very first visit, the Overview page greets you with a Start from scratch card — click it and you’re straight into a blank workflow canvas.
For any future workflow (once you’ve built a few), use the + icon at the top of the sidebar and choose Workflow.
Either way, you’ll land on an empty canvas with a big Add first step button in the middle. Click it.
Add the trigger — Google Sheets
A trigger is what starts a workflow. In our case, we want the workflow to run every time a new row is added to the sheet.
In the "What triggers this workflow?" panel, search for Google Sheets and select it.
Choose the On row added trigger (the exact label may vary slightly — pick the one that watches for new rows).
In the credential dropdown, click Create new credential. A popup will guide you through connecting your Google account using OAuth — you’ll be redirected to Google, asked to sign in, and asked to grant n8n permission to read your sheets. Approve it, and you’ll come back to n8n.
Once connected, select your spreadsheet (n8n Test Form Responses) from the Document dropdown, and select the sheet tab (usually Form Responses 1).
Click Execute step at the top of the node panel. n8n will fetch the test row you submitted earlier, so you can see the data structure it’s working with. This confirms everything is wired correctly.
Close the node panel. You’ll see a single node on the canvas — your trigger is ready.
About credentials: Notice that n8n stored your Google connection as a named credential. You never had to paste an API key or a password into a workflow. This is the right way — always connect services through n8n’s Credentials system, never by hardcoding tokens or passwords directly into a node’s fields. It keeps your secrets safe and makes workflows shareable and safer to edit.
Add the action — send yourself a notification
Now let’s decide where the notification goes. Pick one of the two options below.
Option A: Send to Slack
On the canvas, click the + to the right of the trigger node.
Search for Slack and select it.
Choose the Send a message action.
Create a new credential and follow the prompts to connect your Slack workspace (n8n will walk you through authorising access).
In the Channel field, pick the channel where you want the notification (for example, your own direct message channel, #general, or a dedicated #form-alerts channel).
In the Message field, type something like:
New form submission!
Name: {{ $json["Name"] }}
Email: {{ $json["Email"] }}
Those {{ $json["..."] }} expressions pull values from the form submission. Replace Name and Email with the actual column headers from your sheet.
Option B: Send to yourself by email
On the canvas, click the + to the right of the trigger node.
Search for Send Email and select it.
Create a new credential using your email provider’s SMTP settings, or connect a Gmail credential if that’s where you want the email sent from.
Fill in the To field with your own email address, a Subject like New form submission, and in the body, use the same {{ $json["Name"] }} style expressions to include the form data.
Test your workflow
Click Execute workflow at the bottom of the canvas. n8n will run the workflow once using the test data from your sheet, and you’ll either see a Slack message pop up or an email land in your inbox.
If something’s off — wrong channel, wrong email, missing data — click the node that failed, fix it, and re-run.
Turn it on
Testing runs the workflow manually. To make it run automatically every time the form is submitted:
Toggle the Active switch in the top-right corner of the canvas to on.
Save the workflow (Ctrl/Cmd + S or the Save button).
That’s it. Submit a new response to your form, wait about a minute, and the notification will arrive on its own.
Step 5: Keep Things Safe and Running
You just built your first automation. Before you build more, a few housekeeping habits will save you real pain later.
Back up your workflows
Your workflows live inside n8n, but they’re easy to export as a safety net:
Open any workflow, click the three-dot menu in the top-right, and choose Download. You’ll get a .json file — keep a copy in a safe place (your local computer, a private Git repo, cloud storage).
Do this any time you finish a workflow you’d hate to lose. If something ever goes wrong, you can re-import the .json on a fresh n8n instance and pick up right where you left off.
Keep n8n up to date
n8n releases updates regularly with new features, new integrations, and — most importantly — security fixes. Your WHC VPS makes this easy:
Check the n8n version shown in the bottom-left of the n8n UI from time to time.
When a new version is available, follow the update instructions in your WHC n8n service documentation (or open a support ticket and we’ll guide you through it). Don’t skip updates for long — outdated versions are the most common source of security issues.
Never hardcode secrets
You already followed this rule when you set up the Google and Slack credentials, but it’s worth saying explicitly: never paste an API key, password, or access token directly into a workflow field. Always create a credential for it. Credentials are encrypted, and they won’t appear if you export and share your workflow later.
You’re Up and Running
You now have a working n8n instance, one real automation running on its own, and the three core concepts — workflows, nodes, and credentials — under your belt. Every other automation you’ll build follows the same pattern: pick a trigger, add one or more action nodes, connect them, test, and activate.
When you’re ready to go further, n8n’s official documentation is excellent and covers every node, every trigger, and hundreds of templates you can import to get a head start:
Happy automating!