| # | Workflow | Trigger | Actions | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W1 | Email → CRM ingest | IMAP poll (sourcing@, sales@, hello@) | Parse inbound, create/link Contact+Account, create Activity/Email record, classify RFQ vs. general | Immediate value; kills manual logging |
| W2 | Supplier discovery sync | Cron (daily/weekly) | Pull leads (scraper/manual), dedupe, create EspoCRM Supplier/Lead | Feeds the DB pipeline (03-product/supplier-intelligence) |
| W3 | n8n ↔ EspoCRM webhook heartbeat | Webhook | Test CRUD, health-check | Proves the integration path |
| W4 | RFQ email → structured record | W1 on RFQ-type | Parse product/qty/spec into Sourcing Request + Quote fields | Parsing via LLM node |
| # | Workflow | Trigger | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
| W5 | Supplier enrichment | New/updated supplier | Fetch website (Crawlee), extract certs/products via LLM, check company API, populate dossier, score |
| W6 | Customs/trade check | On verification | Query ImportYeti/customs source for export history → dossier |
| W7 | Scoring & re-rank | On dossier update | Recompute supplier_score + fit vs. open RFQs → notify |
| # | Workflow | Trigger | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
| W8 | Inbound inquiry triage | Email/portal | Classify buyer, create Opportunity, attach matching suppliers by fit-score, draft intro email (human approves) |
| W9 | Quote follow-up nudges | Scheduled per-stage | Remind agent to follow up on stale quotes/RFQs |
| W10 | Notification hub | Any event | Push to Telegram/Slack/email per role (deals, new supplier, QC due) |
| W11 | Campaigns / outreach | Scheduled | Templated supplier-verification or buyer-outreach sequences (rate-limited) |
| # | Workflow | Trigger | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
| W12 | Order lifecycle | Order created (Temporal) | Milestones, approvals, docs collection, payment reminders |
| W13 | Logistics tracking | Shipment created | Poll tracking API → buyer updates |
| W14 | QC scheduling | Pre-shipment date | Book inspection, collect report → dossier + notification |
| Need | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled/triggered glue, CRM sync, email, notifications, webhooks | n8n (Community, self-host) | Installed, visual, 400+ nodes, free internal use under SUL |
| Heavy scheduled data pipelines (large scraping ETL) | Prefect / Airflow | Better DAG/scheduling semantics for data engineering |
| Long-running durable business process (RFQ→order→fulfillment) | Temporal | Durable execution, retries, timeouts, state persistence across restarts |
| Lightweight script→workflow→internal UI | Windmill | n8n alternative if you prefer code-first scripts |
| RAG/agent research orchestration | LangGraph / OpenAI Agents SDK | See 03-product/ai-agents |
07-research/github-projects — Crawlee).Then iterate toward W4/W5 (RFQ parsing + enrichment), which unlock the intelligence flywheel.