Deployment of n8n in production for workflow automation

Abstract

Automating workflows using low-code platforms presents a strategic opportunity for process optimization in higher education institutions. The installation, configuration and production deployment of the n8n platform was carried out at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, as the support infrastructure for the "Taller Desarrollo de Aplicaciones con IA" in Educación Continua. The implementation process consisted of four phases: designing a containerized architecture with Docker; configuring the environment with secure variables and a reverse proxy using Traefik; verifying the installation with automatic HTTPS certificates from Let's Encrypt; and testing functional integration with external services. In this context, a semi-automatic update script was also developed to back up the PostgreSQL data volume before applying new versions, thus facilitating reversible and controlled maintenance. The results demonstrated that the platform is stable, achieving over 98% availability during operation, and is capable of executing workflows that integrate language models with institutional services. It can be concluded that the self-deployment of n8n is a feasible and cost-effective alternative for academic institutions that require automation of research processes and seek to integrate artificial intelligence capabilities into their workflows, while maintaining full control over their own institutional data.