FIELD NOTE // MAKE.COM

04 - The Automation Engine

Written by Matteo Cavalli 28 March 2026

The Automation Engine

This is the final and more complex automation. We have the Brain (Google Sheets) and the Warehouse (Google Drive) perfectly synced. Now, we need the “Engine” to pick up the processed flyer and publish it to Instagram.

For this task i chose Make.com.

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The choice

Before choosing make.com i tried also Zapier, but there are limitations on the free tier that were less restrictive in Make.

The Engine

This is the final stage of the pipeline. Make.com is responsible for taking all the prepared assets and publishing them to Instagram.

The system is designed to be smart: if there are no parties scheduled for a specific day, the engine stays dormant to save resources. If there is at least one event, it springs into action.

The Execution Logic The scenario triggers every day at 8:00 PM and follows a rigorous, multi-step workflow:

System Check & Logging: The engine starts by sending a “Status: Starting” message to my private chat using the Telegram Bot.
Environment Setup: It initializes all necessary variables, formatting dates (Italian/English) and generating the dynamic caption based on our pre-defined templates.
The Trigger Gate: It reads the “Autopost Cell” in the Google Sheet. If no cities are listed, the process stops. If cities are present, it moves to the media phase.
Media Processing: While the Instagram app allows up to 20 images in a single post, the Graph API is strictly limited to 10.
The Solution: The engine counts the images in the folder. If are less than 10, it creates a single post. If no, it automatically splits the content into “Part 1” and “Part 2” to ensure no flyer is left out.
Format Conversion: Instagram APIs are extremely picky—they require JPG format. The engine automatically converts any image to JPG on the fly.
AWS S3 Handshake: The converted images are uploaded to the AWS S3 Bucket. The engine retrieves the direct links, which are then used for the final API call.
The Final Post: It assembles the array of photos, applies the correct Instagram Tags (fetched from the Tags sheet), and hits the Instagram API.

Closing the Loop Once the post is live:

Data Integrity: Make.com captures the Instagram Post URL and writes it back into the “Tomorrow Link” row in Google Sheets.
Multi-Channel Broadcast: Finally, it takes the pre-built message from the sheet and broadcasts it to the Telegram Channel via the Bot, providing the community with the “Info Link” to the new post.

The Result

A standardized page, that automatically publish all the parties without manual intervention.

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