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    <title>DEV Community: Terence Hielscher</title>
    <description>The latest articles on DEV Community by Terence Hielscher (@terence_hielscher_f80058d).</description>
    <link>https://dev.to/terence_hielscher_f80058d</link>
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      <title>DEV Community: Terence Hielscher</title>
      <link>https://dev.to/terence_hielscher_f80058d</link>
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      <title>Built a public tender monitor in n8n — PDF extraction + Slack alerts [free template]</title>
      <dc:creator>Terence Hielscher</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:11:47 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dev.to/terence_hielscher_f80058d/built-a-public-tender-monitor-in-n8n-pdf-extraction-slack-alerts-free-template-2ehl</link>
      <guid>https://dev.to/terence_hielscher_f80058d/built-a-public-tender-monitor-in-n8n-pdf-extraction-slack-alerts-free-template-2ehl</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;Every morning it pulls all new public tenders from official EU sources, &lt;br&gt;
downloads each PDF, and extracts structured data automatically. Anything &lt;br&gt;
above €100k lands in Slack within minutes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The output looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Title: Website Redesign&lt;br&gt;
Authority: Institute of Science and Technology Austria&lt;br&gt;
Region: Lower Austria&lt;br&gt;
Value: €350,000&lt;br&gt;
Deadline: 04/05/2026&lt;br&gt;
CPV: 72413000&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Four gotchas I hit building this that might save you time:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The API returns a notices array — you need a Split Out node before &lt;br&gt;
the Loop, otherwise you only ever process the first item&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add 2s Wait nodes before the PDF download and before the extraction &lt;br&gt;
node to avoid 429 rate limit errors from both services&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use $now.toFormat('yyyyMMdd') for the date filter — hardcoding a date &lt;br&gt;
means you get identical results every day&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contract value is null for many documents — use &lt;br&gt;
Number($json.data.estimated_contract_value) || 0 in the IF node &lt;br&gt;
with "Convert types where required" enabled&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The data source and notification channel are both swappable — works &lt;br&gt;
with any procurement API on the input side and any messaging platform &lt;br&gt;
on the output side.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Template JSON in the first comment. Happy to answer questions. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I'm now adding a Q&amp;amp;A Bot and Vector DB to the workflow. &lt;br&gt;
Ideally, the system will automatically apply for pre-filtered tenders. &lt;/p&gt;

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      <category>automation</category>
      <category>productivity</category>
      <category>showdev</category>
      <category>tutorial</category>
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