Approve Shift Swaps with OpenAI, Google Sheets & Telegram Webhook

Approve Shift Swaps Automatically — with OpenAI, Google Sheets, and Telegram Webhook

This n8n workflow receives employee shift swap requests via a webhook, uses OpenAI to determine whether each request needs manager review, logs every request to Google Sheets, and notifies people via Telegram—either for approval or confirmation.

What this workflow does

• Receives swap requests through an n8n webhook (POST), including employee details, shift date, current shift, requested shift, reason, and an optional Telegram chat ID.
• Normalizes and prepares the request by generating a request ID and timestamp and building the request text for analysis.
• Uses OpenAI decisioning to evaluate the swap against your defined rules and returns a JSON decision, including whether the request requires manager review.
• Logs requests to Google Sheets in a sheet named “ShiftSwaps”, appending each entry with a status of either PENDING_REVIEW or LOGGED, plus the AI’s short reason.
• Sends Telegram notifications:
  • If marked PENDING_REVIEW, alerts the manager to review.
  • Otherwise, sends an employee confirmation message.

Use cases

• Automating shift swap approval workflows for call centers, retail teams, or distributed schedules.
• Reducing manual triage by having OpenAI flag only the shift swap requests that need manager attention.
• Maintaining an auditable shift swap history in Google Sheets while notifying managers and employees in real time via Telegram.

Technical details

• n8n nodes/integrations used: webhook, if, set, OpenAI (default model: gpt-4o-mini), google sheets, telegram, plus a sticky note.
• Google Sheets setup: configure the target document ID and sheet name; it expects a sheet named “ShiftSwaps” with matching columns.
• Webhook setup: create and activate the webhook endpoint in n8n; connect your shift swap form or internal tool to POST requests to the workflow URL.