Automate Purchase Requisition Triage with n8n, Airtable, Groq & Slack

Instantly triage purchase requisitions with n8n—using Groq scoring and Slack routing

This n8n workflow monitors new purchase requisitions in Airtable, automatically determines urgency using Groq (LLM + keyword rules + department thresholds), logs every decision to Google Sheets, updates the requisition status in Airtable, and notifies the right team in Slack.

What this workflow does

• Triggers on submission in Airtable when a requisition is created/updated, using the submitted_at field.
• Calls Groq LLM with the requisition description to return strict JSON: an urgency score (1–5) plus short reasoning.
• Applies critical keyword checks by scanning the requisition description and business justification (e.g., terms like “outage” or “breach”) to produce a keyword-based urgency score.
• Loads department routing rules from a separate Airtable base and computes a final priority score. Cost thresholds can force escalation to a VP approval path.
• Routes the request into the appropriate path: VP approval, auto fast-track, or the standard queue.
• Creates an audit trail by logging scores, routing decision, reason, cost, and metadata to Google Sheets.
• Updates Airtable with the new status and routing note.
• Sends Slack notifications for VP-approval and fast-tracked requisitions to the appropriate channel.

Use cases

• When an “outage” or “breach” purchase request arrives, route it immediately to VP approval with documented scoring and rationale.
• Reduce manual triage by automatically fast-tracking low-risk, cost-appropriate requests to the standard reviewers.
• Ensure consistent department handling by centralizing routing rules in Airtable.

Technical details

• Integrations/Nodes: airtable, slack, switch, set, code, sticky note
• LLM scoring: Groq-hosted model returning strict JSON (urgency 1–5 + reasoning)
• Routing logic: Airtable-based department rules + keyword urgency + cost thresholds
• Audit logging: decision details written to Google Sheets