Construction RFI & Submittal Tracker with n8n, Airtable, Gmail

Automatically track Construction RFIs & Submittals—then notify everyone on time

This n8n workflow captures incoming construction RFIs and submittals through webhooks, logs them into Airtable, drafts acknowledgment emails with OpenAI, and pushes updates instantly via Gmail, Discord, and Telegram—including urgent escalation and an automated daily due/overdue sweep.

What this workflow does

• Receives new RFI submissions via a webhook, normalizes the payload, and rejects incomplete requests while alerting the office through Discord and Gmail.
• Prioritizes each RFI using its due date and keywords, then uses OpenAI to categorize the question and draft an acknowledgment email; it parses the JSON response with a fallback if needed.
• Creates records in Airtable in an “RFI Register”, emails the acknowledgment to the submitter via Gmail, and posts a “new RFI” message to Discord.
• Escalates engineering-required items by sending an urgent Discord message, a Telegram alert, and emailing an engineer via Gmail.
• Receives RFI answers via a separate webhook, validates the payload, finds the matching Airtable entry, and updates the record to “answered”.
• Notifies submitters by emailing the answer through Gmail, logs updates to Discord, and alerts the office if the answer is invalid or doesn’t match any Airtable record.
• Processes new submittals via webhook: validates required fields, uses OpenAI to classify and draft an acknowledgment, logs to Airtable “Submittal Log”, then emails the submitter and posts to Discord.

Use cases

• General contractors routing RFIs to the right team with priority and due-date awareness.
• Engineering review escalation when an RFI is flagged for additional scrutiny.
• Submittal intake automation that keeps owners and teams informed without manual copy/paste.

Technical details

• n8n nodes: if, set, code, webhook, gmail, discord
• Data storage: Airtable (RFI Register, Submittal Log)
• Comms: Gmail, Discord, Telegram (including urgent alerts)
• AI assistance: OpenAI for RFI/submittal categorization and acknowledgment email drafting