Gmail Support Email Drafts with OpenAI (n8n Workflow)

Draft Gmail support replies instantly—using your FAQ and OpenAI

This n8n workflow watches your Gmail inbox for likely support/FAQ emails, then uses OpenAI to generate a friendly reply grounded only in the FAQ/policy text you provide—saving the result as a Gmail draft in the original thread for your review.

What this workflow does

• Monitors Gmail every minute: A Gmail Trigger checks for new incoming messages.
• Filters by subject keywords: Using an if step, it inspects the email subject for support-style terms (e.g., “pricing”, “refund”, “help”). The workflow continues only when there’s a match.
• Grounds the response in your content: It injects your FAQ/policy text as context, ensuring the drafted reply is based on what you provided.
• Generates a concise draft with OpenAI: The workflow calls GPT-4o-mini via the OpenAI Chat Model to draft a response using the FAQ context and the incoming email snippet.
• Saves, doesn’t send: It creates a Gmail draft reply (not sent) with a “Re:” subject and the original thread ID, keeping everything in the same conversation.

Use cases

• SaaS support teams who want faster turnaround for common questions like pricing and refund inquiries.
• Automation engineers setting up an n8n + Gmail + OpenAI assist workflow for support email drafting.
• Operators who prefer human oversight—receiving AI-written drafts for quick approval instead of fully automated sending.

Technical details

• n8n nodes: Gmail Trigger, if, set, Sticky Note, and a Gmail draft action.
• OpenAI integration: OpenAI Chat Model using GPT-4o-mini to draft replies.
• Authentication: Connect Gmail OAuth2 for both the trigger and draft steps; add your OpenAI credentials for the LLM node.
• Setup customization: Replace the placeholder FAQ/policy text in the FAQ context step and adjust the subject keyword filters to match your support topics.