Gmail Trigger: Draft Labeled Support & Sales Replies w/ OpenAI

Turn unread Gmail messages into labeled, ready-to-send reply drafts—using OpenAI

This n8n workflow monitors your Gmail INBOX for unread emails, uses OpenAI to classify each message (support, sales, information, or other), and then creates a structured draft reply—complete with the right Gmail label for fast triage.

What this workflow does

• Triggers every minute when a new unread email arrives in your Gmail INBOX.
• Fetches existing Gmail labels and builds a label ID map, then normalizes key email fields (sender name, subject, and body).
• Classifies the email with an OpenAI chat model based on the message content.
• If the email is support, sales, or information, it sends the normalized email plus your company context to the matching OpenAI agent to generate a JSON reply containing a Subject and Body.
• Validates the AI output to ensure Subject and Body are non-empty; invalid results are routed to an error label.
• Creates a Gmail draft reply in the original thread and applies the appropriate Gmail label: Support, Sales, Information, or Other.

Use cases

• Route incoming customer questions to the right team by automatically labeling and drafting support replies.
• Classify sales inquiries and generate consistent, on-brand reply drafts for faster lead response.
• Handle informational emails (e.g., FAQs, status requests) by drafting categorized responses without manual sorting.

Technical details

• Gmail Trigger: monitors unread emails in INBOX on a 1-minute cadence.
• Gmail: fetches labels and creates threaded draft replies with label application.
• OpenAI (chat model): classification + agent-based drafting for support/sales/information.
• Workflow logic: uses if, set, code, plus supporting steps like configuration notes.

Setup note: create Gmail labels named Support, Sales, Information, and Other, and fill in the business details in the Manual Configuration step so the agents reply with accurate context.