n8n: Business Card OCR to Gmail Drafts (Drive + Gemini + Slack)

Turn Business Card Images in Google Drive into Gmail Drafts—Automatically

This n8n workflow scans business card images in your Google Drive “unprocessed” folder, extracts contact details with Google Gemini Vision (PaLM), and creates personalized Gmail drafts (without sending). It then archives processed cards and notifies your team via Slack, Discord, or Chatwork.

What this workflow does

• Run on demand: execute the workflow manually in n8n.
• Fetch card images from Google Drive: list files in a specified “unprocessed” folder and download each card image.
• OCR with Google Gemini Vision: send the image to Google Gemini (PaLM) Vision to extract business card fields as JSON, then clean/parse the response (including rescuing an email address if needed).
• Validate extracted email:
  • If a valid email is found, the workflow proceeds to draft creation.
  • If not, it prepares a manual review needed notification including a Google Drive link to the card.
• Create personalized Gmail drafts: build a subject and body for each contact; optionally attach a file downloaded from Google Drive; and create drafts only (never auto-send).
• Archive and notify: move successfully drafted images to a “processed” folder, then post success or review-required messages to your chosen notification channel.

Use cases

• Sales teams capturing leads by uploading scanned business cards to Google Drive.
• SaaS operators streamlining follow-ups by generating Gmail drafts from card details.
• Automation engineers building a reliable n8n pipeline for OCR-to-email workflows with team notifications.

Technical details

• Google Drive OAuth2 (source “unprocessed” folder, optional Drive attachment download, “processed” archive folder)
• Google Gemini (PaLM) Vision OCR for business card extraction
• Gmail OAuth2 to create drafts
• Slack, Discord, or Chatwork notification integration
• Core n8n nodes include: if, set, code, gmail, slack, switch

Setup reminder: configure Google Drive credentials, Google Gemini (PaLM) API credentials, Gmail OAuth2, and the notification credential for your selected channel.